Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, Feminist Physician

really close to schwing. Remember that schwing. Oh man, I totally forgot about it until just now. Schwing. Chuck Schwing, schwing. That's how you have to say it. No, you can

say it anyway like schwing. Yeah. Well, what I really love is that we're talking about America's first woman physician, an amazing woman named Eliza, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, who had an amazing family and her story is incredible, and we're saying swinging at the beginning, right, especially considering that she was a m a h. Rather puritanical person in a lot of senses, she would probably not have been down

with us saying swing no, no, because you know what. Uh, she and her family were Quakers, And I know some Quakers and have known some Quakers. They hate swing, they do, but you know what, they love being awesome. Yeah, yeah, no, I mean for sure, um this this, I get the impression that her entire family is a pretty good example of like a like a Quaker family. Quaker. Every Quaker I've known has just had it like had it all figured out. It seems like they're like the the Buddhists

of the best. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. They also, Um, I think they also go by the Society of Friends, which says a lot too if Yeah, I'm pretty sure. And then if you remember correctly, Charles, our Pacifist episode focused heavily on the Quakers because they're big time Pacifists too. So Elizabeth Blackwell, just by virtue of having been a Quaker, was a pretty interesting like upstanding, upright person with with a good head on her shoulders. But she also like

individually personally was a very amazing person. And not just the fact that she was the first licensed woman physician in America. Um, but to get there, she really had to blaze her own path and put up with a lot of bs. You might put it um, and and so much so that even in her um, her autobiography, which was published in when she was in her seventies, I think um, she called it pioneering work, um, and that was There's really no better way to put it.

She was absolutely a pioneer, and not just getting herself established as a woman physician in America, but in making it so that there could be more women physician in America, physicians and more and more, much more. So let's start with, oh, I don't know, February three, what's significant about that date? She was born as a little baby uh, near Bristol, England. She was the third of nine children. Her mom was Hannah Lane, who came from a family of merchants who

had some dough and her pops was Samuel Blackwell. He was a sugar refiner and also prosperous. And like we said, they were Quakers, which means that they were very cool. They were not then this was one. They were not down with slavery. They were activists against lay bree uh, they were abolitionists. They supported women's suffrage. Um. Her brother Henry married Lucy Stone, who was very famous women's rights activist. Her little sister Emily followed in her footsteps in medicine.

Her sister in law, Antoinette Brown Blackwell, first female ordained minister in Protestant the Protestant denomination. Yeah, they're way ahead of their time. Yeah, and you can trace I mean, both of her parents seem to be pretty cool. Um, and you can trace their um the roots of of their sensibilities back to their parents. Like um, Samuel was a dissenter, like he was a Quaker, which is I

guess the form of Protestantism. But he was definitely he didn't recognize like the sole religious authority of say, like the Church of England or anything like that. And so as a result, his children could not go to public school. He said, fine, I've got some money. I'm a prosperous sugar merchant. I'm going to hire the best tutors I

can find. And not only that, I'm going to defy the conventions of England and have these tutors teach my daughters the same stuff that they're going to teach my sons, which unheard of. But that really formed the basis for especially Elizabeth's progression and education that she she came to expect to be taught just like she was a boy. Um because of how she was raised. Yeah, and you know, by all accounts, her parents were both pretty great. Her

dad was a very caring individual. He thought that all kids of any gender should reach their full potential. Uh. He didn't physically punish his kids, which was weird at the time. People are like, why aren't you hitting your kids? Yeah, and he said, I don't believe in it. I've got a switch right here you can borrow. Really do not have a switch, That's what the deal is. He doesn't have a switch or paddle. Let's get him a switch.

So he you know, they would had sort of like a demerit system in their house, and if you added up to too many demerits, you would have to do something like eat by yourself in the attic or something that sounds horrific, also like sticking a kid in the closet. But I think it was just a room removed from the family dinner. Yeah, it was just you have to go away from the family. We can't even bear to look at you. You make us want a puke. That's right.

But everything changed when he lost his sugar refinery and a fire and said, you know, what, let's pack our bags and let's move to New York City. New York City. That's right, New York City. Do you remember back in I don't know, like around two thousand and seven eight. I feel like it was right when we both started working around how stuff works. That a sugar refinery and Savannah blew up. Remember that I wrote an article about that. It's like that sugar dust is is volatile, it can

can catch fire. And I'm wonder if that's what happened to his sugar refinery. You okay, So they moved to New York. They lived in New York and in Jersey for six years. Yeah. And one of the cool things that I liked about him he was he was a little paradoxical. So he was a sugar refiner. He made his money off of sugar refining. But the sugar industry was based almost entirely on slave labor around the world.

