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For immediate release: Monday, December 19, 2016 Boston, MA – Elderly hospitalized patients treated by female physicians are less likely to

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The pioneering women who faced jeers and discrimination to become doctors.

A new study says patients are less likely to die in the care of female physicians.

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No ,it was not 🩺💫

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Times, they are a-changin’. And within a large majority of today’s operating rooms and medical offices, so is the gender of many practicing physicians. The increasing number of women donning the white coat has seen a gradual, yet steady, shift over time—and it’s a shift that is only ramping up with each passing year.

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Elizabeth Blackwell

Medicine woman.

Birth: February 3, 1821 Death: May 31, 1910

Women have been a longstanding part of healthcare in history. From wise women who offered remedies in the home made from herbs and salves to women who delivered babies in the home. Despite the services they offered, women were not allowed to enter universities or guilds to take formal education to be recognised medical practitioners. Wise women would see themselves be labelled as witches, those who delivered babies would find men gradually replacing them in their craft and soon only those with recognised medical certification were able to practise medicine. New medical journals written would soon begin to dismiss the old herbal remedies and traditional folklore medicine as old wives tales thus removing any legitimacy that it may have had.

In nursing is where women found a inlet into medicine. In the late 1700′s, reform began to emerge from various other civil areas that saw change. Institutions for training nurses began to emerge, the Deaconess Institute at Kaiserworth in Germany (1836) would inspire Florence Nightingale who would go on to reform army hospital standards during the Crimean war and Mary Seacole would set up her own nursing home on the front line. Nursing began to be seen as a respectable course of career for a young woman though for some it might have been seen as still closed to young women of colour or of the lower classes. Nursing was seen as a natural extension of a women’s attribute, a caring and nurturing role that women easily slotted into but the idea of women becoming trained physicians was not an open subject. Not to say that women did not try, Margeret Ann Buckley enjoyed a successful medical career as James Barry and their secret was only discovered when they died from dysentery.

Elizabeth Blackwell was born in Bristol, England to a large and prosperous family, her father, Samuel Blackwell would move them to America in 1832 to take up residency in New York where he would become involved in the abolitionist movement. Elizabeth benefitted from private tutelage from an early age but her family would fall from wealth as her fathers business practises did not do well in the states and ultimately he would pass away in Cincinatti, Ohio. His daughters, Elizabeth, her mother and her sisters would go on to open a private school to make ends meet and would go on to teach in Kentucky and later in North and South Carolina. Elizabeth’s family were very progressive for the times, her brother Henry was a well known abolitionist and suffragist, her sister Emily would follow her into medicine and her sister in law became an ordained female minister.

it was during the latter years of her teaching career that Blackwell would began reading medical journals. She would claim that her interest came at the experience of a terminally ill, close friend who stated that had her physician been female: it is likely her fate would have been much different. Elizabeth would apply to multiple medical colleges but ultimately was denied by all but one. Her application to Geneva eventually would be accepted. The board did not think that the all male student body would approve of the admittance of a woman into their ranks and thus put it to a vote. If one member of the student body voted no; Elizabeth Blackwell would be denied a place at the university. Unanimously the vote was a yes and Elizabeth was admitted. By what virtue did all 150 members vote in her favour?

Allegedly they thought it was a joke or an exercise.

Nevertheless the board wrote to Blackwell upon her acceptance;

“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.”

Despite a resolution that no conduct of the University would be detrimental to Blackwell's career, she nevertheless encountered resistance and difficulty upon her admittance. When discovered that her application was indeed serious, she was met with horror from the public and was even restricted from attending medical demonstrations. She was asked to leave operating theatres, advised to avoid a lecture on medical anatomy and many patients reacted poorly to her presence. She recounted in her biography that wives of doctors would not speak to her and often other ladies would stare at her with curiosity. However some noted that fellow students became quite friendly after a time and even some of the more uncouth students appeared to tighten their bootstraps and become more studious.

Elizabeth would graduate first in her class in 1849 with an MD; writing her doctoral thesis on Typhus fever. She would return to Europe and work for some time in the maternity sector and sadly would contract an illness that would leave her blind in one eye. Because of this, she gave up on the idea of becoming a surgeon. Nevertheless she eventually returned to practise in New York and faced further prejudice in her attempts to open up a practise. Hospitals and dispensaries ultimately refused her associated. Landlords would refuse to rent practise space to her so eventually she bought a house and set up a practise where she would see mainly women and children. During this period she would also go onto write and publish lectures on health including The Laws of Life; with Special Reference to the Physical Education of Girls.

In 1853, she would open a dispensary in the slums alongside her newly qualified sister and Dr Marie Zakrewska, a polish doctor whom Blackwell had encouraged to continue her studies. Emily Blackwell, her younger sister became the third women to qualify in America. Leading medical practitioners would go onto to aid the practise as well. In her personal life, it was during this time that Elizabeth chose to adopt a child as she had chosen to never marry. Katherine ‘Kitty’ Barry and Elizabeth remained close friends into Blackwell’s old age. Eventually the dispensary would be incorporated into the New York Women’s and children infirmary by the sisters and Dr Zakreska who would later leave to continue her career in Boston. Towards the end of the 1850′s, Elizabeth would go on to tour Britain lecturing on medicine, many women would go onto be inspired by Elizabeth’s pursuit of a medical career and Elizabeth would be the first woman to have her name on the British Medical register. During the civil war they would aid in the organisation of Womens central organisation of relief which selected and trained nurses for service in war.

Elizabeth would also meet Florence Nightingale, with her sister Emily as well; they would open the Women’s medical college at the infirmary which Elizabeth would be the Chair of Hygiene for a number of years but would directly guide the college herself. In 1875, Elizabeth was appointed the professor of gynaecology at the London School of Medicine for Women which had been founded by a fellow female doctor, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. She would retain this position until she retired in 1907 due to a bad fall she had sustained and later in 1910, she would pass away in her home in Hastings. Elizabeth Blackwell is generally labelled as the first female doctor in America and certainly was a visionary in medicine and helped lead the charge of women entering the profession. Certainly after two world wars, more opened up to the idea of women entering the medical profession as the need for more medical staff arose. The influence of the first wave of female doctors is certainly felt, in 1881 there were 25 female doctors but by 1925; there were approximately 425. Elizabeth fought for her career and certainly earned the respect - albeit sometimes begrudging- respecting of her male peers and the acceptance of women in the profession.

Stuff:

http://broughttolife.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/themes/practisingmedicine/women

https://www.medicaldaily.com/most-influential-women-medicine-past-present-270560

https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/elizabeth-blackwell

http://time.com/5131961/elizabeth-blackwell-facts/

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Elizabeth-Blackwell

https://cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov/physicians/biography_35.html

https://www.thoughtco.com/elizabeth-blackwell-biography-3528555

https://www.biography.com/people/elizabeth-blackwell-9214198

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/blackwell/about/elizabeth-blackwell/elizabeth-blackwell-biography/

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