WEBVTT - Selects: Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, Feminist Physician 0:00:00.880 --> 0:00:03.720 Hi, their friends, It's me Josh, And for this week's Select, 0:00:03.760 --> 0:00:07.200 I've chosen our April twenty twenty episode on Elizabeth Blackwell, 0:00:07.520 --> 0:00:10.239 who is a complex person to say the least, and 0:00:10.280 --> 0:00:13.000 she's a great example of how nobody fits neatly into 0:00:13.039 --> 0:00:16.239 one group or another. And she's a great lesson and 0:00:16.320 --> 0:00:18.799 how a person who you might hold different views from 0:00:18.840 --> 0:00:21.960 and values from can still be one of your heroes. 0:00:22.400 --> 0:00:24.440 I hope you get a lot out of this episode 0:00:24.640 --> 0:00:27.360 about Elizabeth Blackwell, the feminist icon. 0:00:32.360 --> 0:00:38.640 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:41.920 --> 0:00:44.560 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's 0:00:44.640 --> 0:00:50.720 Charles w Charles Chuck, Wayne Twain Bryant, and there's Jerry 0:00:50.800 --> 0:00:56.000 Jerome Roland, the Rizzy, And I'm just Josh, like just 0:00:56.160 --> 0:01:01.040 Jack was just Jack Wow, Okay, heck coming in, Thank you. 0:01:01.520 --> 0:01:02.960 Let's do a little jazz hands there. 0:01:03.160 --> 0:01:07.520 Just call me Twain Chwain from now on, Chwain. It's 0:01:07.560 --> 0:01:08.560 not awkward to pronounce. 0:01:08.920 --> 0:01:14.000 It's really close to schwing. Remember that shwing, Oh man, 0:01:14.400 --> 0:01:20.080 I totally forgot about it until just now. Shwing, Chuck shwing, shwing. 0:01:20.440 --> 0:01:21.400 That's how you have to say it. 0:01:22.200 --> 0:01:24.679 No, you can say it anyway like schwing. 0:01:25.200 --> 0:01:27.520 Yeah. Well, what I really love is that we're talking 0:01:27.560 --> 0:01:35.480 about America's first woman physician, an amazing woman named doctor 0:01:35.520 --> 0:01:39.639 Elizabeth Blackwell, who had an amazing family and her story 0:01:39.720 --> 0:01:43.920 is incredible, and we're saying shwing, shwing at the beginning. 0:01:43.760 --> 0:01:50.760 Right, especially considering that she was a a rather puritanical 0:01:50.880 --> 0:01:53.960 person in a lot of senses, she would probably not 0:01:54.040 --> 0:01:55.400 have been down with us saying shwing. 0:01:56.600 --> 0:02:02.040 No, no, because you know what, uh, she and her 0:02:02.040 --> 0:02:05.600 family were Quakers, And I know some Quakers and have 0:02:05.720 --> 0:02:09.560 known some Quakers. They hate shwing, they do, but you 0:02:09.600 --> 0:02:11.960 know what they love what being awesome? 0:02:13.040 --> 0:02:17.079 Yeah, yeah, no, I mean for sure this I get 0:02:17.080 --> 0:02:19.399 the impression that her entire family is a pretty good 0:02:19.440 --> 0:02:23.320 example of like a like a Quaker family. 0:02:23.880 --> 0:02:24.240 Quaker. 0:02:24.320 --> 0:02:27.240 Every Quaker I've known has just had it like had 0:02:27.240 --> 0:02:29.880 it all figured out. It seems like they're like the 0:02:29.880 --> 0:02:31.200 the Buddhists of the West. 0:02:31.960 --> 0:02:37.720 Yeah, yeah, pretty much. They also I think they also 0:02:37.840 --> 0:02:42.919 go by the Society of Friends, which says a lot too. Yeah, 0:02:42.919 --> 0:02:45.400 I'm pretty sure. And then, if you remember correctly, Charles 0:02:45.480 --> 0:02:49.079 are Pacifist episode focused heavily on the Quakers because they're 0:02:49.120 --> 0:02:54.480 big time pacifists too. So Elizabeth Blackwell, just by virtue 0:02:54.520 --> 0:02:58.760 of having been a Quaker, was a pretty interesting, like 0:02:59.160 --> 0:03:03.520 upstanding up, bright person with a good head on her shoulders. 0:03:03.840 --> 0:03:08.760 But she also, like individually personally, was a very amazing person. 