Her fame followed her as she took grueling post-graduate positions in Paris and London. She received her diploma at Geneva College in upstate New York after the dean jokingly had the male students vote on whether to admit her. On one hand, "no true lady ould leave the purity of the domestic sphere to study the corruptions of the human body," and on the other, "what if female doctors were a resounding success, and female patients preferred them?"Įlizabeth went to exhaustive lengths to qualify for medical school, arranging unorthodox apprenticeships in Ashville, NC Charleston, SC and Philadelphia, Penn. Objections to women in the medical establishment were all but universal. "Medicine is always an evil," she wrote, "though sometimes a necessary evil." Phrenology was considered a valid science and so-called treatments such as leeches and toxic drafts made patients worse and often killed them. She had no interest in marriage and chose medicine as a path to self-sufficiency, although she did not want to treat patients. The book is illustrated with photographs that bring the era to life.Įlizabeth takes center stage in The Doctors Blackwell. Author Nimura has combed through mountains of documents to bring all of the siblings alive through their own words. The Blackwell family were copious letter writers.
He died too soon, leaving his family with few resources other than brains and grit. To atone for his sins, Blackwell moved his family to Cincinnati where he hoped to plant sugar beets rather than participate in the odious Caribbean sugar trade. The parents were ardent abolitionists, despite Samuel Blackwell's sugar investments profiting from backbreaking slave labor. The family emigrated to New York in 1832. Nine Blackwell children survived past infancy. Nimura's account is not only an exhaustive biography, but also a window into egregious 19th century medical practices and the role these sisters played in building medical institutions.Įlizabeth Blackwell was born in Bristol, England in 1821 Emily in 1826. They achieved a series of near-impossible feats to become America's first and third certified women medical doctors. Nimura, profiles two sisters who faced what was a daunting lack of choices for 19th century women.
The Doctors Blackwell, by historian Janice P. The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine, by Janice P.
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