Dr. Blackwell

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In 1847, the idea that a woman could be a medical doctor was absurd. Some thought it couldn’t be done. Others accepted the premise that a woman could learn to be a physician, but suggested such a woman would need to disguise herself as a man and go study far away where no one would recognize her – France, perhaps. But for Elizabeth Blackwell that defeated the purpose. Her goal was to prove that a woman could do anything a man could do. And once she got her medical degree, she set to work helping other women, starting with her sister Emily, follow in her footsteps. 

​Host: Samantha

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Further Reading
Elizabeth Blackwell, Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women: Autobiographical Sketches (1895)
 
M.A. Elston, “Elizabeth Blackwell.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (May 2015).
 
Regina Morantz-Sanchez, “Feminist Theory and Historical Practice: Rereading Elizabeth Blackwell,” History and Theory 31 (1992): 51-69.
 
Janice Nimura, The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women – and Women to Medicine, W.W. Norton, (2021).
 
Related Content
This episode is part of our Women's History Collection

Music: "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin Macleod (www.incompetech.com)