I had not the slightest idea of the commotion created by my appearance as a medical student in the little town. Very slowly, I perceived that a doctor's wife at the table avoided any communication with me, and that as I walked backwards and forwards to the college, ladies stopped to
stare at me as a curious animal. I afterwards found that I had so shocked Geneva propriety that the theory was established that either I was a bad woman whose designs would gradually become evident, or that being insane an outbreak of insanity would soon become a parent. Those are the words of Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman ever to earn a medical degree in the United States, and the person reading them was Dr Deborah Michaels, Professor of Women
and Gender Studies at Merrimack College. Elizabeth Blackwell was a woman ahead of her time. Her medical thinking was advanced, and she opened the door to all the women who have since followed into the medical profession. I'm a land ververe and this is Seneca's one women to hear. We are bringing you one hundred of the world's most inspiring and history making women. You need to hear. In eighteen forty nine, Elizabeth Blackwell graduated first in her class from
Geneva Medical College in New York State. It was the only school that would take her, and she got in because the other students thought it would make a good prank to have a woman in class. But her career was no joke. Among her accomplishments was starting a medical college for women in New York City. We spoke to Dr Deborah Michaels to find out more. Let's listen and learn why Dr Elizabeth Blackwell is one of se because
women to hear. I'm delighted to be here today with a doctor Deborah Michaels, and we're going to be speaking about Dr Elizabeth Blackwell, who has been called the first female doctor, certainly the first woman in America to get a medical degree. Dr Michaels, I wonder could we start maybe with talking about her impact, Um, what she will be remembered for. Maybe you could place her in history? Oh sure, Um, Elizabeth Blackwell is, as you said, the
first woman to receive a medical degree. Not necessarily the first woman to practice medicine, because midwives have been practicing medicine before that, but the first woman to blaze this new trail for women to say that women have not only the ability, but also the right um and should
have the right to become doctors. And not only did she become a doctor, she studied um typhus, which was a highly contagious disease at the time, and you know, thinking about that in the context of the world we live in today, her work um advancing the ways in which diseases were transmitted. She studied, for example, the ways in which physicians might transmit a disease because from patient to patient by not washing their hands in between visiting
with patients. So, I mean that's kind of resonates in a very contemporary way. You're not kidding, right, So she's one of the first people to actually begin to talk about how do diseases spread and what role do you does hygiene play in that? And that was a very big area of study for her Um. She you know, it's it's significant that she Um was the first woman
to attend a medical college that was co educational. But she was also somebody who went on to found both medical schools for women and infirmaries and and sort of many smaller hospitals that treated women She didn't love the idea of women only um, you know, medical schools, because she felt that women should be allowed to attend any any school, anywhere. But she also understood, because she lived through them, the difficulties women at that time fased attending
medical colleges that were dominated by men. Harassment, um, being blocked from certain trainings or letters of recommendation or you know, all kinds of things um at that time. So so in many ways we think about her impact, it's, you know, people love the idea of firsts, and certainly she's a first, but she's more than just a first in terms of being the first doctor. She's the person who opened the door for all of the women who came after her. And I think that's significant when we look at any
of the first in our history. How did they open the door for all of the women you know today? For example today, you know, I looked up a statistic prior to this women are u more than of the students in medical schools right now, correct, And that would
not have happened without an Elizabeth Blackwell. But isn't this so interesting about the first that they pay it forward in a really significant way and opened the door as you say, I think there's some real strong learning in all of that, and and the fact that some of the things that she was dealing with in school you mentioned harassment, discrimination. We are still battling some of those issues.
