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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.
“It is not easy to be a pioneer – but oh, it is fascinating!”
-Elizabeth Blackwell
As the first woman in the United States to earn a medical degree, an active champion of women’s rights, and an abolitionist, Elizabeth Blackwell was nothing if not a pioneer.
Blackwell grew up in Bristol and emigrated to the United States with her family, where she began her professional life as a teacher. Early on, she asserted her moral convictions: when a teaching position in Kentucky exposed her to the brutality of slavery for the first time, she set up a Sunday school for slaves and became a staunch abolitionist.
Years later, the death of a friend prompted her foray into medicine, as Blackwell believed a female physician might have lessened her friend’s suffering. She persisted through seemingly endless rejections from medical schools – at least once being told that she should dress as a man in order to gain admittance. Finally, she was accepted into the Geneva Medical College by a unanimous vote of the all-male student body. She went on to establish a women-governed infirmary, found two medical colleges for women, and mentor several physicians.
Today’s Doodle is by illustrator Harriet Lee Merrion – who happens to be based in Bristol and regularly cycles past the house where Elizabeth grew up! Her illustration shows Blackwell in the midst of her pioneering practice and celebrates the significant positive impact she had on the lives of people around the world.
Early drafts of the Doodle below
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.
