The name Elizabeth Blackwell is well-known in New York. She was the first woman who started developing US medicine actively. In the mid-19th century, she opened the first medical dispensary in Gotham and later an infirmary too. As New York was becoming bigger, the need for medical services was growing up too. Learn more about the founder of medicine in Queens and New York as a whole in the article at Queenska.
Teaching or medicine?
Elizabeth was born in England in 1821 and spent her childhood in Cincinnati. Blackwell graduated from the pedagogical university as a teacher. Despite her education, Elizabeth had a knack for medicine. The death of her friend, who died of cancer of the female internal reproductive organs, became a decisive point in her life. Dying in Elizabeth’s arms, her friend said that if her doctor was a woman, she could have avoided such suffering. Those words were etched in Blackwell’s memory forever. Thus, after a while, she decided to become a gynecologist and help people.
First steps in medicine
In 1847, Elizabeth applied to 20 medical colleges, all of which, unfortunately, refused her. The idea of a woman becoming a doctor was impossible at that time. It was believed that a woman should stay at home and can’t work at a hospital. The writer Leo Trachtenberg confirmed those beliefs in his article explaining that such work is a violation of women’s morality.
Elizabeth was strong-willed and used to achieving her life goals. In 1847, it helped her enroll in Geneva Medical College in upstate New York.
Elizabeth successfully graduated in 1849 and continued her postgraduate studies in Paris. Then she worked for several years there. After that, the young female doctor moved to New York. At that time, it was a city of the elite and merchant class. Every year, the population was increasing there owing to emigrants from Germany and Ireland.
Elizabeth Blackwell as a doctor
When the woman settled in New York, she opened a small gynecological clinic on University Place to provide women with medical care. She also placed an ad in the local newspaper to advertise her services, which came to fruition quickly. Women began to visit her clinic, though some of them were cautious of the services she provided.
In 1853, owing to the financial help of wealthy New Yorkers, she opened a dispensary near Tompkins Square Park. Unlike other NY medical facilities of that time, the Elizabeth’s facility served poor women and children from the entire 11th district.
At that time, that district was completely populated by emigrants and most of them were hungry and sick. In 1856, Blackwell and her sister Emily Blackwell, who also became a doctor, opened the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women & Children, which was located at 64 Bleecker St.
The infirmary became the first women-managed hospital in the city. The former Roosevelt family house was renovated and equipped to serve as a birthing center and a surgical ward.
Blackwell desired not only to help people in the infirmary but also to teach future female doctors and nurses within its walls. In 1868, the first New York Medical College for Women was opened at the New York Infirmary.
For some time, the hospital continued functioning and fulfilled its main mission of treating women and children as well as teaching future female doctors. Blackwell left New York in 1860 and spent the rest of her life in England, where she was giving medical lectures actively and writing books. Elizabeth died in 1910.