Speaker 1: I had not the slightest idea of the commotion created
Speaker 1: by my appearance as a medical student in the little town.
Speaker 1: Very slowly, I perceived that a doctor's wife at the
Speaker 1: table avoided any communication with me, and that as I
Speaker 1: walked backwards and forwards to the college, ladies stopped to
Speaker 1: stare at me as a curious animal. I afterwards found
Speaker 1: that I had so shocked Geneva propriety that the theory
Speaker 1: was established that either I was a bad woman whose
Speaker 1: designs would gradually become evident, or that being insane an
Speaker 1: outbreak of insanity would soon become a parent. Those are
Speaker 1: the words of Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman ever to
Speaker 1: earn a medical degree in the United States, and the
Speaker 1: person reading them was Dr Deborah Michaels, Professor of Women
Speaker 1: and Gender Studies at Merrimack College. Elizabeth Blackwell was a
Speaker 1: woman ahead of her time. Her medical thinking was advanced,
Speaker 1: and she opened the door to all the women who
Speaker 1: have since followed into the medical profession. I'm a land
Speaker 1: ververe and this is Seneca's one women to hear. We
Speaker 1: are bringing you one hundred of the world's most inspiring
Speaker 1: and history making women. You need to hear. In eighteen
Speaker 1: forty nine, Elizabeth Blackwell graduated first in her class from
Speaker 1: Geneva Medical College in New York State. It was the
Speaker 1: only school that would take her, and she got in
Speaker 1: because the other students thought it would make a good
Speaker 1: prank to have a woman in class. But her career
Speaker 1: was no joke. Among her accomplishments was starting a medical
Speaker 1: college for women in New York City. We spoke to
Speaker 1: Dr Deborah Michaels to find out more. Let's listen and
Speaker 1: learn why Dr Elizabeth Blackwell is one of se because
Speaker 1: women to hear. I'm delighted to be here today with
Speaker 1: a doctor Deborah Michaels, and we're going to be speaking
Speaker 1: about Dr Elizabeth Blackwell, who has been called the first
Speaker 1: female doctor, certainly the first woman in America to get
Speaker 1: a medical degree. Dr Michaels, I wonder could we start
Speaker 1: maybe with talking about her impact, Um, what she will
Speaker 1: be remembered for. Maybe you could place her in history?
Speaker 1: Oh sure, Um, Elizabeth Blackwell is, as you said, the
Speaker 1: first woman to receive a medical degree. Not necessarily the
Speaker 1: first woman to practice medicine, because midwives have been practicing
Speaker 1: medicine before that, but the first woman to blaze this
Speaker 1: new trail for women to say that women have not
Speaker 1: only the ability, but also the right um and should
Speaker 1: have the right to become doctors. And not only did
Speaker 1: she become a doctor, she studied um typhus, which was
Speaker 1: a highly contagious disease at the time, and you know,
Speaker 1: thinking about that in the context of the world we
Speaker 1: live in today, her work um advancing the ways in
Speaker 1: which diseases were transmitted. She studied, for example, the ways
Speaker 1: in which physicians might transmit a disease because from patient
Speaker 1: to patient by not washing their hands in between visiting
Speaker 1: with patients. So, I mean that's kind of resonates in
Speaker 1: a very contemporary way. You're not kidding, right, So she's
Speaker 1: one of the first people to actually begin to talk
Speaker 1: about how do diseases spread and what role do you
Speaker 1: does hygiene play in that? And that was a very
Speaker 1: big area of study for her Um. She you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's significant that she Um was the first woman
Speaker 1: to attend a medical college that was co educational. But
Speaker 1: she was also somebody who went on to found both
Speaker 1: medical schools for women and infirmaries and and sort of
Speaker 1: many smaller hospitals that treated women She didn't love the
Speaker 1: idea of women only um, you know, medical schools, because
Speaker 1: she felt that women should be allowed to attend any
Speaker 1: any school, anywhere. But she also understood, because she lived
Speaker 1: through them, the difficulties women at that time fased attending
Speaker 1: medical colleges that were dominated by men. Harassment, um, being
Speaker 1: blocked from certain trainings or letters of recommendation or you know,
Speaker 1: all kinds of things um at that time. So so
Speaker 1: in many ways we think about her impact, it's, you know,
Speaker 1: people love the idea of firsts, and certainly she's a first,
Speaker 1: but she's more than just a first in terms of
Speaker 1: being the first doctor. She's the person who opened the
Speaker 1: door for all of the women who came after her.
