Kathryn Cann has kindly contributed a Women’s History Month guest post. I was enlightened by this story of two women pioneers in the medical professions, I hope you are too. Enjoy Kathryn’s post below!

(Image via Wikipedia.)

This is a tale of two Elizabeths. Not the Queen Elizabeth I or II, worthy though they surely would have been of a Women’s History Month post! No, these Elizabeths (Elizabeth Blackwell & Elizabeth Garrett) were pioneering doctors, and they helped break barriers for women in the medical profession, in many respects they also made a large contribution to winning the argument of that time about women’s access to higher education.
No matter how well-known these two may be to feminists and women’s historians they can never be well known enough to the mainstream, hence the reason for this reminder as Women’s History Month draws to a close. We must make Women’s History mainstream history, somehow.
Elizabeth Blackwell was born in Bristol, England in 1821 to a Quaker Family that believed in the idea of equal rights. The family emigrated to the United States in 1832, and at private school Elizabeth became interested in medicine. At this time, women were not permitted to attend higher education establishments. Elizabeth Blackwell took a keen interest in medicine at school and decided that she wanted to be a doctor. After being rejected from 29 medical schools, the Geneva Medical College, New York, finally accepted her application. It is believed that the student body voted to allow her in, thinking that the application was a hoax. In any event on the 11th January 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first female* to graduate as a medical student. Here is an eyewitness account of the Graduation Ceremony (pdf format). It makes for a very interesting read!
*Of those that admitted their gender that is! We do not know how many women had posed as male to complete their medical studies.
After graduation, Elizabeth Blackwell was banned from being a doctor, and as she wanted to go on to be a surgeon, friends advised her to go to Paris. La Maternité would accept her but the downside was that she had to continue her training as a student midwife, not a physician. In November 1849, her hopes of becoming a surgeon came to an abrupt end when Dr. Blackwell picked up a serious eye infection that led to the loss of her right eye, and a replacement glass eye had to be fitted in its place.
This setback did not deter Elizabeth Blackwell and in 1853, along with her sister Emily and Dr. Marie Zakrzewska, they founded the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children in Manhattan, New York. After the Infirmary was well established, she seems to have spent some of her time back in England, on lecture circuits and attending Bedford College before becoming the first woman to have her name put on the General Medical Council Medical Register in January 1859. Around this time, she met Elizabeth Garrett, inspiring her and countless other women to seek a career in the medical profession. Dr. Blackwell spent some of her time in Great Britain, organising the National Health Society and founding the London School of Medicine for Women. She later returned to the United States to train women to be nurses during the US Civil War and in 1868 established a Women’s Medical College at the Manhattan Infirmary.
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson was the first woman to successfully complete the medical qualifying exams in Great Britain. Born in Whitechapel, London in 1836, Garrett was introduced to the feminist scene in London in 1854, and met Dr. Blackwell, who inspired her to study to be a doctor, in 1859. At first she attended the Middlesex hospital as a nursing student, going to doctors’ lectures normally only attended by male students. After half receiving a medical education but being the subject of too many complaints she was barred! It just wasn’t the done thing to have females studying to do medical exams at the time. So Garrett had to find another way, and that she did. The Society of Apothecaries did not specifically forbid women from taking the examinations and in 1865 she passed, gaining a certificate to become a doctor. This loophole was swiftly closed behind her and no other women were allowed to enter this way. Elizabeth Garrett had become the second woman to have her name placed on the UK Medical Register and the first educated and qualified in Great Britain. She went on to set up her own dispensary and in doing so became the first woman to practice medicine in Britain. The dispensary grew into the New Hospital for Women, where Dr. Garrett worked for more than twenty years.
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson also founded the London School of Medicine for Children, and in 1875, Elizabeth Blackwell was appointed professor of gynaecology. Both women throughout their lives and careers were strong advocates of women’s suffrage and women’s opportunities in higher education, arguing against spurious claims of the times that womens reproductive, general and mental health would suffer if they were allowed to participate in higher education.
Incidentally, Elizabeth Garrett’s younger sister is Millicent Garrett Fawcett, after whom the Fawcett Society is named.
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson became the first woman in England elected as mayor, in the town of Aldeburgh, Suffolk which had been their family’s home-town for some years. A monument to Elizabeth Blackwell can be found at the site of the former Geneva Medical College, (now Hobart) New York. The New Hospital in London was renamed the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital but in 2005 the building was sold to UNISON, and is no more. A wing at the University Hospital London is named after Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, and an art exhibition in her honour was held there in 2009.
Cross Posted at miscellani.org/blog/