Today’s Google Doodle marks what would have been the 197th birthday of Elizabeth Blackwell, the pioneering physician who paved the way for women to enter the field of medicine.
Born in Bristol in 1821, her family emigrated to the United States when she was just 11 years old. Blackwell initially began her career as a teacher, setting up a school with her sisters to provide the family with financial stability after the death of her father, Samuel, in 1838.
However, a family friend’s terminal illness soon led her to reconsider her career. The friend believed she would have received more considerate treatment from a female doctor and Blackwell became determined to train as a physician.
She began applying for medical colleges and was rejected numerous times. Only one institution, Geneva Medical College in New York, was prepared to even consider her.
The faculty allowed the college’s all-male student body to vote on her admission, assuming they would never agree to allow a woman into their school. However, in a joke on their professors, the students voted to allow Blackwell to study with them and her admittance was granted in 1847.
Although she had finally gained a place at a medical school, the struggle was only just beginning for Blackwell and she faced much resentment and prejudice from her fellow students. But, against the odds, she received her MD degree two years later, becoming the first woman in America to do so.
After gaining her degree, she went on to work in clinics in London and Paris, studying midwifery at La Maternité, where she contracted purulent opthalmia, losing sight in one eye and putting an end to her ambitions of one day becoming a surgeon.
The setback did not discourage her however and she returned to the US in 1851 to establish a medical practice in New York, before opening her own dispensary in 1853.
Blackwell’s sister, Emily, who had by this time also qualified as a doctor, joined another trailblazing female physician, Dr Marie Zakrzewska, to open the New York Infirmary for Women and Children in 1857.
She began making trips back to Britain in a bid to raise funds in order to launch a similar infirmary on the other side of the Atlantic. It was during a visit to England in 1859 that she became the first woman to have her name entered in the British General Medical Council's register.
During the 1860s and 1870s, Elizabeth Blackwell continued to fight in Britain for the acceptance and support of women in medicine. She was able to achieve sufficient backing in America to add a women's medical school to her New York women's hospital, which opened in November 1868.
In 1869, she made the decision to move back to Britain full-time in order to continue her campaign for reform in medicine.
She founded the National Health Society in 1871, with the goal of educating the public on the benefits of hygiene and healthy lifestyles. Their motto “Prevention is better than Cure”, is still a phrase widely used not just in medical circles, but in society as a whole.
Blackwell had set up a private practice in London in 1870, established the London School of Medicine for Women in 1874 and finally won the right for women to undertake medical degrees in Britain during 1876 following years of campaigning.
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Although she did not actively practice medicine in the last 20 years of her life, Blackwell continued to work tirelessly on a number of courses, including medical education, preventative medicine, sanitation, family planning, women's suffrage, the abolition of prostitution and white slavery, morality in government, and liberalisation of the notoriously prudish Victorian society.
She died in Hastings on May 31, 1910, but left behind a sizeable legacy for women in medicine. IN 1881, there were only 25 registered female doctors in England and Wales but a year after her death in 1911 almost 500 were registered across the country.
In 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman in the US to earn a medical degree when she graduated from Geneva Medical College, a small school in western New York. She only got in because the male students thought her application was part of a hoax.
By the time Blackwell applied to Geneva, she’d already been rejected from several other schools. When Geneva dean Charles Lee received her application, he and his male faculty decided to let the student body vote on whether to admit a woman. According to PBS News Hour, Lee explained that a single “no” vote from the 150 male students would lead the college to reject Blackwell. Apparently thinking the exercise was a practical joke, every student voted yes.
On Oct. 20, 1847, Lee notified Blackwell of her admission to Geneva in a letter:
A quorum of the faculty assembled last evening for the first time during the session, and it was thought important to submit your proposal to the class (of students), who have had a meeting this day, and acted entirely on their own behalf, without any interference on the part of the faculty. I send you the result of their deliberations, and need only add that there are no fears but that you can, by judicious management, not only “disarm criticism,” but elevate yourself without detracting in the least from the dignity of the profession.
The letter included a resolution adopted by the college stating that Blackwell would be admitted and pledging that “no conduct of ours shall cause her to regret her attendance at this institution.”
That wasn’t entirely the case. As Blackwell later recalled in her autobiography, “a doctor’s wife at the table avoided any communication with me, and… the ladies stopped to stare at me, as a curious animal.” Her diary entries recall multiple days when she was asked to leave an operation, and another time when she was advised to skip a lecture on reproductive anatomy.