0:03:08.919 --> 0:03:12.239 And not just the fact that she was the first 0:03:12.520 --> 0:03:18.480 licensed woman physician in America. Yeah, but to get there 0:03:18.680 --> 0:03:21.359 she really had to blaze her own path and put 0:03:21.440 --> 0:03:25.080 up with a lot of bs, you might put it, 0:03:27.160 --> 0:03:31.480 and so much so that even in her autobiography, which 0:03:31.520 --> 0:03:33.760 was published in eighteen ninety five when she was in 0:03:33.800 --> 0:03:39.240 her seventies, I think she called it pioneering work, and 0:03:39.280 --> 0:03:41.240 that there's really no better way to put it. She 0:03:41.400 --> 0:03:45.280 was absolutely a pioneer, and not just getting herself established 0:03:45.320 --> 0:03:48.760 as a woman physician in America, but in making it 0:03:48.880 --> 0:03:54.800 so that there could be more women physician in America, physicians. 0:03:53.440 --> 0:03:56.839 And more and more, much more. So. 0:03:57.240 --> 0:04:01.240 Let's start with, oh, I don't know, February eighteen twenty one. 0:04:01.480 --> 0:04:02.960 What's significant about that date. 0:04:03.440 --> 0:04:07.480 She was born as a little bebe near Bristol, England. 0:04:07.560 --> 0:04:10.240 She was the third of nine children. Her mom was 0:04:10.280 --> 0:04:13.960 Hannah Lane, who came from a family of merchants who 0:04:14.000 --> 0:04:17.120 had some dough and her pops was Samuel Blackwell. 0:04:17.200 --> 0:04:20.320 He was a sugar refiner and also prosperous. 0:04:20.839 --> 0:04:24.120 And like we said, they were Quakers, which means that 0:04:24.200 --> 0:04:27.960 they were very cool, and this was eighteen twenty one. 0:04:28.040 --> 0:04:31.560 They were not down with slavery. They were activists against slavery. 0:04:32.120 --> 0:04:36.800 They were abolitionists. They supported women's suffrage. Her brother Henry 0:04:37.680 --> 0:04:41.120 married Lucy Stone, who was very famous women's rights activist. 0:04:41.800 --> 0:04:45.159 Her little sister Emily followed in her footsteps in medicine. 0:04:45.640 --> 0:04:49.600 Her sister in law Antoinette Brown Blackwell, first female ordained 0:04:49.640 --> 0:04:54.640 minister in Protestant the Protestant denomination. Yeah, they were way 0:04:54.680 --> 0:04:55.400 ahead of their time. 0:04:55.680 --> 0:04:57.240 Yeah, and you can trace I mean, both of her 0:04:57.240 --> 0:04:59.920 parents seem to be pretty cool, and you can trace 0:05:00.080 --> 0:05:05.640 there the roots of their sensibilities back to their parents. 0:05:05.680 --> 0:05:09.799 Like Samuel was a dissenter, like he was a Quaker, 0:05:10.240 --> 0:05:13.200 which is I guess a form of Protestantism, but he 0:05:13.360 --> 0:05:17.400 was definitely he didn't recognize like the sole religious authority 0:05:17.440 --> 0:05:19.840 of say, like the Church of England or anything like that. 0:05:20.360 --> 0:05:22.760 And so as a result his children could not go 0:05:22.839 --> 0:05:25.599 to public school. He said, fine, I've got some money 0:05:25.600 --> 0:05:29.000 I'm a prosperous sugar merchant. I'm going to hire the 0:05:29.000 --> 0:05:32.240 best tutors I can find. And not only that, I'm 0:05:32.240 --> 0:05:36.680 going to defy the conventions of England and have these 0:05:36.720 --> 0:05:41.440 tutors teach my daughters the same stuff that they're going 0:05:41.480 --> 0:05:45.560 to teach my sons, which is unheard of. But that 0:05:45.800 --> 0:05:51.280 really formed the basis for especially Elizabeth's progression and education 0:05:51.760 --> 0:05:56.159 that she came to expect to be taught just like 0:05:56.240 --> 0:06:00.000 she was a boy because of how she was raised. 0:06:01.000 --> 0:06:03.480 Yeah, and you know, by all accounts, her parents were 0:06:03.480 --> 0:06:06.920 both pretty great. Her dad was a very caring individual. 0:06:07.480 --> 0:06:11.200 He thought that all kids of any gender should reach 0:06:11.240 --> 0:06:14.720 their full potential. Sure, he didn't physically punish his kids, 0:06:14.720 --> 0:06:15.680 which was weird. 