Speaker 1: And I think that's significant when we look at any
Speaker 1: of the first in our history. How did they open
Speaker 1: the door for all of the women you know today?
Speaker 1: For example today, you know, I looked up a statistic
Speaker 1: prior to this women are u more than of the
Speaker 1: students in medical schools right now, correct, And that would
Speaker 1: not have happened without an Elizabeth Blackwell. But isn't this
Speaker 1: so interesting about the first that they pay it forward
Speaker 1: in a really significant way and opened the door as
Speaker 1: you say, I think there's some real strong learning in
Speaker 1: all of that, and and the fact that some of
Speaker 1: the things that she was dealing with in school you
Speaker 1: mentioned harassment, discrimination. We are still battling some of those issues.
Speaker 1: So people who really, especially women leaders, who do engage
Speaker 1: in this way can have tremendous impact and it continues, thankfully.
Speaker 1: I also had heard about her that she went into
Speaker 1: medicine because a dying friend wish that she had had
Speaker 1: a woman physician. She obviously did not. Is that a
Speaker 1: true story you had mentioned? Certainly there are women midwives,
Speaker 1: but how did medicine treat women patients during her life
Speaker 1: time or just around that time. Well, that is a
Speaker 1: true story. She had a friend who was dying of cancer.
Speaker 1: UM Elizabeth Blackwell was one of those women at that time.
Speaker 1: She was part of this very activist family. They defied
Speaker 1: a lot of social norms. Her her family was involved
Speaker 1: in the anti slavery movement. Elizabeth is born in eighteen
Speaker 1: twenty one, and she's coming of age in the eighteen
Speaker 1: forties and fifties, and at that time, you know, as
Speaker 1: pre Civil War, her family is speaking out against UM,
Speaker 1: against the continuation of slavery, She's part of that very
Speaker 1: very famous Blackwell family. Her brother Henry Blackwell, is an abolitionist.
Speaker 1: She grows up being friends with Harriet Beetures Stowe, who
Speaker 1: wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin. She travels in very she she
Speaker 1: gets to know people who will later become prominent. UM.
Speaker 1: And one of her friends is dying of what we
Speaker 1: would call cancer today. And the medical profession then it's
Speaker 1: not the medical profession of today. UM, it's beginning to professionalize.
Speaker 1: It's getting to require licenses and special training. UM. Around
Speaker 1: the time that Elizabeth most to medical school, but before that,
Speaker 1: most people became a midwife or a doctor. They trained
Speaker 1: by apprenticing with an existing doctor or midwife. And the
Speaker 1: reason her friend her friends said to her, you know, Elizabeth,
Speaker 1: you're so talented, you're so intelligent, you should become a doctor.
Speaker 1: Because if I had been treated by a doctor who
Speaker 1: was a woman, I think my treatment would have been better.
Speaker 1: And what she's referring to is that the male the
Speaker 1: male doctors who treated her cancer were highly aggressive. UM.
Speaker 1: And as many doctors were at that time, highly aggressive,
Speaker 1: and they used techniques that today we might consider kind
Speaker 1: of coined or barbaric. I mean, they you know, they
Speaker 1: used phrenology, They studied the skull to see what that's
Speaker 1: said about, you know, about your personality or about your
Speaker 1: medical conditions. They use leeches, they used blood letting, They
Speaker 1: and and in very aggressive ways. So I think what
Speaker 1: her friend pointing to is that the the treatment might
Speaker 1: have been more humane, might have been more understanding of
Speaker 1: a woman's um position and situation had she been treated
Speaker 1: by a woman. And Elizabeth she was actually really turned
Speaker 1: off by the idea when her friend says this. You know,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth loved to read literature. She wanted to to to
Speaker 1: engage in sort of that kind of life of the mind.