So people who really, especially women leaders, who do engage in this way can have tremendous impact and it continues, thankfully. I also had heard about her that she went into medicine because a dying friend wish that she had had a woman physician. She obviously did not. Is that a true story you had mentioned? Certainly there are women midwives, but how did medicine treat women patients during her life time or just around that time. Well, that is a
true story. She had a friend who was dying of cancer. UM Elizabeth Blackwell was one of those women at that time. She was part of this very activist family. They defied a lot of social norms. Her her family was involved in the anti slavery movement. Elizabeth is born in eighteen twenty one, and she's coming of age in the eighteen forties and fifties, and at that time, you know, as pre Civil War, her family is speaking out against UM, against the continuation of slavery, She's part of that very
very famous Blackwell family. Her brother Henry Blackwell, is an abolitionist. She grows up being friends with Harriet Beetures Stowe, who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin. She travels in very she she gets to know people who will later become prominent. UM. And one of her friends is dying of what we would call cancer today. And the medical profession then it's not the medical profession of today. UM, it's beginning to professionalize.
It's getting to require licenses and special training. UM. Around the time that Elizabeth most to medical school, but before that, most people became a midwife or a doctor. They trained by apprenticing with an existing doctor or midwife. And the reason her friend her friends said to her, you know, Elizabeth, you're so talented, you're so intelligent, you should become a doctor. Because if I had been treated by a doctor who was a woman, I think my treatment would have been better.
And what she's referring to is that the male the male doctors who treated her cancer were highly aggressive. UM. And as many doctors were at that time, highly aggressive, and they used techniques that today we might consider kind of coined or barbaric. I mean, they you know, they used phrenology, They studied the skull to see what that's said about, you know, about your personality or about your medical conditions. They use leeches, they used blood letting, They
and and in very aggressive ways. So I think what her friend pointing to is that the the treatment might have been more humane, might have been more understanding of a woman's um position and situation had she been treated by a woman. And Elizabeth she was actually really turned off by the idea when her friend says this. You know, Elizabeth loved to read literature. She wanted to to to engage in sort of that kind of life of the mind.
And she writes later in um in her book on the pioneer work and Opening the medical profession to Women, she writes that she was um she hate This is a quote from her. She said, I hated everything connected with the body and could not bear the site of a medical book. My favorite studies were history and metaphysics, and the very thought of dwelling on the physical structure of the body and its various ailments filled me with disgust.
Oh my goodness, Bryan, can you imagine that? Instead she went into teaching, which is what what most women did. That was a you know, a legitimate profession for women at the time. So what put her over, Well, she starts to think about it a little bit more, um, and then she just I think as she starts to think about it more, she decides that she just needs to do it. Um. I think this idea of her friend maybe could have haunted her a little bit um, but she definitely decides that she wants to do it.
And in order to get into some of these medical um schools at the time, you really kind of had to have had previous experience, which you know, she didn't have.
She was a school teacher. So what she does very cleverly as she becomes a school teacher, she moves to Asheville, North Carolina, and she becomes a music teacher for the daughters of doctor John Dickinson, and he basically lets her play in his medical library and he bolsters you know, her medical resume um and actually encourages her to go on and become a doctor. Um. So she starts to apply to medical colleges, which you know, as you know,
she's rejected everywhere simply because she's a woman. Such a fascinating story though, that she moved to Asheville and was providing music lessons to the daughter of a physician. Really fascinating. And she has to keep her mouth shut about her families and her own anti slavery views because I remember she's in North Carolina in you know, the eighteen forties,
which is a slave stick. My goodness. So, as you said a little bit earlier, today, we have just slightly over of medical students are are female today, and it's been a long road for women to get to this place. You were just talking about the obstacles that are pioneering woman confronted. So what did Dr Blackwell go through to get into medical school where she rejected? What? What kind
of treatment did she get it in this application process? Well, so this is sort of one of these fun moments in history, right, There's there's several of them where women get something by accident and then they turn it into something phenomenal. Right, So we right, we know, we know for example that Title seven of the Civil Rights Act, you know, they add the word sex, kind of laying the game, and that changes everything for our our legal right to be treated equally um as employees in America.
But it's blackwell story is kind of the same thing. So she applies to multiple um medical colleges, and of course is rejected. She does not use the famous trick that we learn many women use later, which is just her first initial. She doesn't do that. She applies as
Elizabeth Blackwell. What happens is that Geneva Medical College in New York begins to reject her, and then the the the administrators say, well, we're gonna see what the hundred and fifty mail students want, and if a single one of them does not vote to approve, she will not get in. So they put it to a vote of the male students, a hundred and fifty mail students and um, and all but one of them says yes. And the one who says no, the others taunt him into saying yes.