0:06:15.440 --> 0:06:17.600 At the time. People are like, why ain't you hitting 0:06:17.640 --> 0:06:20.599 your kids? Yeah, and he said, I don't believe in it. 0:06:20.960 --> 0:06:24.080 I've got a switch right here you can borrow. Well, yeah, really, 0:06:24.120 --> 0:06:24.360 do we. 0:06:24.360 --> 0:06:26.760 Not have a switch? That's what the deal is. He 0:06:26.800 --> 0:06:29.440 doesn't have a switch or a paddles. Let's get him 0:06:29.480 --> 0:06:32.960 a switch so he you know, they would had sort 0:06:32.960 --> 0:06:35.560 of like a demerit system in their house, and if 0:06:35.680 --> 0:06:38.760 you add it up to too many demerits. You would 0:06:38.839 --> 0:06:41.000 have to do something like eat by yourself in the 0:06:41.040 --> 0:06:45.000 attic or something that sounds horrific, also like sticking a 0:06:45.040 --> 0:06:46.880 kid in a closet. But I think it was just 0:06:47.279 --> 0:06:49.279 a room removed from the family dinner. 0:06:49.520 --> 0:06:51.560 Yeah, it was just you have to go away from 0:06:51.640 --> 0:06:53.600 the family. We can't even bear to look at you. You 0:06:53.640 --> 0:06:54.559 make us want a puke. 0:06:54.839 --> 0:06:58.480 That's right. But everything changed when he lost his sugar 0:06:58.520 --> 0:07:01.640 refinery in a fire and said, you know what, let's 0:07:01.680 --> 0:07:06.000 pack our bags and let's move to New York City. 0:07:06.360 --> 0:07:07.200 New York City. 0:07:07.839 --> 0:07:09.120 That's right, New York City. 0:07:09.240 --> 0:07:12.240 Do you remember back in I don't know, like around 0:07:12.240 --> 0:07:13.920 two thousand and seven eight. I feel like it was 0:07:14.200 --> 0:07:16.440 right when we both started working around how stuff works, 0:07:16.840 --> 0:07:19.160 that is sugar refinery and Savannah blew up. 0:07:19.280 --> 0:07:20.040 Yeah, I remember that. 0:07:20.280 --> 0:07:22.640 I wrote an article about that. It's like that sugar 0:07:22.720 --> 0:07:26.200 dust is volatile it they can catch fire, and I 0:07:26.280 --> 0:07:28.520 wondering if that's what happened to his sugar refinery. 0:07:28.680 --> 0:07:29.040 I bet you. 0:07:29.600 --> 0:07:32.080 Okay, So they moved to New York. They lived in 0:07:32.120 --> 0:07:35.960 New York and New Jersey for six years, as you do. Yeah, 0:07:36.000 --> 0:07:39.200 And one of the cool things that I liked about him. 0:07:39.720 --> 0:07:42.240 He was a little paradoxical. So he was a sugar 0:07:42.280 --> 0:07:45.520 refinery made his money off of sugar refining. But the 0:07:45.560 --> 0:07:51.160 sugar industry was based almost entirely on slave labor around 0:07:51.160 --> 0:07:54.960 the world how sugarcane was grown. That's how he didn't 0:07:55.040 --> 0:07:57.440 use slaves, I can tell you that. But he still 0:07:57.440 --> 0:08:00.400 made his money in an industry that was heavy, heavy 0:08:00.400 --> 0:08:05.600 on slavery. And in fact, his children were such staunch abolitionists. 0:08:05.720 --> 0:08:08.520 Even as young children, they refused to eat sugar because 0:08:08.520 --> 0:08:11.840 they knew that slaves had had a hand in producing it, 0:08:12.200 --> 0:08:14.520 so they would they wouldn't even eat it as kids. 0:08:14.600 --> 0:08:18.920 Little kids wouldn't need sugar because of the slavery involved. 0:08:19.480 --> 0:08:22.240 But he still made his money off of that. But 0:08:23.240 --> 0:08:25.280 when he got to America, one of the first things 0:08:25.320 --> 0:08:31.440 he tried was to introduce sugar beets, which don't require 0:08:31.520 --> 0:08:34.920 slave labor. There's a much less labor intensive process of 0:08:34.960 --> 0:08:40.240 extracting sugar from sugar beets, and this was really revolutionary 0:08:40.360 --> 0:08:43.319 at the time. They think they first isolated sugar from 0:08:43.360 --> 0:08:47.199 beats in eighteen hundred, like thirty years before, and they 0:08:47.200 --> 0:08:49.920 had been introduced to America just like two years before. 