Speaker 1: And she writes later in um in her book on
Speaker 1: the pioneer work and Opening the medical profession to Women,
Speaker 1: she writes that she was um she hate This is
Speaker 1: a quote from her. She said, I hated everything connected
Speaker 1: with the body and could not bear the site of
Speaker 1: a medical book. My favorite studies were history and metaphysics,
Speaker 1: and the very thought of dwelling on the physical structure
Speaker 1: of the body and its various ailments filled me with disgust.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, Bryan, can you imagine that? Instead she
Speaker 1: went into teaching, which is what what most women did.
Speaker 1: That was a you know, a legitimate profession for women
Speaker 1: at the time. So what put her over, Well, she
Speaker 1: starts to think about it a little bit more, um,
Speaker 1: and then she just I think as she starts to
Speaker 1: think about it more, she decides that she just needs
Speaker 1: to do it. Um. I think this idea of her
Speaker 1: friend maybe could have haunted her a little bit um,
Speaker 1: but she definitely decides that she wants to do it.
Speaker 1: And in order to get into some of these medical
Speaker 1: um schools at the time, you really kind of had
Speaker 1: to have had previous experience, which you know, she didn't have.
Speaker 1: She was a school teacher. So what she does very
Speaker 1: cleverly as she becomes a school teacher, she moves to Asheville,
Speaker 1: North Carolina, and she becomes a music teacher for the
Speaker 1: daughters of doctor John Dickinson, and he basically lets her
Speaker 1: play in his medical library and he bolsters you know,
Speaker 1: her medical resume um and actually encourages her to go
Speaker 1: on and become a doctor. Um. So she starts to
Speaker 1: apply to medical colleges, which you know, as you know,
Speaker 1: she's rejected everywhere simply because she's a woman. Such a
Speaker 1: fascinating story though, that she moved to Asheville and was
Speaker 1: providing music lessons to the daughter of a physician. Really fascinating.
Speaker 1: And she has to keep her mouth shut about her
Speaker 1: families and her own anti slavery views because I remember
Speaker 1: she's in North Carolina in you know, the eighteen forties,
Speaker 1: which is a slave stick. My goodness. So, as you
Speaker 1: said a little bit earlier, today, we have just slightly
Speaker 1: over of medical students are are female today, and it's
Speaker 1: been a long road for women to get to this place.
Speaker 1: You were just talking about the obstacles that are pioneering
Speaker 1: woman confronted. So what did Dr Blackwell go through to
Speaker 1: get into medical school where she rejected? What? What kind
Speaker 1: of treatment did she get it in this application process? Well,
Speaker 1: so this is sort of one of these fun moments
Speaker 1: in history, right, There's there's several of them where women
Speaker 1: get something by accident and then they turn it into
Speaker 1: something phenomenal. Right, So we right, we know, we know
Speaker 1: for example that Title seven of the Civil Rights Act,
Speaker 1: you know, they add the word sex, kind of laying
Speaker 1: the game, and that changes everything for our our legal
Speaker 1: right to be treated equally um as employees in America.
Speaker 1: But it's blackwell story is kind of the same thing.
Speaker 1: So she applies to multiple um medical colleges, and of
Speaker 1: course is rejected. She does not use the famous trick
Speaker 1: that we learn many women use later, which is just
Speaker 1: her first initial. She doesn't do that. She applies as
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Blackwell. What happens is that Geneva Medical College in
Speaker 1: New York begins to reject her, and then the the
Speaker 1: the administrators say, well, we're gonna see what the hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty mail students want, and if a single one
Speaker 1: of them does not vote to approve, she will not
Speaker 1: get in. So they put it to a vote of
Speaker 1: the male students, a hundred and fifty mail students and um,
Speaker 1: and all but one of them says yes. And the
Speaker 1: one who says no, the others taunt him into saying yes.