That's how sugarcane was grown, That's how I He didn't use slaves, I can tell you that, but he still made his money in an industry that was heavy, heavy on slavery. And in fact, his children were such staunch abolitionists even as young children they refused to eat sugar because they knew that slaves had had a hand in producing it, so they wouldn't even they wouldn't even need it as kids. Little kids wouldn't eat sugar because of of the slavery involved. Um, but he still made his

his money off of that. But Um, when he got to America, one of the first things he tried was to um introduce sugar beets, which don't really require slave labor. There's a much less labor intensive process of extracting sugar from sugar beets, and this is really revolutionary at the time. Like they think they first isolated sugar from beats in eighteen hundred, like thirty years before, and they had been

introduced to America just like two years before. He he took this up, so he was on the cutting edge of of sugar beat production. But it didn't actually work out very well. No Um, he his original sugar refinery went Um went south in eighteen thirty seven, so he said, let me move to Cincinnata and I'll get down on the on the sugar beat thing. But just a few weeks after they got the Cincinnati in August of eighteen

thirty eight, he died of a fever. And because he had lost that sugar refinery and didn't have the next sugar beat operation up and going, they didn't have a lot of dough. His family was um left without a lot of money. Yeah, which I mean, that's gotta be really tough to go from wealthy to not, you know, and just one fell swoop and but that's kind of

what happened with Elizabeth's family and UM. A few years later, she resolved, and she was twenty one, that she would not be dependent on any man, that she was going to be self sufficient, and she was never going to marry, and she wanted to make her own way. And I mean, it's pretty tough not to trace that line directly back to, you know, the state that her father left his family and UM not in any way that you know that was his own doing or his own fault, but that

was just the conventions of the time. And so for a woman to resolve that she would make her own way in life was very unconventional. But if Elizabeth Black was anything, she was very unconventional, that's right. So she and her mom and a couple of her sisters, they were teachers for a little while and she eventually and we this is kind of jumping ahead of it, but she she did adopt a girl, a seven year old

Irish immigrant orphan that she named Kitty. Her name was Katherine Barry and went by Kitty, and she was with her for the duration of her life. But she never got married, and she decided to become a doctor when she had a really close friend who was dying said you know what, I think that I might have lived if I might have had a woman as a doctor, because they're more compassionate and I might have gotten better treatment. And Elizabeth Blackwell was like, WHOA that really speaks to me. Yeah.

They they think that the woman was probably dying of uterine cancer, and she thinks that she would have She would have disclosed more of her condition post sooner, and at the very least she would have been more comfortable in her dying days being treated by a woman, rather than poked and prodded by some man um who who seemed to be less compassionate than she believed a woman

would be. The thing about Elizabeth Blackwell is she, first of all, she was struck by this, and she was so struck struck by it that she moved her to want to become a doctor. But not only that, she had to overcome a natural, deep seated aversion to the

idea of the body or anatomy or medicine. Like she was not at all interested in this to begin with, and in fact, she had an aversion to it, but she was so moved by that woman um and her experience that she resolved to overcome her disgust and her aversion at bodily functions and anatomy and become a doctor herself. It's pretty I mean, that's a really key detail. It

is a hugely I mean that's enormous. Like not only she like she just wasn't a kid who wanted to be a doctor, Like I loved the side of blood

and internal oregan so this kind of fits anyway. Yeah, she had to overcome an aversion to it, on top of overcoming the aversion that society had against a woman becoming a doctor, because at the time it was it was considered that a woman couldn't know enough about the human body to be a physician and still be considered a morally upright woman, that her morals were at risk of being corrupted just by knowing everything there is to

know about the human body. Yeah, I mean, let's be honest, they would have to see a male penis as part of their training. PP. So, man, we're such children, we are. So she said, all right, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna get over this. I'm gonna be a doctor. How do I do this? I'll just go to medical school. Medical school said no, no, no, no, no, women can't go to medical school. Um, there are a few ladies around the country that are unlicensed physicians that worked as