0:08:50.360 --> 0:08:52.600 He took this up, so he was on the cutting 0:08:52.679 --> 0:08:56.800 edge of sugar beat production. But it didn't actually work 0:08:56.840 --> 0:08:57.560 out very well. 0:08:58.200 --> 0:09:03.800 No, his original sugar refinery went went south in eighteen 0:09:03.840 --> 0:09:07.200 thirty seven, so he said, let me move to Cincinnata 0:09:07.640 --> 0:09:09.600 and I'll get in on the sugar beat thing. But 0:09:10.200 --> 0:09:12.120 just a few weeks after they got to Cincinnati, in 0:09:12.120 --> 0:09:14.840 August of eighteen thirty eight, he died of a fever. 0:09:15.400 --> 0:09:18.040 And because he had lost that sugar refinery and didn't 0:09:18.080 --> 0:09:21.480 have the next sugar beat operation up and going, they 0:09:21.480 --> 0:09:24.400 didn't have a lot of dough. His family was left 0:09:24.400 --> 0:09:25.280 without a lot of money. 0:09:25.920 --> 0:09:28.679 Yeah, which I mean, that's kind of be really tough 0:09:28.720 --> 0:09:32.440 to go from wealthy to not, you know, in just 0:09:32.520 --> 0:09:35.000 one fell swoop. But that's kind of what happened with 0:09:35.240 --> 0:09:40.400 Elizabeth's family. And a few years later she resolved, and 0:09:40.480 --> 0:09:43.679 she was twenty one that she would not be dependent 0:09:43.800 --> 0:09:46.360 on any man, that she was going to be self sufficient, 0:09:46.400 --> 0:09:49.000 and she was never going to marry, and she wanted 0:09:49.040 --> 0:09:51.600 to make her own way. And I mean, it's pretty 0:09:51.640 --> 0:09:54.400 tough not to trace that line directly back to you 0:09:54.880 --> 0:09:58.720 to state that her father left his family and not 0:09:58.840 --> 0:10:01.960 in any way that you know, that was his own 0:10:02.040 --> 0:10:03.720 doing or his own fault, but that was just the 0:10:03.760 --> 0:10:06.000 conventions of the time. And so for a woman to 0:10:06.360 --> 0:10:08.480 resolve that she would make her own way in life 0:10:08.640 --> 0:10:12.920 was very unconventional. But if Elizabeth Blackwell was anything, she 0:10:13.120 --> 0:10:15.280 was very unconventional. 0:10:15.040 --> 0:10:15.480 That's right. 0:10:15.679 --> 0:10:18.720 So she and her mom and a couple of her sisters, 0:10:18.800 --> 0:10:23.000 they were teachers for a little while, and she eventually 0:10:23.040 --> 0:10:24.840 and this is kind of jumping ahead a bit, but 0:10:24.960 --> 0:10:27.880 she did adopt a girl, a seven year old Irish 0:10:27.880 --> 0:10:31.240 immigrant orphan that she named Kitty. Her name was Catherine 0:10:31.280 --> 0:10:33.640 Barry and went by Kitty, and she was with her 0:10:33.679 --> 0:10:35.840 for the duration of her life. But she never got married, 0:10:36.679 --> 0:10:40.400 and she decided to become a doctor when she had 0:10:40.400 --> 0:10:44.480 a really close friend who was dying, said you know what, 0:10:45.000 --> 0:10:49.000 I think that I might have lived if I might 0:10:49.040 --> 0:10:51.880 have had a woman as a doctor, because they're more 0:10:51.880 --> 0:10:55.920 compassionate and I might have gotten better treatment. And Elizabeth 0:10:55.920 --> 0:10:59.199 Blackwell was like, WHOA, that really speaks to me. 0:10:59.760 --> 0:11:03.280 Yeah, they think that the woman was probably dying of 0:11:03.360 --> 0:11:07.400 uterine cancer, and she thinks that she would have she 0:11:07.440 --> 0:11:10.920 would have disclosed more of her condition possible sooner and 0:11:10.960 --> 0:11:13.199 at the very least she would have been more comfortable 0:11:13.240 --> 0:11:15.480 in her dying days being treated by a woman rather 0:11:15.520 --> 0:11:19.440 than poked and prodded by some man who seemed to 0:11:19.440 --> 0:11:21.680 be less compassionate than she believed a woman would be. 0:11:22.200 --> 0:11:26.680 The thing about