Speaker 1: And the reason they say yes is they think that
Speaker 1: it's funny. They think this is a prank. We'll have
Speaker 1: a woman here. She won't she won't make it, she
Speaker 1: won't be any good at it, but for a while,
Speaker 1: we'll have some sport about the whole thing. Um. And
Speaker 1: little do they know that the women that they think
Speaker 1: they're going to play this prank on is Blackwell, who
Speaker 1: ultimately will graduate at the top of her class. Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, that's quite a story, right, So this is
Speaker 1: I mean, I love stories like this because you know,
Speaker 1: the jokes on them ultimately. Um, but they admitted her
Speaker 1: purely as a joke. And you know, she writes about this,
Speaker 1: she says, Um, you know, just as by way background,
Speaker 1: I think about Elizabeth Blackwell a lot when I teach
Speaker 1: my own students, and I think about what it means
Speaker 1: to be a woman in college today versus some of
Speaker 1: these first women who were college students or in this
Speaker 1: case a medical student in a different historic context, when
Speaker 1: ideas about what gender roles and women's roles should be
Speaker 1: are not the same as our roles are today, and
Speaker 1: even today we're still arguing about what they should be.
Speaker 1: But but in the mid nineteenth century, you have this
Speaker 1: ideology of sort of pure womanhood and domesticity, and woman's
Speaker 1: place is supposed to be in the home and all
Speaker 1: things related to the home, and um, there are lots
Speaker 1: of sort of pseudo scientific beliefs that you know, if
Speaker 1: women are educated, it will draw blood from their reproductive
Speaker 1: organs to their brains, and therefore they won't be able
Speaker 1: to be mothers. One day um, or that their natures
Speaker 1: are too delicate to to be faced with the disgustingness
Speaker 1: of you know, the harsher things of life and so so.
Speaker 1: And I tell you this by way of context, because
Speaker 1: when Elizabeth writes about what happens to her in Geneva,
Speaker 1: in some ways she's she's regarded as um, a woman
Speaker 1: who violated woman's proper role. Um. So I'll just read
Speaker 1: a little for you from her own writing. She says,
Speaker 1: I had not the slightest idea of the commotion created
Speaker 1: by my appearance as a medical student in the little town.
Speaker 1: Very slowly, I perceived that a doctor's wife at the
Speaker 1: table avoided any communication with me, and that as I
Speaker 1: walked backwards and forwards to the college, ladies stopped to
Speaker 1: stare at me as a curious animal. I afterwards found
Speaker 1: that I had so shocked Geneva propriety that the theory
Speaker 1: was established that either I was a bad woman whose
Speaker 1: designs would gradually become evident, or that being insane an
Speaker 1: outbreak of insanity would soon become a parent. So that's
Speaker 1: what she's really up against. Well, And you know, as
Speaker 1: you were reading that, I was thinking of women and
Speaker 1: other parts of the world who are still confronted with
Speaker 1: norms that say they should work outside the home or
Speaker 1: are accustomed to arguments that go to the fact that
Speaker 1: they shouldn't do X, Y and z in terms of professions.
Speaker 1: So it's still very much with us. And I think
Speaker 1: it's great that you're educating younger women today in the
Speaker 1: college to understand both that they stand on the shoulders
Speaker 1: of women like Elizabeth Blackwell, but beyond that that these
Speaker 1: are still issues that one has to contend with in
Speaker 1: many parts of the world. Yes. Absolutely. And you know
Speaker 1: what's interesting too, is that she becomes so motivated that
Speaker 1: even as you know, she has nobody to study with.
Speaker 1: The men won't study with her, They won't admit her
Speaker 1: to the labs, they won't admit her to the clinical
Speaker 1: training sessions. They won't even tell her where to buy
Speaker 1: the books. Oh my gosh. So there's all And this is,
Speaker 1: I mean, this really is the definition of the kinds
Speaker 1: of obstacles and sabotage we still see today when women
Speaker 1: step into um territories or or job categories that are
Speaker 1: traditionally male totally. And so, you know, in a way,
Speaker 1: her story, even though it's you know, a hundred seventy
Speaker 1: years old is still very current. Senecas one hundred Women
Speaker 1: to Hear will be back after the short break. M
Speaker 1: we talk about how important support systems are and networks are. Now,
Speaker 1: you had mentioned that she came from a family of
Speaker 1: women's rights activists. How did people like Lucy Stone and
Speaker 1: her other relatives influence her, You know, it's really interesting
Speaker 1: about Lucy Stone. So Lucy Stone is, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the one of the earliest women to attend college.
