Trailblazers

Sanctuary celebrates a talented physician and savvy businesswoman who paved the way for other women to make their mark in the medical field.

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Elizabeth Blackwell
​(1821-1910)
© Library of Congress

Elizabeth Blackwell was a pioneer for women’s health and women’s rights. She became the first modern woman to break through the centuries-old barrier to women practicing medicine. She first studied medicine on her own. She then applied to many U.S. medical schools but was rejected because of gender prejudice. She was finally admitted to Geneva Medical College in New York and received her M.D. degree in 1849. After completing her internship in her native England, she returned to the United States but found no hospital willing to hire female physicians. So, she and her sister, Emily, also a physician, opened a clinic in the slums of New York city. The clinic’s success led to the women establishing the New York Infirmary for Women and Children. Later, they founded a medical college for women – the first of its kind. 

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Some interesting facts...

• Elizabeth was the first woman in America to receive a medical degree.
• She was inspired to pursue medicine by a dying friend who said her ordeal would have been better had she had a female physician.
• Professors forced her to sit separately at lectures and often excluded her from labs.
• She earned respect from her peers after graduating first in her class in 1849.
• She studied midwifery at La Maternité, where she contracted "purulent opthalmia" (inflammation of the eye) from a young patient. When Elizabeth lost sight in one eye, she returned to New York City in 1851, giving up her dream of becoming a surgeon.
• She also helped found the National Health Society.
• She published several books, including an autobiography, Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women (1895), the story of her dedicated, groundbreaking struggle to practice the medical profession, eloquently told in her own words.

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