Elizabeth Blackwell is she, first of all, 0:11:26.720 --> 0:11:29.600 she was struck by this, and she was so struck 0:11:29.640 --> 0:11:32.680 struck by it that she it moved her to want 0:11:32.760 --> 0:11:36.880 to become a doctor. But not only that, she had 0:11:36.920 --> 0:11:42.440 to overcome a natural, deep seated aversion to the idea 0:11:42.559 --> 0:11:45.720 of the body or anatomy or medicine. Like she was 0:11:45.760 --> 0:11:48.199 not at all interested in this to begin with, and 0:11:48.240 --> 0:11:50.320 in fact, she had an aversion to it, but she 0:11:50.400 --> 0:11:54.240 was so moved by that woman and her experience that 0:11:54.280 --> 0:11:58.880 she resolved to overcome her disgust in her aversion at 0:11:58.960 --> 0:12:03.040 bodily functions an anatomy and become a doctor herself. 0:12:03.080 --> 0:12:04.959 It's pretty I mean, that's a really key detail. 0:12:05.600 --> 0:12:07.920 It is a huge league. I mean that's enormous. Like 0:12:07.960 --> 0:12:10.840 not only she like she just wasn't a kid who 0:12:10.840 --> 0:12:12.240 wanted to be a doctor. 0:12:12.080 --> 0:12:14.600 Right, Like, I love the side of blood and internal organs, 0:12:14.679 --> 0:12:16.040 so this kind of fits anyway. 0:12:16.200 --> 0:12:18.440 Yeah, she had to overcome an aversion to it on 0:12:18.559 --> 0:12:23.040 top of overcoming the aversion that society had against a 0:12:23.080 --> 0:12:26.040 woman becoming a doctor, because at the time it was 0:12:26.120 --> 0:12:30.280 it was considered that a woman couldn't know enough about 0:12:30.280 --> 0:12:34.160 the human body to be a physician and still be 0:12:34.280 --> 0:12:37.280 considered a morally upright woman, that her morals were at 0:12:37.400 --> 0:12:41.160 risk of being corrupted just by knowing everything there is 0:12:41.200 --> 0:12:42.640 to know about the human body. 0:12:43.000 --> 0:12:46.079 Yeah, I mean, let's be honest. They would have to 0:12:46.120 --> 0:12:49.600 see a male penis as part of their training. 0:12:49.840 --> 0:12:50.720 Sure, a pp. 0:12:52.880 --> 0:12:54.520 So, man, we're. 0:12:54.320 --> 0:12:58.040 Such children, we are. So she said, all right, I'm 0:12:58.040 --> 0:12:59.640 gonna do this. I'm gonna get over this. I'm going 0:12:59.720 --> 0:13:01.960 to be a doctor. How do I do this? I'll 0:13:01.960 --> 0:13:05.280 just go to medical school. Medical school said no, no, no, no, no. 0:13:05.480 --> 0:13:08.559 Women can't go to medical school. There are a few 0:13:08.640 --> 0:13:12.160 ladies around the country that are unlicensed physicians that worked 0:13:12.160 --> 0:13:14.559 as apprentices and learn their trade, but. 0:13:15.240 --> 0:13:17.320 You're not going to go this traditional route. 0:13:17.480 --> 0:13:19.720 And medical school at the time was just weird anyway, 0:13:20.520 --> 0:13:22.200 which we'll get into a little bit later. 0:13:22.320 --> 0:13:24.200 But we I mean, we also got into it in 0:13:24.200 --> 0:13:27.080 our grave robbing episode. Yees was similar to that time. 0:13:27.520 --> 0:13:31.400 Around that time, it was crazy. It wasn't like it 0:13:31.440 --> 0:13:35.559 wasn't the I don't think doctors were as respected back then. 0:13:35.600 --> 0:13:39.200 Even No, they I know, because they were the ones 0:13:39.440 --> 0:13:42.680 we who were cutting open bodies and just kind of 0:13:42.720 --> 0:13:44.760 figuring stuff out as they went along. And if you 0:13:44.800 --> 0:13:46.600 went to a doctor, there was like an eighty percent 0:13:46.679 --> 0:13:49.920 chance you were walking out one limb short. 