Speaker 1: She goes to Oberlin in the thirties and the eighteen thirties,
Speaker 1: she marries Henry Blackwell. And when Lucy Stone and Henry
Speaker 1: Blackwell marry in eighteen fifty eight, I mean they write
Speaker 1: their own marriage vows. They're published in the New York Times,
Speaker 1: but their marriage vows are a protestation of marriage. I
Speaker 1: mean basically they you know this whole they get married,
Speaker 1: and they basically in their statements say, we know marriage
Speaker 1: is role prison for women. We know that women are
Speaker 1: give up their rights. And in this case, you know,
Speaker 1: Lucy Stone says, I'm giving up nothing, even though the
Speaker 1: laws of course means, you know, don't back that up.
Speaker 1: So she's in this kind of world. She's in this
Speaker 1: world of people who understand the limitations, and you know,
Speaker 1: frankly she Blackwell herself it comes to adopt many of
Speaker 1: these ideas, and she never marries Um. She wants hardly
Speaker 1: to be a doctor because she wants to find a
Speaker 1: profession where she can support herself as an independent woman,
Speaker 1: because most women are marrying really well into the mid
Speaker 1: twentieth centuries for economic reasons. If the most lucrative jobs
Speaker 1: go for men, go to men, then it becomes very
Speaker 1: difficult for women to support themselves unless they marry and
Speaker 1: marry well. And so she's actually consciously thinking in the
Speaker 1: eighteen forties and fifties of how do I support myself
Speaker 1: in the event that I never marry r and increasingly
Speaker 1: choosing never to marry. And and so the connection with
Speaker 1: like people like her brother Um, who is the family
Speaker 1: member who attends her graduation, Henry Blackwell and Lucy Stone,
Speaker 1: she's in that whole same sort of idea. She actually
Speaker 1: wants women to get educations and she tries to push
Speaker 1: through that. She says, you know, when women are this
Speaker 1: is black Wall speaking. She says, women are feeble, narrow,
Speaker 1: frivolous at present ignorant of their own capacities and underdeveloped
Speaker 1: in thought and feeling. And while they remain so, the
Speaker 1: great work of human regeneration must remain incomplete. And in
Speaker 1: this quote, I think she's saying, we're missing a whole
Speaker 1: talent pool here, and women don't realize what they're capable of.
Speaker 1: I think all of that is really revolutionary thinking and
Speaker 1: still with us today. You know, we're still not tapping
Speaker 1: fully the talents and experiences of half the population of
Speaker 1: the world. So in many ways we're still of struggling
Speaker 1: with these issues. Absolutely, and again not even not just
Speaker 1: against you know, one of the things that that she
Speaker 1: had to defy where the men who said, look, we
Speaker 1: don't want women in medical school because we don't want
Speaker 1: to compete with them. We we don't need any more rivals,
Speaker 1: or we don't want to be seen as sort of
Speaker 1: silly and frivolous by men who might attract We won't
Speaker 1: get the best students if we if we let women in.
Speaker 1: But she also was up against women, and one of
Speaker 1: her letters was to a woman who you know, accused
Speaker 1: her of trying to take a higher place for women,
Speaker 1: and that in some ways is still with us. Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean. In her response, she says, I do not
Speaker 1: wish to give women a first place us still less
Speaker 1: a second one, but the most complete freedom to take
Speaker 1: their true place, whatever it may be. Beautiful quote. So
Speaker 1: she had this this spirited world in which she lived,
Speaker 1: and she got to medical school, she graduated. Tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit about her career in New York. Did
Speaker 1: she take advances in medicine and for women as well?
Speaker 1: She does. But here's the here's the interesting thing about
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Blackwell and and many of the early women doctors,
Speaker 1: and and frankly even female doctors today. Most she she
Speaker 1: does her work in obstetrics and gynecology and pediatrics, and
Speaker 1: today obstetrics and gynecology eighty three point four percent of
Speaker 1: doctors in O B g U I n our women.
Speaker 1: Seventy two percent of doctors who practice pediatrics are women.