And the reason they say yes is they think that it's funny. They think this is a prank. We'll have a woman here. She won't she won't make it, she won't be any good at it, but for a while, we'll have some sport about the whole thing. Um. And little do they know that the women that they think they're going to play this prank on is Blackwell, who ultimately will graduate at the top of her class. Oh my gosh, that's quite a story, right, So this is I mean, I love stories like this because you know,
the jokes on them ultimately. Um, but they admitted her
purely as a joke. And you know, she writes about this, she says, Um, you know, just as by way background, I think about Elizabeth Blackwell a lot when I teach my own students, and I think about what it means to be a woman in college today versus some of these first women who were college students or in this case a medical student in a different historic context, when ideas about what gender roles and women's roles should be are not the same as our roles are today, and
even today we're still arguing about what they should be. But but in the mid nineteenth century, you have this ideology of sort of pure womanhood and domesticity, and woman's place is supposed to be in the home and all things related to the home, and um, there are lots of sort of pseudo scientific beliefs that you know, if women are educated, it will draw blood from their reproductive organs to their brains, and therefore they won't be able
to be mothers. One day um, or that their natures are too delicate to to be faced with the disgustingness of you know, the harsher things of life and so so. And I tell you this by way of context, because when Elizabeth writes about what happens to her in Geneva, in some ways she's she's regarded as um, a woman who violated woman's proper role. Um. So I'll just read
a little for you from her own writing. She says, I had not the slightest idea of the commotion created by my appearance as a medical student in the little town. Very slowly, I perceived that a doctor's wife at the table avoided any communication with me, and that as I walked backwards and forwards to the college, ladies stopped to
stare at me as a curious animal. I afterwards found that I had so shocked Geneva propriety that the theory was established that either I was a bad woman whose designs would gradually become evident, or that being insane an outbreak of insanity would soon become a parent. So that's
what she's really up against. Well, And you know, as you were reading that, I was thinking of women and other parts of the world who are still confronted with norms that say they should work outside the home or are accustomed to arguments that go to the fact that they shouldn't do X, Y and z in terms of professions.
So it's still very much with us. And I think it's great that you're educating younger women today in the college to understand both that they stand on the shoulders of women like Elizabeth Blackwell, but beyond that that these are still issues that one has to contend with in many parts of the world. Yes. Absolutely. And you know what's interesting too, is that she becomes so motivated that even as you know, she has nobody to study with.
The men won't study with her, They won't admit her to the labs, they won't admit her to the clinical training sessions. They won't even tell her where to buy the books. Oh my gosh. So there's all And this is, I mean, this really is the definition of the kinds of obstacles and sabotage we still see today when women step into um territories or or job categories that are traditionally male totally. And so, you know, in a way, her story, even though it's you know, a hundred seventy
years old is still very current. Senecas one hundred Women to Hear will be back after the short break. M we talk about how important support systems are and networks are. Now, you had mentioned that she came from a family of women's rights activists. How did people like Lucy Stone and her other relatives influence her, You know, it's really interesting about Lucy Stone. So Lucy Stone is, uh, you know, one of the one of the earliest women to attend college.