Google is honoring Blackwell today (Feb. 3) to commemorate the 197th anniversary of her birth.
Blackwell went on to work in England and Paris, returning to New York City in 1851. She hoped to establish a practice there, but encountered a “blank wall of social and professional antagonism.” She dedicated the rest of her career to public health and preventative medicine, and to promoting medical opportunities for women. Blackwell’s younger sister, Emily, was the third woman in the US to earn a medical degree.
Read next: For the first time ever, more women than men are going to med school
Google is celebrating Elizabeth Blackwell’s 197th birthday on Feb. 3 with a Google Doodle tribute.
The Google Doodle shows Blackwell, a pioneer of medical and feminist history, at a desk covered with books, medical supplies and a classic leather doctor’s bag. The sketch was drawn by Harriet Lee Merrion, who lives in the town where Blackwell was born almost two centuries ago, according to an announcement from Google.
Here’s what to know about Elizabeth Blackwell on her birthday.
(Original Caption) Head and shoulders portrait of Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910), the first woman (in 1849), to receive a medical degree in the U.S. Undated photograph. Bettmann—Bettmann Archive
Elizabeth Blackwell Biography
Blackwell, who would go on to become the first woman in America to earn a medical degree, was born in Bristol, England, in 1821. Her family immigrated to the U.S. about 10 years later, settling in Ohio, according to the National Women’s History Museum.
Originally a teacher, Blackwell decided to pursue medicine after a dying friend told her she wished she had a female doctor, according to the Women’s History Museum. Despite the fact that medical schools did not accept women at the time, Blackwell applied and eventually attended New York’s Geneva College. After graduating, she and one of her sisters, who also became a doctor, went on to open the New York Infirmary for Women and Children, the Women’s History Museum writes.
Later in her career, Blackwell also opened a women’s medical school in New York City, became a professor of gynecology in London and wrote extensively, according to the Encyclopædia Britannica.
Elizabeth Blackwell Facts
Blackwell’s acceptance to Geneva College was intended as a practical joke, according to the Women’s History Museum. She was rejected everywhere else she applied.
After medical school, Blackwell sought further training in Paris, according to Britannica. While there, she contracted an eye disease that left her blind in one eye, dashing her hopes of becoming a surgeon.
When she was a schoolteacher in Kentucky, Blackwell cemented herself as an abolitionist by running a Sunday school for slaves, Google writes.
Florence Nightingale, the legendary British nurse, helped Blackwell hatch the plan to open her women’s medical college in New York, Britannica says.
In 1974, the U.S. Postal Service honored Blackwell’s achievements and contributions to history with a commemorative stamp.
Elizabeth Blackwell Quotes
Google
Today's Google Doodle celebrates the 197th birthday of physician and abolitionist Elizabeth Blackwell.
Blackwell spent the first part of her working life as a teacher, but in the mid-1840s, the death of a friend prompted her to study medicine. After much contemplation, she set her mind to becoming a doctor, and she decided that only one of Philadelphia's prestigious medical schools would do.
But there were no female doctors in the United States at the time, and the medical establishment didn't want to change that. Blackwell applied to medical school after medical school, and she got back rejection after rejection. Some said that as a woman, she obviously wasn't up to the rigors of medical study and practice; others said that they couldn't risk her becoming competition for the male doctors already practicing. Beset on all sides by contradictory rejections, she sought advice from every doctor she could find. Several of them actually suggested that Blackwell would be better of disguising herself as a man to apply for medical school.
Instead, she applied to what today's college-bound students would call "backup schools," and one was brave enough to take her. She entered Geneva Medical College (now Hobart College) in 1847 and graduated in 1849. When he presented her diploma, the dean bowed to her.
There's no denying that Blackwell was a pioneer, but she was also, in many ways, a product of her time. She's remembered as an advocate for women's rights, and she certainly was, but she also argued - on religious grounds - against medical contraception, advocating the (significantly less effective) rhythm method instead. Her approach to medicine focused on moral and social reform, and she believed that morality and spirituality played a role in disease and wellness. It wasn't an uncommon view at the time, and on that basis, she argued against inoculations and vaccines, and she firmly rejected the newfangled idea that microscopic organisms cause disease.