Speaker 1: And so you know, she's doing what many women in
Speaker 1: that time did, which is that they found a way
Speaker 1: to take their gender role and make it and defy
Speaker 1: it while also making it making the work they do
Speaker 1: align with it. So she is treating women. Um, that
Speaker 1: makes it a little less radical that she's a doctor.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a lot of pushback against the idea
Speaker 1: of women treating men it's inappropriate. At that time, she
Speaker 1: uh she can't get her doctor her dean to write
Speaker 1: letters for her, so she ends doing UM some some
Speaker 1: of her post after graduating, she does some work in
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania at an almshouse treating poor women UM and children,
Speaker 1: and she discovers this that that many of these women
Speaker 1: who have venereal diseases are UM seduced by the men
Speaker 1: they work for and then abandoned, and this, this idea
Speaker 1: of helping women becomes her mission. She does go to
Speaker 1: New York in eighteen fifty one and and she can't
Speaker 1: get a job because nobody wants to hire a women
Speaker 1: a woman. So she and her sister, who at this
Speaker 1: point her sister Emily, also becomes a doctor UM, the
Speaker 1: third woman to have a medical degree. As her sister
Speaker 1: and UM, they open a clinic for women and children
Speaker 1: that UM in eighteen fifty seven becomes a New York
Speaker 1: Infirmary for Women and children. In eighteen sixty eight, she
Speaker 1: opens a medical college for women in New York City,
Speaker 1: and this is around the time that more and more
Speaker 1: women's medical colleges begin to open around the country. It's
Speaker 1: just fascinating, you know. She goes to Paris for a
Speaker 1: little while after she graduates, and she's treating children, um
Speaker 1: and who are infected with bacteria, one of them, uh,
Speaker 1: and she gets an infection in her eye from one
Speaker 1: of the children, so she loses her left eye. Um
Speaker 1: and so her dream of becoming a surgeon disappears with that,
Speaker 1: and she ends up. She stays in obstetrics, does important
Speaker 1: research um and returns to London in the eighteen seventies
Speaker 1: to become a professor and open a women's medical college there.
Speaker 1: But she was never going to be able to even
Speaker 1: go much further with the dream of becoming a surgeon
Speaker 1: once she lost her left eye. But I tell you
Speaker 1: that story because I think it's important, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: to circle back to her influence or her impact. This
Speaker 1: is somebody who never gave up no matter what the
Speaker 1: odds against her were. You know, whether the odds were
Speaker 1: a world of society that said women should should get
Speaker 1: married and stay home and raise children and do nothing else,
Speaker 1: or whether you know the odds were against blocking her
Speaker 1: issition to medical schools or letting her treat patients, or
Speaker 1: even when she has you know, loses her eyesight, nothing
Speaker 1: stops her. She sounds utterly remarkable. So let me go
Speaker 1: into that remarkable feature here. You are a professor of
Speaker 1: women in gender studies, obviously engaged deeply in in these
Speaker 1: stories in history and what they represent for today. What
Speaker 1: inspires you about Elizabeth Blackwell? Clearly you told us a
Speaker 1: great deal. That's just fascinating. But what lessons can we
Speaker 1: all take from her life? I think she's a sort
Speaker 1: of a paradigm of fearlessness and um steadfastness and resiliency.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's this is a woman who um the
Speaker 1: world would say no to her over and over again,
Speaker 1: and she just found a way to bypass or sidestep
Speaker 1: or overcome every single obstacle. I think that's that's the story.
Speaker 1: You know, There's so many times we experience in our
Speaker 1: own lives obstacles or discrimination or hardships, and many times
Speaker 1: we want to throw our hands up and say, well,
Speaker 1: I guess that's not the path for me. UM. When
Speaker 1: Blackwell couldn't get a job, she created her own clinic.