apprentices and learned their trade. But um, you're not going to go this traditional route. And medical school at the time was just weird anyway, which we'll get into a little bit later, but we I mean, we also got into it in our grave robbing episodes was similar to that time. It was crazy. It wasn't like it wasn't the I don't think doctors were as respected back then even No, they know, because they were the ones who were, um, who were cutting open bodies and just kind of figuring

stuff out as they went along. And if you went to a doctor, there was like an eight percent chance you were walking out one limb short. Yeah. So she, uh, while she was a teacher. She boarded with um families, and that she did a lot of this stuff in the South, which we'll get too as well. But UM, two Southern physicians mentored her. Um, she still could not get into medical school. Of course, she had some physician

friends who were Quakers. She asked them about it. They said, that's a great idea, but no, it costs too much. You're never gonna be able to get in. UM. What you should do is disguise yourself as a man and go to France. And she was like, not a bad idea. If that's the best advice somebody's giving you, you need to rethink the people who you take advice from. It sounds like she was game, though, but she just had to save money instead and apply to medical medical school

in the United States. So and today dollars I did the the the old inflation calculator three grand back then. It would be about eighty five thou dollars today, So that's a lot of money. And she between I think, for a period of two or three years, went South and taught school and slave states, which was very hard for her to do in order to save money for medical school. She didn't know what she could get into anyway, right exactly. And the first the first place she taught

in Kentucky, she only lasted a year. She's just found the social climate so intolerable. She she was really, you know, she couldn't put up with it. And I don't know how she was able to better in North and South Carolina, but yeah, I mean she managed in two years to raise eighty three grand from teaching I guess rich kids in North and South Carolina. And she she um. But she also while she was there, she's, well, I want to teach the slave kids too. I'll do it pro bono.

And they said, well, it's against the law for you to teach slave kids. And they said, but you can teach them Sunday school. And she said, fine, I'll do that. And there was a great quote um that came from her, uh in a letter to her family in and I'm not sure what state she was in, maybe even Kentucky, but she said, I assure you I felt a little odd sitting down before those degraded little beings, not saying they were naturally degraded, that they had been degraded by

other people. I believe, to teach them a religion which the owners professed to follow whilst violating its very first principles. It really does. She was like, you know, these people are professed to be Christians, but are do not treat other people like Christians. And that's just such a Quaker thing to do. Huh, that is a very quicker thing to do. You want to take a little break, Yeah, let's do it. Okay, We're gonna take a break everybody, and we'll be back to tell you more about Elizabeth

Blackwell's progress towards med school. So, Chuck, like you said, she um was mentored by a couple of doctors who she she stayed with while she was teaching in North and South Carolina, one of whom was actually a professor of medicine, so he had all the books. He was very encouraging to her. Um, he taught her everything he could. And that was, like you said, a way that a woman could become a physician, but an unlicensed physician. Um certainly not one that was that was in any way

established as an actual legitimate physician. And that was ultimately her goal. Yeah. Like, she continued to get sort of tutored by different people in the South that she knew who were physicians, and it was great that these uh, these men encouraged her and tutored her. Said, here used my books. Um. But again, like you said, she wanted to do the real deal and and forge a path and not just kind of go the back door route. So she applied to all the medical schools in New

York and Philly. She applied to twelve more in the Northeast. She was rejected by all of them, and on the thirtie application to Geneva Medical College in Western New York in eighteen forty seven, she was accepted. And I said, I raised my voice because she got accepted because it was a joke that uh well, everyone thought it was a practical joke. The professor there, the dean of the medical med school, basically said, hey, let's take a vote here.

We'll have all the men here that go here vote on whether or not a woman can come to school here. And if every single person says yes, she can come here, and if one person says no, she won't. They all thought it was a prank from I guess the neighboring rival medical school the west Geneva. Yeah, they said, sure, let her in. And it wasn't a joke, and they did let her in. They they did, um, And apparently

they were all very surprised. Like this almost sounds like an urban legend, but from what I saw, like this is across the board. What happened that they thought it was a practical joke and it turned out to be real. And that is how she ended up going to medical school. Unbelievable. So when she showed up, she was taking this quite seriously. She was twenty six already, she spent some time like

living around seeing the country. Um. Just she was twenty six, Like this says a lot about a person, oversay, like twenty or nineteen or something like that. And so she when she showed up, um, not only was she a little more mature, probably than some of her contemporaries, she also um was she was well aware of the convention. She was breaking challenges and the obstacles that laid ahead