0:13:50.720 --> 0:13:51.080 Yeah. 0:13:51.120 --> 0:13:55.959 So she while she was a teacher, she boarded with families, 0:13:56.000 --> 0:13:57.439 and that she did a lot of this stuff in 0:13:57.480 --> 0:14:00.720 the South, which we'll get to as well. But two 0:14:00.760 --> 0:14:05.240 Southern physicians mentored her. She still could not get into 0:14:05.240 --> 0:14:08.920 medical school. Of course, she had some physician friends who 0:14:08.920 --> 0:14:11.400 were Quakers. She asked them about it. They said, that's 0:14:11.440 --> 0:14:14.680 a great idea, but no, it costs too much. You're 0:14:14.679 --> 0:14:17.280 never going to be able to get in. What you 0:14:17.320 --> 0:14:19.360 should do is disguise yourself as a man and go 0:14:19.440 --> 0:14:22.240 to France. And she was like, not a bad idea. 0:14:22.640 --> 0:14:25.560 If that's the best advice somebody's giving you, you need 0:14:25.600 --> 0:14:27.680 to rethink the people who you take advice from. 0:14:27.840 --> 0:14:31.120 It sounds like she was game, though, but she decided 0:14:31.160 --> 0:14:35.400 to save money instead and apply to medical school in 0:14:35.760 --> 0:14:36.880 the United States. 0:14:37.520 --> 0:14:40.080 So in today dollars that did the. 0:14:41.800 --> 0:14:45.080 Old inflation calculator three grand back then, it would be 0:14:45.080 --> 0:14:48.600 about eighty five thousand dollars today, So that's a. 0:14:48.520 --> 0:14:49.160 Lot of money. 0:14:49.240 --> 0:14:52.000 And she between I think, for a period of two 0:14:52.080 --> 0:14:55.920 or three years, went south and taught school and slave states, 0:14:56.760 --> 0:14:58.760 which was very hard for her to do in order 0:14:58.800 --> 0:15:00.960 to save money for medical school. Yeah, she didn't know 0:15:01.000 --> 0:15:02.560 what she could get into anyway. 0:15:02.360 --> 0:15:05.360 Right exactly. In the first place she taught in Kentucky, 0:15:05.440 --> 0:15:08.160 she only lasted a year. She's just found the social 0:15:08.200 --> 0:15:13.240 climate so intolerable. Yeah, she was really you know, she 0:15:13.240 --> 0:15:15.160 couldn't put up with it. And I don't know how 0:15:15.200 --> 0:15:18.360 she was able to better in North and South Carolina, 0:15:18.920 --> 0:15:22.240 but yeah, I mean she managed in two years to 0:15:22.360 --> 0:15:25.680 raise eighty three grand from teaching I guess rich kids 0:15:25.680 --> 0:15:30.320 in North and South Carolina. But she also while she 0:15:30.360 --> 0:15:32.040 was there, she's like, well, I want to teach the 0:15:32.080 --> 0:15:35.240 slave kids too. I'll do it pro bono. And they said, well, 0:15:35.320 --> 0:15:37.760 it's against the law for you to teach slave kids. 0:15:38.520 --> 0:15:41.160 And they said, but you can teach them Sunday school. 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:43.200 And she said, fine, I'll do that. And there was 0:15:43.240 --> 0:15:47.840 a great quote that came from her in a letter 0:15:47.840 --> 0:15:50.640 to her family in eighteen forty five, and I'm not 0:15:50.680 --> 0:15:54.320 sure what state she was in, maybe even Kentucky, but 0:15:54.440 --> 0:15:57.200 she said, I assure you I felt a little odd 0:15:57.360 --> 0:16:00.600 sitting down before those degraded little beings, saying they were 0:16:00.680 --> 0:16:03.600 naturally degraded, that they had been degraded by other people. 0:16:03.680 --> 0:16:07.440 I believe to teach them a religion which the owners 0:16:07.520 --> 0:16:11.360 profess to follow whilst violating its very first principles. It 0:16:12.720 --> 0:16:15.000 really does. She was like, you know, these people are 0:16:16.280 --> 0:16:19.480 profess to be Christians, but do not treat other people 0:16:19.640 --> 0:16:22.080 like Christians. And that's just such a Quaker thing to do. 0:16:22.160 --> 0:16:24.520 Huh, that is a very Quaker thing to do. 0:16:24.560 --> 0:16:27.440 You want to take a little break, Yeah, let's do it. Okay, 0:16:27.440 --> 0:16:29.120 We're going to take a break, everybody, and we'll be 0:16:29.200 --> 0:16:32.640 back to tell you more about Elizabeth Blackwell's progress towards 0:16:32.680 --> 0:16:54.040 med school. So, Chuck, like you said, she was mentored 0:16:54.040 --> 