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Speaker 1: Hi, um Eves, Welcome to This Day in History Class,

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Speaker 1: a show that reveals a little bit more about history

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Speaker 1: day by day. Today is January. The day was January

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Speaker 1: eighteen forty nine. Elizabeth Blackwell, an English immigrant and former

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Speaker 1: school teacher, became the first woman to get a medical

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Speaker 1: degree from an American medical school. As a person who

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Speaker 1: wants it. She hated quote bodies and everything about them.

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Speaker 1: This was quite a reversal. But okay, the transformation wasn't

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Speaker 1: as black and white as I'm making it seen. She

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Speaker 1: had her reasons for becoming a doctor. Let's start from

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Speaker 1: the beginning in eight one. Elizabeth was born in Bristol, England,

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Speaker 1: to Hannah Lane and Samuel black Oil. And as it

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Speaker 1: turns out, Elizabeth wasn't the only one in her family

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Speaker 1: who was full of contradictions. Her family was Congregationalist, which

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Speaker 1: is a Protestant faith. They were also super liberal. No,

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Speaker 1: that's not the contradiction. Many Congregationalists held socially liberal views.

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Speaker 1: The thing was Elizabeth's family were abolitionists and slave owners. Yep,

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Speaker 1: her father was a sugar refiner who used slaves for labor.

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Speaker 1: But clearly the irony caught up with them In eight

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Speaker 1: thirty two, after the sugar refinery burnt down and Papa

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Speaker 1: Black Will felt the urge to really pursue anti slavery efforts, Elizabeth,

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Speaker 1: her parents, and her four sisters and four brothers packed

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Speaker 1: up and left for the Land of Opportunity, and they

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Speaker 1: really hit the ground running. They moved from New York

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Speaker 1: to Jersey City to Cincinnati, all the while ramping up

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Speaker 1: their abolitionist activities and getting buddy buddy with big names

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Speaker 1: in the movement like William Lloyd Garrison. But their father

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Speaker 1: died not long after they got to Ohio, leaving the

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Speaker 1: family poor. Elizabeth and two of her sisters started a

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Speaker 1: girls school and expanded their activism to education access, while

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Speaker 1: the oldest brothers started working in the mayor's office. Just

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Speaker 1: think about it. In early nineteenth century America, the literacy

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Speaker 1: rate for women was way lower than men. Girls and

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Speaker 1: women had just started being accepted to public high schools

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Speaker 1: and higher education institutions, and non white girls and women

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Speaker 1: were facing all sorts of discrimination and oppression when it

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Speaker 1: came to education. So it makes sense that Elizabeth began

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Speaker 1: advocating for women and girls education too. But years later,

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Speaker 1: after a stint teaching in Kentucky, Elizabeth returned to Cincinnati

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Speaker 1: with an urge to do something different. At first, she

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Speaker 1: was pretty averse to studying medicine. A dying friend of

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Speaker 1: hers was sure she would have suffered a lot less

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Speaker 1: had her doctor been a woman. But even at the

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Speaker 1: request of a dying friend, our girl, Elizabeth said later

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Speaker 1: in her autobiography that quote, the very thought of dwelling

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Speaker 1: on the physical structure of the body and its various

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Speaker 1: ailments filled me with disgust. Fortunately, Elizabeth switched up her

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Speaker 1: tune and decided the doctor life was for her. That's

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Speaker 1: because one, she wouldn't have to get married, because being

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Speaker 1: a doctor and being a wife were just two things

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Speaker 1: that didn't work well together. Two, she believed that if

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Speaker 1: more women were doctors, the world would be a better place.

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Speaker 1: And three she could help defy the stigma that female

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Speaker 1: doctors were abortionists. There were just a few, tiny, okay

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Speaker 1: big problems. Med school was for dudes, and they cost

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Speaker 1: a ton of money. So while saving money through teaching

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Speaker 1: jobs in North and South Carolina, she studied under a

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Speaker 1: couple of doctors. After she moved to Philadelphia in eighteen

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Speaker 1: forty seven and started applying to medical colleges. People reacted

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Speaker 1: pretty much how you'd expect them to at a time

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Speaker 1: when women weren't accepted in med school. They taunted her,

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Speaker 1: rejected her, and told her she needs to go to Paris,

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Speaker 1: or at least Pertis she was a man. Well, the

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Speaker 1: joke was on them. Elizabeth finally received a pretty warm

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Speaker 1: and welcoming letter of acceptance from Geneva Medical College in

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Speaker 1: New York, so in November eighteen forty seven, she headed

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Speaker 1: to Geneva to start her studies, and when she got

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Speaker 1: there she found out that they thought her application was

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Speaker 1: the joke. But her classmates and teachers treated her pretty well,

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Speaker 1: even though the town spoke in Geneva metaphorically held their

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Speaker 1: breath when she walked by, but Elizabeth was resilient. After

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Speaker 1: her first year at Geneva, she went back to Philadelphia,

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Speaker 1: where she worked with the poor and Irish immigrants. When

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Speaker 1: she went back to New York for year two of

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Speaker 1: her degree, she did her thesis on typhus, and in

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Speaker 1: eighteen forty nine she became doctor Elizabeth Blackwell. The rest

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Speaker 1: of her years as a doctor were no walk in

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Speaker 1: the park. She studied medicine and midwifery in London and Paris,

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Speaker 1: but worked a lot, and her dreams of becoming a

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Speaker 1: surgeon ended when she lost one of her eyes to

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Speaker 1: an infection caused by gnarrhea. She got that infection while

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Speaker 1: you guessed it working, and the idea of a woman

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Speaker 1: doctor was so new and detested by many that she

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Speaker 1: struggled to get patients. But it would be allied to

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Speaker 1: say her challenges and detractors got the upper hand. In

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Speaker 1: eighteen fifty seven, she her sister, doctor Emily Blackwell, and

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Speaker 1: another doctor opened the New York Infirmary for Women and Children. Later,

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Speaker 1: she founded the Women's Central Association of Relief to train

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Speaker 1: women to be nurses in the Civil War, and eventually

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Speaker 1: the infirmary opened to medical college. By the time she

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Speaker 1: died in nineteen ten, doctor Blackwell's work for women in

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Speaker 1: higher education and medicine far transcendent her title as the

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Speaker 1: first woman to get a medical degree in the United States.

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Speaker 1: Um Eve step Cooke and hopefully you know a little

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Speaker 1: more about history today than you did yesterday. You can

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Speaker 1: subscribe to This Day in History Class on Apple podcast,

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Speaker 1: the I Heart radio app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 1: Thanks to Taylor Mays for all his production help. We'll

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Speaker 1: be back with more history tomorrow. H