of her. Um. And there's a pretty good report like the fact that she showed up at medical school made the papers, and in fact, the Boston Medical Journal even wrote up something about the facts that that she was yeah, that she was there taking medical classes. The Boston Medical Journal said that she comes into the class with great composure, takes off her bonnet and puts it under the seat, exposing a fine phrenology. Are you kidding me? You're talking

about the shape of her head. Yeah. Yeah, But this is the Boston Medical Journal at the time. Hopefully the b m J has um has officially uh stopped using phrenology in any way, shape or form. But we'll have to We'll have to get a subscription and find out. So we talked earlier about the fact that medical school at the time was really different. Um, it sounds like animal house or something. It was very raucous. Uh. Apparently when they were lecturers, you would make crewe jokes out loud,

and no matter what you're talking about. It sounds like a bunch of children taking sex at or something. Yeah, and like the sixth grade. But apparently Blackwell's effect on the whole, like every class she went into was everyone took it a lot more seriously because she was there. Yeah. Because again, like if you were a man, you acted far, far, far differently around a woman. Um at the time, where you were just much more genteel. It was just the social convention and so you had to bite your tongue

in medical school. If if um, Elizabeth blackwells in your class, where you just did that was just kind of the effect that she had on class just by being a woman. But even beyond that, there was this whole view that like, these guys were somehow contributing to this woman's moral corruption by even being in the same class with her, let

alone being the instructor teaching her. And so one of the things she ran into in med school was she would sometimes be asked to go step outside because this particular lecture is a little rough, and Elizabeth Blackwell did not truck to that at all, and very adamant that. Remember, she was educated like a boy by the tutors her father hired. She had a full expectation to be left out of absolutely nothing. At med school. She was to be a full physician, and so she was to learn

everything that any physician would learn. And eventually, over time she kind of overcame this genteel opposition to her presence by her professors in male classmates. Yeah, and I think in no small part due to her serious take and her fastidiousness in her uh the fact that in the end she graduated first in her class. Yeah, this says a lot. She was the best student in nine. She graduated first um ultimately earned the respect of her fellow students. Not to say that it was a um it was

a cake walk. There were still plenty of jerks there, Uh, and you know a lot of them had animosity towards her. Remember a cake walker's racist? Is it really? Yeah? I remember we did a we did a show on what was it? I can't remember them, Like words that have different origins than you would think, are different meanings than you would think. You remember, Yeah, I think I do remember that. I'm sorry, everybody, I'm sorry for interrupting you. That's okay. So it was no pie walk. Still plenty

of jerks. Uh. There were some men there that um would um would laugh at her, some in there that would support her, some men that would jeer at her, some men that would help her out. But like I said, in the end, she she got that degree first in her class. Apparently, and I don't know if this is the movie version, but the medical school's dean bowed to her when she accepted her diploma, and everyone busted out

in applause. Yeah, that's what a newspaper account us that who from the correspondent who was there, and they also added and brother Bluto became Senator Blue tar Very. It's that wrapped everything up. Do you think that movie age as well? We're talking about Animal House again. I haven't. I haven't seen it. You know what I should say? Sorry, in a while. I'm not sure. Okay, I could have seen it plenty of times, but I haven't seen it in in a while. I'm sure it doesn't it can't. Uh.

I don't know, man, I think it's kind of timeless. Um. However, I've heard certain people that I won't name say it doesn't age well. Noel, oh yeah, yeah, nol didn't think you think there's a there's a raft of comedies from that era that just are not funny. Now wait, not funny or political? No, no, no, not funny. Oh gotcha? It doesn't age well as in, like, why is this? Why do people think this is a comedy classic? It's not even that good? Gotcha? Gotcha? Okay, yeah, I'll have

to watch it again. I haven't, I haven't seen it. I don't know, man, I think it's kind of timeless in its comedy. I mean, sure, there are parts that don't age well in every other respect like any comedy made before like four years ago. Sure, that's what I know. Like like the last five minutes, I thought that's what you were talking about. No, I mean it's entirely possible, because I've seen some comedies where I'm like, this is this is not at all funny, like spies like us

give me a break? Not good. No, I haven't seen it in a long time. It's not good. See now I'm afraid to watch some of those oldies. Yeah, I do. My dad taught me. Well, but if you, uh, if if you want to continue to cherish any movie that you used to love, I would not risk it. No, we'll see. Unless it's Ghostbusters. That definitely holds up. Friend. Yeah, that new one looks good too. Was the new one the sequel sort of? So it's technically Ghostbusters three? Yeah?