0:16:57.920 by a couple of doctors who she stayed with while 0:16:57.960 --> 0:17:00.400 she was teaching in North and South Carolina, one of 0:17:00.400 --> 0:17:03.680 whom was actually a professor of medicine, so he had 0:17:03.720 --> 0:17:07.199 all the books. He was very encouraging to her. He 0:17:07.320 --> 0:17:10.160 taught her everything he could. And that was, like you said, 0:17:10.240 --> 0:17:12.800 a way that a woman could become a physician, but 0:17:13.160 --> 0:17:18.440 an unlicensed physician certainly not one that was in any 0:17:18.480 --> 0:17:22.399 way established as an actual legitimate physician. And that was 0:17:22.560 --> 0:17:23.600 ultimately her goal. 0:17:24.240 --> 0:17:27.920 Yeah, Like she continued to get sort of tutored by 0:17:27.960 --> 0:17:30.640 different people in the South that she knew who were physicians, 0:17:31.320 --> 0:17:34.240 and it was great that these. 0:17:33.320 --> 0:17:36.480 Men encouraged her and tutored her. Said, here, used my books. 0:17:37.400 --> 0:17:39.560 But again, like you said, she wanted to do the 0:17:39.600 --> 0:17:43.160 real deal and forge a path and not just kind 0:17:43.160 --> 0:17:47.080 of go the back door route. So she applied to 0:17:47.600 --> 0:17:50.520 all the medical schools in New York and Philly. She 0:17:50.760 --> 0:17:54.360 applied to twelve more in the Northeast. She was rejected 0:17:54.359 --> 0:17:58.720 by all of them, and on the thirtieth application to 0:17:58.920 --> 0:18:02.399 Geneva Medical College in Western New York in eighteen forty seven, 0:18:03.040 --> 0:18:07.919 she was accepted. And I raised my voice because she 0:18:08.000 --> 0:18:14.679 got accepted. Because it was a joke that well everyone 0:18:14.720 --> 0:18:16.760 thought it was a practical joke. The professor there, the 0:18:16.760 --> 0:18:19.480 dean of the medical med school, basically said. 0:18:19.560 --> 0:18:21.040 Hey, let's take a vote here. 0:18:21.480 --> 0:18:24.919 We'll have all the men here that go here vote 0:18:24.920 --> 0:18:27.800 on whether or not a woman can come to school here. 0:18:28.160 --> 0:18:31.800 And if every single person says yes, she can come here, 0:18:31.800 --> 0:18:33.120 and if one person says no. 0:18:33.160 --> 0:18:33.600 She won't. 0:18:33.960 --> 0:18:36.760 They all thought it was a prank from I guess 0:18:36.880 --> 0:18:41.760 the neighboring rival medical school, say West Geneva. Yeah, they said, sure, 0:18:42.200 --> 0:18:44.479 let her in and it wasn't a joke. And they 0:18:44.520 --> 0:18:45.159 did let her in. 0:18:45.920 --> 0:18:50.080 They did, and apparently they were all very surprised. Like 0:18:50.119 --> 0:18:52.240 this almost sounds like an urban legend, but from what 0:18:52.359 --> 0:18:55.400 I saw, like this is across the board. What happened 0:18:55.720 --> 0:18:58.000 that they thought it was a practical joke and it 0:18:58.040 --> 0:18:59.800 turned out to be real. And that is how she 0:19:00.280 --> 0:19:01.560 up going to medical school. 0:19:01.680 --> 0:19:02.320 Unbelievable. 0:19:02.800 --> 0:19:06.080 So when she showed up, she was taking this quite seriously. 0:19:06.119 --> 0:19:08.560 She was twenty six already, she'd spent some time like 0:19:08.920 --> 0:19:13.080 living around, seeing the country. Just she was twenty six, 0:19:13.160 --> 0:19:15.360 Like that says a lot about a person over say 0:19:15.480 --> 0:19:18.960 like twenty or nineteen or something like that. And so 0:19:19.000 --> 0:19:21.320 she when she showed up, not only was she a 0:19:21.320 --> 0:19:24.040 little more mature, probably than some of her contemporaries, she 0:19:24.200 --> 0:19:30.040 also was she was well aware of the convention she 0:19:30.119 --> 0:19:33.200 was breaking, of the challenges and the obstacles that laid 0:19:33.320 --> 0:19:37.720 ahead of her. And there's a pretty good report like 0:19:37.760 --> 0:19:40.200 the fact that she showed up at medical school made 0:19:40.240 --> 0:19:43.320 the papers, and in fact, the Boston Medical Journal even 0:19:43.359 --> 0:19:46.280 wrote up something about the fact that she was Yeah, 0:19:46.320 --> 0:19:49.800 that she was there taking medical classes. The Boston Medical 0:19:49.880 --> 0:19:53.439 Journal said that she comes into the class with great composure, 0:19:53.880 --> 0:19:56.520 takes off her bonnet and puts it under the seat, 0:19:56.760 --> 0:19:58.480 exposing a fine phrenology. 