Speaker 1: When she could get people to accept her um as
Speaker 1: a doctor, she treated the poor who needed her and
Speaker 1: built a following from that. She built her reputation from that,
Speaker 1: from going where she was needed, proving what she could do,
Speaker 1: and then take, you know, making it bigger from there.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are always ways to to achieve what
Speaker 1: you want to achieve if you're willing to be creative
Speaker 1: as she was and to never take no for an answer. Debra,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for introducing us to Elizabeth Blackwell
Speaker 1: for those of us who may not have known her, uh,
Speaker 1: and the role that she played in in women's history,
Speaker 1: in history of medicine, in this country's progress. I wonder,
Speaker 1: given that we're talking after the inauguration, UM, if I
Speaker 1: could just ask you for your your personal reaction to
Speaker 1: the fact that, for the first time in America's history, UM,
Speaker 1: a woman became the vice President of the United States,
Speaker 1: and a woman of color. It was really hard not
Speaker 1: to watch the inauguration with a tear in my eye
Speaker 1: about all of that. I've been a big fan of
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris for a long time. I noticed, with you know,
Speaker 1: the woman's history historians, I that she was wearing purple.
Speaker 1: Yesterday people were talking about the purple is Shirley Chisholm's color,
Speaker 1: Um that I don't know and I'm all, it's Shirley
Speaker 1: Chisholm is my personal hero. But I never knew about
Speaker 1: purple being her color choice. What I did know was
Speaker 1: that purple was one of the colors of suffrage, and
Speaker 1: so I I felt that and she was wearing the
Speaker 1: pearls from her sorority at Howard University, sending a message
Speaker 1: to uh, the two young women today they're about about
Speaker 1: about the potential achievement UM for all of us. So
Speaker 1: so for me, yesterday was this incredible milestone that says
Speaker 1: to every young woman of you know, every race, UM
Speaker 1: and ethnicity and ability and gender identity, that, um, you know,
Speaker 1: here is someone who represents you. Here is someone who
Speaker 1: shows you what is possible. We've all heard the line
Speaker 1: that if you know, you can't see it. If you
Speaker 1: can't see it, you can't be it. And yesterday we
Speaker 1: could see it. And I kept thinking about all of
Speaker 1: the young people everywhere who could now imagine it for themselves. Uh.
Speaker 1: That to me was the power of seeing that, um,
Speaker 1: we have this first and someone who I believe and
Speaker 1: hope will be the first of many, and not just
Speaker 1: as vice president, which is the important milestone, but the
Speaker 1: but but also you know this is the path to
Speaker 1: the presidency, the highest sort of office in the land,
Speaker 1: and I think she is. She blazed that trail as
Speaker 1: well for us yesterday by saying anything It's possible, so
Speaker 1: beautifully said. You gave me goose bumps just reliving it
Speaker 1: as you were talking about it. And I think it's
Speaker 1: so true when others can see the possibility when that
Speaker 1: role model becomes a model, as this chapter in history represented,
Speaker 1: it really does make all the difference. So thank you
Speaker 1: for saying that, and thank you for a wonderful conversation
Speaker 1: and for enabling us to become well acquainted or much
Speaker 1: better acquainted with Dr Elizabeth Blackwell. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Dr Michaels, thank you for having me. I really enjoyed this.
Speaker 1: What a truly amazing woman. Here are three things I
Speaker 1: took away from that conversation. First, Elizabeth Blackwell shows how
Speaker 1: persistence pays off despite sexism, ostracism, and even the loss
Speaker 1: of an eye. She was determined to practice medicine and
Speaker 1: save lives. Second, if there were a roadblock in her path,
Speaker 1: rather than retreat, she'd find a way around it. As
Speaker 1: Dr Michael says, when Blackwell couldn't get hired as a physician,
Speaker 1: she started her own clinic. When patients wouldn't come to
Speaker 1: her practice, she went out and treated the poor. Finally,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Blackwell knew that medicine, like all endeavors, benefits when
Speaker 1: women's perspective is part of the equation, and the medical
Speaker 1: profession and patients have much to thank her for. Tune
Speaker 1: in next Tuesday to hear about our next featured woman
Speaker 1: and discover why she's one of Seneca's Women to Hear.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to join the Seneca Women Network, go
Speaker 1: to Seneca Women dot com. There you'll get access to
Speaker 1: exclusive events and workshops, plus updates on new podcasts and
Speaker 1: other opportunities to get involved. Seneca's one hundred Women to
Speaker 1: Hear is a collaboration between the Seneca Women Podcast Network
Speaker 1: and I Heart Radio, with support from founding partner PNG.
Speaker 1: Have a Great Day.