Or four? I mean we are Wait was there a third? It was just the first two? Yeah, the second There was the first two and then the third one had like I think Kate McKinnon, different universe, didn't it. Yeah? Yeah, that was that was just a reboot, which was great, I thought. But this new one is a sequel many years later, and I think it's one of their grandkids. Um, you know, stuff starts happening. It looks good. Paul reads in it, okay, and what's his name's kid? Reitman's kid

is directing it. It's a oh, he's great Jason. Yeah, it's a Jason, rightman, jam. So that's good stuff. That might he might be a little too high high brow for a Ghostbusters. Well, hey, I can tell you you know who's spinning in her grave right now about a thousand RPMs. Who Elizabeth black Wow, I know, I'm so sorry, Dr Blackwell. Should we take a break. I don't know who knows anymore? All right, let's take a break and we'll stop talking about dumb old movies right after this. Alright, so, Chuck,

I think where we officially left off. Um, Elizabeth Blackwell received her diploma. The the dean of the medical school stood up and bowed, and the auditorium broke out into applause, which is pretty awesome. Um. Apparently she when she although she won over her classmates, there were still like a lot of women actually at the time who were not very happy with what she'd done. But she said, nuts

to you guys, I'm gonna move to Paris. And London, and I'm going to pursue my my practice there to start, that's right, which is a great idea. And when she got there, they said, wow, you were a real deal doctor and you have a medical degree. Here be a midwife. Yeah, a woman saccar blue. Yeah she was, uh, she was

led into midwife ree and nursing um. But she's like really sort of trying to be revolutionary here because all she sees are these men walking around not washing their hands at all, and she's like, you know, what is probably super important is personal hygiene and preventative care. And they're like, what's that? Yeah, well they literally were what's that?

Because this was early eighteen fifties and remember a Great Stink episode, So they were still operating under the miasma theory that it was like bad vapors and smells that made you sick. So her idea that it was like that hand washing was part of this preventative medicine was really ahead of its time. And so in in addition to being a woman who they were just discrediting out of hand anyway just for being a woman, they were also saying, like you're talking cookie stuff. Everybody knows it

smells that make you sick. Your nut job over there and deliver a baby. And she's like, but I haven't washed my hands, Like we just told you. It doesn't matter. Babies are dirty. As long as your hands don't stink, it's fine. Yeah, we should also mention it's right about here where she lost sight in her left eye from an accident that I can barely even talk about. Oh,

I want to, can I please? So she contracted purulent ophthalmia, which is which is an infection of the eye, and her I became infected because she was tending to an infant who I guess had some sort of wound that was infected, and pus escorted in her left eye from the infection and in facted her left eye to such a terrible degree that she became blind in her left eye. Yes, and that is that is sad, but really sad because she was not able to become a surgeon, which is

what she really wanted to do. It's also said that there was a baby with an infection a pussy and actually, let's not forget about that baby. H That baby grew up to be Roy Cone. She she moved to the that's really good, um, she moved to the UK then from Paris, and this is where she hooked up with a little buddy named Florence Nightingale. Yeah, who deserves her own episode two. Totally, they became good friends. They were like, you like to wash your hands? I do too, isn't

it awesome? Let's go do it together. That's kind of the long and short of it. They sat around and saying ABC S or I don't want no scrubs wash their hands, and they were both like, why are none of these men doctors ever washing their hands? And they were both like, because they're dummies. Yeah, just give him a few years in germ theory will be developed and then they'll listen to Louis past year or not exactly.