0:19:58.560 --> 0:20:01.320 Are you kidding me? You're talking about the shape of 0:20:01.359 --> 0:20:01.720 her head. 0:20:02.000 --> 0:20:05.119 Yeah, yeah, but this is the Boston Medical Journal at 0:20:05.119 --> 0:20:12.920 the time. Hopefully the BMJ has officially stopped using phrenology, yeah, 0:20:12.960 --> 0:20:14.879 in any way, shape or form. But we'll have to 0:20:14.960 --> 0:20:16.600 We'll have to get a subscription and find out. 0:20:17.160 --> 0:20:20.040 So we talked earlier about the fact that medical school 0:20:20.080 --> 0:20:23.040 at the time was really different. It sounds like animal 0:20:23.040 --> 0:20:28.040 house or something. It was very raucous. Apparently when there 0:20:28.040 --> 0:20:32.359 were lecturers, you would make crude jokes out loud, and 0:20:32.680 --> 0:20:34.159 no matter what you're talking about. It sounds like a 0:20:34.200 --> 0:20:37.240 bunch of children taking sex at or something. Yeah, in 0:20:37.320 --> 0:20:41.680 like the sixth grade. But apparently Blackwell's effect on the whole, 0:20:42.200 --> 0:20:45.119 like every class she went into was everyone took it 0:20:45.119 --> 0:20:47.160 a lot more seriously because she was there. 0:20:48.080 --> 0:20:51.439 Yeah. Because again, like if you were a man, you 0:20:51.480 --> 0:20:55.440 acted far, far, far differently around a woman at the time, 0:20:55.480 --> 0:20:57.520 where you were just much more genteel. It was just 0:20:57.560 --> 0:21:01.520 the social convention, and so you had to bite your tongue. 0:21:01.600 --> 0:21:06.080 In medical school if Elizabeth Blackwell is in your class, 0:21:06.080 --> 0:21:07.800 so you just did. That was just kind of the 0:21:07.840 --> 0:21:09.879 effect that she had on class just by being a woman. 0:21:10.160 --> 0:21:15.320 But even beyond that, there was this whole view that 0:21:15.960 --> 0:21:21.160 these guys were somehow contributing to this woman's moral corruption 0:21:21.760 --> 0:21:24.000 by even being in the same class with her, let 0:21:24.040 --> 0:21:26.920 alone being the instructor teaching her. And so one of 0:21:27.000 --> 0:21:29.760 the things she ran into in med school was she 0:21:29.840 --> 0:21:33.639 would sometimes be asked to go step outside because this 0:21:33.680 --> 0:21:37.439 particular lecture is a little rough, and Elizabeth Blackwell did 0:21:37.520 --> 0:21:40.960 not truck to that at all. She was very adamant that. Remember, 0:21:41.000 --> 0:21:43.239 she was educated like a boy by the tutors her 0:21:43.280 --> 0:21:47.320 father hired. She had a full expectation to be left 0:21:47.320 --> 0:21:50.320 out of absolutely nothing. At med school. She was to 0:21:50.359 --> 0:21:52.920 be a full physician, and so she was to learn 0:21:52.960 --> 0:21:56.720 everything that any physician would learn. And eventually, over time 0:21:56.840 --> 0:22:01.120 she kind of overcame this genteel opposition to her presence 0:22:01.160 --> 0:22:03.840 by her professors, in male classmates. 0:22:04.320 --> 0:22:06.320 Yeah, and I think in no small part due to 0:22:06.400 --> 0:22:12.360 her serious take in her fastidiousness, in her the fact 0:22:12.400 --> 0:22:15.040 that in the end she graduated first in her class. 0:22:15.160 --> 0:22:16.000 Yeah, this says a lot. 0:22:16.119 --> 0:22:18.040 She was the best student in eighteen forty nine. She 0:22:18.080 --> 0:22:25.040