She goes to Oberlin in the thirties and the eighteen thirties, she marries Henry Blackwell. And when Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell marry in eighteen fifty eight, I mean they write their own marriage vows. They're published in the New York Times, but their marriage vows are a protestation of marriage. I mean basically they you know this whole they get married, and they basically in their statements say, we know marriage is role prison for women. We know that women are
give up their rights. And in this case, you know, Lucy Stone says, I'm giving up nothing, even though the laws of course means, you know, don't back that up. So she's in this kind of world. She's in this world of people who understand the limitations, and you know, frankly she Blackwell herself it comes to adopt many of
these ideas, and she never marries Um. She wants hardly to be a doctor because she wants to find a profession where she can support herself as an independent woman, because most women are marrying really well into the mid twentieth centuries for economic reasons. If the most lucrative jobs go for men, go to men, then it becomes very difficult for women to support themselves unless they marry and
marry well. And so she's actually consciously thinking in the eighteen forties and fifties of how do I support myself in the event that I never marry r and increasingly choosing never to marry. And and so the connection with like people like her brother Um, who is the family member who attends her graduation, Henry Blackwell and Lucy Stone, she's in that whole same sort of idea. She actually wants women to get educations and she tries to push through that. She says, you know, when women are this
is black Wall speaking. She says, women are feeble, narrow, frivolous at present ignorant of their own capacities and underdeveloped in thought and feeling. And while they remain so, the great work of human regeneration must remain incomplete. And in this quote, I think she's saying, we're missing a whole talent pool here, and women don't realize what they're capable of. I think all of that is really revolutionary thinking and
still with us today. You know, we're still not tapping fully the talents and experiences of half the population of the world. So in many ways we're still of struggling with these issues. Absolutely, and again not even not just against you know, one of the things that that she had to defy where the men who said, look, we don't want women in medical school because we don't want
to compete with them. We we don't need any more rivals, or we don't want to be seen as sort of silly and frivolous by men who might attract We won't get the best students if we if we let women in. But she also was up against women, and one of her letters was to a woman who you know, accused her of trying to take a higher place for women, and that in some ways is still with us. Yes,
I mean. In her response, she says, I do not wish to give women a first place us still less a second one, but the most complete freedom to take their true place, whatever it may be. Beautiful quote. So she had this this spirited world in which she lived, and she got to medical school, she graduated. Tell us a little bit about her career in New York. Did she take advances in medicine and for women as well?
She does. But here's the here's the interesting thing about Elizabeth Blackwell and and many of the early women doctors, and and frankly even female doctors today. Most she she does her work in obstetrics and gynecology and pediatrics, and today obstetrics and gynecology eighty three point four percent of doctors in O B g U I n our women. Seventy two percent of doctors who practice pediatrics are women.
And so you know, she's doing what many women in that time did, which is that they found a way to take their gender role and make it and defy it while also making it making the work they do align with it. So she is treating women. Um, that makes it a little less radical that she's a doctor. I mean, there's a lot of pushback against the idea
of women treating men it's inappropriate. At that time, she uh she can't get her doctor her dean to write letters for her, so she ends doing UM some some of her post after graduating, she does some work in Pennsylvania at an almshouse treating poor women UM and children, and she discovers this that that many of these women who have venereal diseases are UM seduced by the men they work for and then abandoned, and this, this idea
of helping women becomes her mission. She does go to New York in eighteen fifty one and and she can't get a job because nobody wants to hire a women a woman. So she and her sister, who at this point her sister Emily, also becomes a doctor UM, the third woman to have a medical degree. As her sister and UM, they open a clinic for women and children that UM in eighteen fifty seven becomes a New York
Infirmary for Women and children. In eighteen sixty eight, she opens a medical college for women in New York City, and this is around the time that more and more women's medical colleges begin to open around the country. It's just fascinating, you know. She goes to Paris for a little while after she graduates, and she's treating children, um and who are infected with bacteria, one of them, uh, and she gets an infection in her eye from one
of the children, so she loses her left eye. Um and so her dream of becoming a surgeon disappears with that, and she ends up. She stays in obstetrics, does important research um and returns to London in the eighteen seventies to become a professor and open a women's medical college there. But she was never going to be able to even go much further with the dream of becoming a surgeon once she lost her left eye. But I tell you that story because I think it's important, uh, you know,
to circle back to her influence or her impact. This is somebody who never gave up no matter what the odds against her were. You know, whether the odds were a world of society that said women should should get married and stay home and raise children and do nothing else, or whether you know the odds were against blocking her issition to medical schools or letting her treat patients, or even when she has you know, loses her eyesight, nothing stops her. She sounds utterly remarkable. So let me go
into that remarkable feature here. You are a professor of women in gender studies, obviously engaged deeply in in these stories in history and what they represent for today. What inspires you about Elizabeth Blackwell? Clearly you told us a great deal. That's just fascinating. But what lessons can we all take from her life? I think she's a sort of a paradigm of fearlessness and um steadfastness and resiliency.