But I think that's pretty awesome. It's almost like, um, I don't know, Einstein and somebody else meeting, you know, like just it's cool to know that these too, like legendary figures met and we're friends at one point in time. Oh, totally, it's almost like a movie, you know what I'm saying. This totally should be a movie. I'm surprised it's not yet agreed. Maybe Jason Rightman could direct it. That's right, and maybe uh, uh, what's who's the guy that wolverine? Yeah,

maybe Hugh Jackman can be in it. He would play um Dr Elizabeth Blackwell, that's right. And Jared from Subway can play the pus baby. Yeah, everything would come full circle and the universe would collapse in on it and then the Sharknado would kill them all. So she uh is pals with Florence Nightingale. She decides, you know what, I'm gonna go back to New York one and I really want to get a practice going there. Um. She got back, and of course discrimination against women in the

doctor in industry was still there. So she did and have a lot of opportunities. She didn't have a lot of patients, she didn't have a lot of other doctors that she could even exchange ideas with. Um, and so she started applying for jobs instead of starting her own practice at the women's department in a big city dispense dispensary. But she was not h she was not hired. No, and I had to look up a dispensary is it

like a charity or public clinic? So this ambition, yeah, this this woman's ambition, this first woman doctor in the United States now UM. Her ambition was to help the poor. That was that was what she wanted to do her. Her her missions in life were to help the poor, help women retain their chastity and purity in the hopes of um having a good moral impact on the world around them, and then to make it so that more women could become doctors from like she was like a

fireless fighter and champion of all of these things. And so, in typical Elizabeth Blackwell fashion, when she was turned down for a job at a dispensary, she just opened her own dispensary, that's right, and a little single rented room. She saw patients a few afternoons each week. It was incorporated in eighteen fifty four, where they moved to a small house uh there on the lower east Side East Village area of Tompkins Square. Her sister, we mentioned that

she followed. I believe at the very beginning that she followed in her sister's footsteps. By this point she was doctor Emily Blackwell. She got her degree at Western Reserve University of Cleveland, and she joined her in eighteen fifty six with another doctor, Dr Marie oh Zack. Zack Suska. That's the doctor Seuss pronunciation. That's a tough one. I

would say, zach zach redska, okay, zakrevska, all right. And they all opened the New York Infirmary for Women and Children on Bleaker Street there in the West Village in seven yep. And now you can go left out of the doorway and hit a Swatch store and see and go get a sandwich at La pan quoity in. I saw this Watch joke coming because I did the old Google or two and I was like, I guarantee you

that poked out to Josh. But what's crazy? So sixty four, at least as far as the Google company is concerned, there before Bleaker Street doesn't exist anymore. But that means that it was subsumed by either Um, the Kith Clothing or the the Swatch store. Somebody took over this. But there's a think the Swatch store did in eight there's yeah, they were all on chains um, but the the the

there's a there's a physical structure that's still there. That was the first um women run infirmary or clinic, I should say, in New York, and what became one of the first um, women's medical schools amazing in the country. Not the first, but one of the first. UM. And there's no plaque, there's no sign, there's no nothing. But the building is that not that I could see, but the building is still there. You can still visit the spot where poor people went and Dr Elizabeth Blackwell treated them.

Yeah with one eye. Yeah, let's not forget that one of sight in one eye, I should say. So she starts going, She's like, I want to do this in England to my home country. Let me, I'm gonna go back and forth. I'm gonna try and raise some money to do the same thing over there. Um. At the same time, she's also taking on and it's amazing what you can do when you don't get married and have to be subserving it to a man. Right, Like, she was living single, so she had nothing but time. You know,

she had this this adopted daughter. But I imagine that she grew she helped her mom out with this stuff. Yeah, and in their off time they would watch Living Single together. So she was getting on other social reform movements. Um, all kinds of things to do with women's rights, family planning, even way back then. Uh, hygiene always Um, did we mention eugenics and how deep she got in that? Do

we even know? I looked and I could not see, because you would think there'd be people that would say, like, oh, a little bit blackwell her, but listen to this eugenic stuff she was into. I saw basically one of those things where it was this. This list was repeated basically in the same order across the internet. So I have no idea how much she was into eugenics, but I do know I did get an impression of her as

far as women's rights were concerned. Um, she was a feminist through and through, absolutely a feminist, but she was also a moralist and a prude and died in the wool prude, and so she was really concerned with the um the moral purity. Yeah, I guess the moral purity of women, because her her whole thing was if a if a woman has basically had sex out of wedlock, she has corrupted her moral She's traded in her morals,

and now she's going to be interested in men. She's gonna think about other men rather than her husband her She's not going to be able to focus on her home, and so the home will start to come apart because this woman had sex out of wedlock before she got married or whatever. And so there that's one home broken. And if more and more women do this, then all of a sudden, the whole country's morals are corrupt and there there's nothing but crime and and drinking and all

