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Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women

Chapter 27: FOOTNOTES
By Elizabeth Blackwell
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About This Book

The author traces her formative family and educational influences, the development of a determination to pursue medical study, and the practical efforts required to obtain training in both American and European institutions. She documents clinical and hospital work, academic challenges, and the moral and social convictions that motivated advocacy for wider education for women. The narrative follows the founding of clinics and an infirmary, collaboration with colleagues and family, and the tactics used to overcome institutional resistance. Personal letters, reminiscences, and reflective passages are interwoven to illuminate both everyday struggles and broader arguments for expanding professional opportunities for women.

PUBLICATIONS

  • The Moral Education of the Young. (Longmans, Green, & Co.)
  • The Human Element in Sex; a Medical Work. (J. & A. Churchill.)
  • Christianity in Medicine; published in ‘Things to Come.’ (Elliot Stock.)
  • The Influence of Women in Medicine; an Address to the Graduates of the London School of Medicine for Women. (Bell & Sons.)
  • Why Hygienic Congresses fail. (Bell & Sons.)
  • The Religion of Health; republished by the M. R. Union, 2 Leinster Place, W.

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SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON

FOOTNOTES

[1] A term then applied in the West to those who were dissatisfied with every phase of our social life; they were generally noticeable for their long hair and peculiar mode of dressing.

[2] The popular name for the Democratic as opposed to the Republican candidate.

[3] I was then very shy, and much annoyed by such public notices as the following:—

‘A very notable event of the year 1848 was the appearance at the medical lectures of a young woman student named Blackwell. She is a pretty little specimen of the feminine gender, said the Boston Medical Journal, reporting her age at twenty-six. She comes into the class with great composure, takes off her bonnet and puts it under the seat, exposing a fine phrenology. The effect on the class has been good, and great decorum is observed while she is present. The sprightly Baltimore Sun remarked that she should confine her practice, when admitted, to diseases of the heart.’—Springfield Republican.

[4] See Appendix I.

[5] See Appendix II.

[6] I was at that time utterly unaware of the amount of degrading cruelty perpetrated by many foreign investigators upon helpless animals under methods erroneously called scientific. It required the extended observation of the physician to realise the intellectual fallacy necessarily involved in experiments which destroy the thing to be observed; and also to recognise how the constant promulgation of false theory and practice arising from erroneous methods of investigation hinders the attainment of scientific medicine.

I have long since realised that conscience and humanity must guide intellectual activity and curiosity, or we wander from the high-road of truth into a labyrinth of error. The above experience illustrates how the eager young student, thirsting for knowledge, may be blind to the unscientific or immoral methods of pseudo-science.

[7] The fine property on Stuyvesant Square, at the corner of East Fifteenth Street, has since been purchased, and is now the site of the New York Infirmary and College.

[8] This remarkable experiment of 1831, with its tragic termination, is related by Mr. Pare (Longmans, Green, & Co.) and by Mr. Craig (Trübner). It is well worth the careful study of all co-operative reformers.