I mean, there's this is a woman who um the world would say no to her over and over again, and she just found a way to bypass or sidestep or overcome every single obstacle. I think that's that's the story. You know, There's so many times we experience in our own lives obstacles or discrimination or hardships, and many times we want to throw our hands up and say, well, I guess that's not the path for me. UM. When Blackwell couldn't get a job, she created her own clinic.
When she could get people to accept her um as a doctor, she treated the poor who needed her and built a following from that. She built her reputation from that, from going where she was needed, proving what she could do, and then take, you know, making it bigger from there. I mean, there are always ways to to achieve what you want to achieve if you're willing to be creative
as she was and to never take no for an answer. Debra, thank you so much for introducing us to Elizabeth Blackwell for those of us who may not have known her, uh, and the role that she played in in women's history,
in history of medicine, in this country's progress. I wonder, given that we're talking after the inauguration, UM, if I could just ask you for your your personal reaction to the fact that, for the first time in America's history, UM, a woman became the vice President of the United States, and a woman of color. It was really hard not to watch the inauguration with a tear in my eye about all of that. I've been a big fan of
Kamala Harris for a long time. I noticed, with you know, the woman's history historians, I that she was wearing purple. Yesterday people were talking about the purple is Shirley Chisholm's color, Um that I don't know and I'm all, it's Shirley Chisholm is my personal hero. But I never knew about
purple being her color choice. What I did know was that purple was one of the colors of suffrage, and so I I felt that and she was wearing the pearls from her sorority at Howard University, sending a message to uh, the two young women today they're about about about the potential achievement UM for all of us. So so for me, yesterday was this incredible milestone that says to every young woman of you know, every race, UM and ethnicity and ability and gender identity, that, um, you know,
here is someone who represents you. Here is someone who shows you what is possible. We've all heard the line that if you know, you can't see it. If you can't see it, you can't be it. And yesterday we could see it. And I kept thinking about all of
the young people everywhere who could now imagine it for themselves. Uh. That to me was the power of seeing that, um, we have this first and someone who I believe and hope will be the first of many, and not just as vice president, which is the important milestone, but the but but also you know this is the path to the presidency, the highest sort of office in the land, and I think she is. She blazed that trail as well for us yesterday by saying anything It's possible, so
beautifully said. You gave me goose bumps just reliving it as you were talking about it. And I think it's so true when others can see the possibility when that role model becomes a model, as this chapter in history represented, it really does make all the difference. So thank you for saying that, and thank you for a wonderful conversation and for enabling us to become well acquainted or much better acquainted with Dr Elizabeth Blackwell. Thank you so much.
Dr Michaels, thank you for having me. I really enjoyed this. What a truly amazing woman. Here are three things I took away from that conversation. First, Elizabeth Blackwell shows how persistence pays off despite sexism, ostracism, and even the loss of an eye. She was determined to practice medicine and save lives. Second, if there were a roadblock in her path, rather than retreat, she'd find a way around it. As Dr Michael says, when Blackwell couldn't get hired as a physician,
she started her own clinic. When patients wouldn't come to her practice, she went out and treated the poor. Finally, Elizabeth Blackwell knew that medicine, like all endeavors, benefits when women's perspective is part of the equation, and the medical profession and patients have much to thank her for. Tune in next Tuesday to hear about our next featured woman and discover why she's one of Seneca's Women to Hear. If you'd like to join the Seneca Women Network, go
to Seneca Women dot com. There you'll get access to exclusive events and workshops, plus updates on new podcasts and other opportunities to get involved. Seneca's one hundred Women to Hear is a collaboration between the Seneca Women Podcast Network and I Heart Radio, with support from founding partner PNG. Have a Great Day.