sorts of horrible things that come out of it. And she definitely identified men as a aggressor in this that it was definitely men who came along and like persuaded girls to have sex out of wedlock because these girls were not too naive to know the ramifications and consequence is so she tried to in books and pamphlets and lectures and all this Warren mothers to warn their their daughters away from men like this and also teach them about the consequences of having like premarital sex and also

basically identifying as you know, men as as the aggressors the wolves in this situation. But so she was super into that, and she was very widely and well received because her line of thinking was very in line with Victorian super rigid morals. But um, at the same time, I mean, it's it's difficult to reconcile with just straight ahead feminism that you know, of the type that we're used to today. But there's really no one who could who could discredit her as a feminist. No, I mean

feminist in a Victorian way, was exactly. It was a time where you couldn't be like girl, own your sexuality and like you asked the man to marry you like that just didn't happen at all. So this was the opposite of that. Whe she was Toudy, she was also what would be known today as a feminist for life,

staunch anti abortion feminist. As a matter of fact that if you read her diary in a certain way, you can make the case that one of the reasons she became a doctor is because she read an article about a woman who was an abortionist at the time who was termed a female physician, which I guess was code for women abortionists that back then, and she was so appalled by this that she wanted to reform the term female physician to mean an actual like just a woman doctor,

a general doctor. Um. And that's one of the things that drove her too. So um, yeah, she was a very complicated character. Reminds us right, But I think she reminds us that over time, when you become a legend, the you know, a legend grows up around you, and you know, the different edges get you know, smoothed over or overlooked or whatever. And people are complicated and complex and that's the way that it should be, and they

should be under stood as such. You know. Yeah, but none of that under undermines her, depending on your your way of thinking, I don't think anything undermines her that she did or thought undermines the work that she did and the good that she did well, of course not. And I think maybe people should try to remember what it might be like to be a trailblazing feminist in the forties through eighties. You know, so the Civil War, that was very nice, he said, good job, I hope

so God Uh, civil war rolls around. She and her sisters trained nurses for the Union for their hospitals. She said, you know what, what we really need is a medical school for women. Um, and so she continued to try and get support from Britain. She finally raised enough backing in America to add that medical school to her women's hospital in New York in eighteen sixty eight. This was

this one you were talking about the UM. The New York Infirmary was finally established with fifteen students nine faculty, and she was the professor of hygiene and her sister Emily was taught, uh was the out well taught obstetrics and diseases of women. Yeah. She handled all of the surgery too at the clinic. Oh Emily did, Yeah, because her sister couldn't write. But UM, so think about this, like, she established not just this UM, this uh, this clinic,

this dispensary, but also a college to teach women doctors. Right, and not only did she do that in New York, she did it in London too. After after she had managed to establish this, she said, okay, Emily you got this. I'm moving back to England and I'm going to do this over here. Yeah. And what it did was it provided about a thirty two year stop gap until when medical schools Cornell University UM finally began accepting women into

their program. So for thirty two years she was running the show and she was providing that UM almost said service. But it kind of is in a way, you know, until medical until mainstream medical schools began catching on. Yeah, no, for sure, And UM, the fact that that she was establishing this college, like that this was one of her big dreams and and focuses and drives. It just kind of goes to underscore the fact that, like she she was trying to make it so that more women could

become doctors. Yeah, that's just it's just easy to overlook when you're like, oh, well she went and became a doctor herself and then she did doctoring. She also simultaneously was trying to expand access to um medical training for women as well to become a licensed physician, and she did in a big way UM In eighteen sixty nine, when she was in her late forties, she uh this

is when she established the London practice. She had passed on the New York Medical College to her sister at that point, and founded the National Health Society in eighteen seventy one and was one of the first champions of prevention is Better than Cure um, which is a very obviously important thing today in all of medicine, but at the time it was kind of a revolutionary kind of

way to go about things. They're all about cures, and she was one of the first people standing up and be like, hey, let's not get to the point where we need to cure by preventing things with handwashing and lifestyle and hygiene. Yeah, wash your hands, yeah, what's your problem? Uh. In eighteen seventies she finally set up a private practice in London and UM in eighteen seventy four, along with physicians Sophia Jex Blake and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, established that

London School of Medicine for Women. Yeah. So again she did this in New York. She also did it in London. She agitated for legislation to be passed in eighteen seventy six to allow women to get medicals to agrees. Um. She was the first woman added to the medical register in England. UM. So she did this in two continents. She opened up the door for women to become doctors on two different continents at about the same time. And UM. Ultimately she stopped had to stop practicing, She had to

stop seeing patients. UM because she had something called billiary colic, which is where gallstone blocks the bile duct, which is not good for you. Um. And apparently it's a very painful condition and especially back then before they could do a lot with it or so you break it up with lasers or something. It could knock you out of out of your career, and it did for for decades. I think she had billiary colic um twenty or thirty years before she died. She basically didn't practice for the

last twenty years. Uh, and very sadly. In nineteen o seven, at the ripe old age of eighty six, which is great. Um, she had an accident. She fell down a flight of stairs and was mentally and physically disabled after that. Lived a few more years after that, uh, and then eventually died of stroke in nineteen ten. Yeah, that was a great great lady. Yeah, there's a statistic here in eighteen eighty one, so she'd moved to the UK permanently in

eighteen sixty nine. In eighty one there were only twenty five registered women doctors in England and Wales, but thirty years later nineteen eleven, it was up to four. There you have it now, I would guess that there's at least double that m probably more probably so. So hats off to Dr Elizabeth Blackwell. Um, way to go. My bonnet is often under my seat. Oh that's a fine phrenology.

You've just exposed their child. Thank you. Uh. If you want to know more about Dr Elizabeth black Well, there's a lot of good stuff on the Internet, including a site that we used, among others, famous scientists dot org check them out, and scientists is plural. I just have a thick tongue, so sometimes it's tough to add that extra asset. And since I said I have a thick tongue, it's time for a listener. Mayl uh. This is from Isaac Hey, guys, I am on day two of six

weeks of staying home in quarantine. I live in Seattle, Washington, which was the place where the first North American coronavirus case was. There have been rumors at my school I'm in the seventh grade that would close for cleaning. But six weeks is nearly all the third quarter. I've got a long stretch of time ahead of me, and I've spent most of that time playing video games. Great, reading,

great in listening to stuff you should know. Nice. It's a nice three pronged approach, a little fun, little knowledge, and little goofy knowledge. I listened to nearly ten episodes today own there will be plenty more rushing through my ear holes. So I wanted to say thank you for helping me through a worry sometime. I loved the Seattle Show.

That is from Isaac. Isaac, buddy, glad, we're there for you, hanging there, be safe, wash your hands and the fact that you use the word ear holes means that you're the coolest kid. I know. Yeah, you're pretty cool, Isaac. We appreciate that. I wonder what video game is playing, Chuck. I don't know. I just finished Red Dead Redemption and now I'm onto a new and I've been gaming a bit lately. I heard that Red Dead Redemption is like

one of the most amazing games ever. But it's just so good and and highbrow like a Jason Rightman film, that it's it's boring, unlike a Jason Rightman film. M I didn't have you heard that? Well, I've played part two. I did not get the first one, although I might go I think it was part two that I'm talking about. I enjoyed it, Okay, good good. I'm glad to hear that, because I like to think that things that are well done aren't boring. You know. Yeah, I had to learn

to shoot animals, and which was not fun. It hunting is a part of it. Really. Yeah, I never shot a funny though. Maybe you had to like put him out of the misery or something because they were rapid. Oh that too. If you have a if you crash your horse, you might have to do the right thing. You know what I means, right, you have to strangle it. Yeah, it's very sad because you get very attached to these horses.

I'll bet do you name them? Yeah, you name him like you actually name them for fun or like they come with names or they like the game makes you name your horse when you go to a stable. You can upgrade your horse in a lot of ways with the saddles and stuff, and then you can also you can also name your horse when you get to a stable and type it in and then your horse name is up there. Did you name any Josh? I did not.

I feel bad now. I had three or four horses and the name of them all variations of my wife and daughter's names. But I'll you'll be next. I appreciate that, but you'll be like, oh, yeah, Josh turned lame. I guess I have to put him out of his misery. Yeah, Josh run over by a train. Let me know how Josh turns out? Okay in video game, I will okay uh, And Isaac thanks again for writing in and like Chuck said, stay safe, stay smart, uh, and wash your hands and

don't panic. It doesn't sound like you are. If you're like Isaac and you're hanging out listening to Stuff you Should Know, we want to hear from you. You can send us an email, wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts For my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.