BOOK REVIEW GOOD READS ELIZABETH AND EMILY BLACKWELL How two 19th century sisters made their own way in an all-male medical profession BY CHARLES R. MEYER, MD y first lecture in medical school of New York, which Emily ran until it was quite a shock—not because of closed in 1899. It was taken over by Cor- Mthe intricacies of the human body nell Medical College, which reluctantly discussed or the frightful prospect of the agreed to admit women. four years to follow, but because I was sit- Lifelong single women from pious Dis- ting next to a woman. Having survived senter roots who each adopted and raised four years at an all-male college that finally a child and chose the same profession, achieved co-ed enlightenment in my se- the Blackwell sisters eventually diverged nior year, females at school seemed a jolt- in their professional interests. After shep- ing but pleasant oddity. Little did I realize herding the formation of the Women’s how historically relevant my reaction was. College, Elizabeth decided to return to her Women’s entry into the medical profession English roots where she devoted her time was a slow, sometimes tortured slog featur- to prevention. She founded the National ing male and societal resistance, rude and Health Society that promoted “sanitary recalcitrant, that yielded only to the insis- practice,” which included the elimination tent persistence of champions like Elizabeth of venereal disease through children learn- Blackwell, the first woman to graduate from ing “chastity at their mother’s knee.” Emily an American medical school. Her remark- soldiered on in the practice of women’s able saga, along with that of her physician medicine in New York. sister Emily, is told in Janice P. Nimura’s The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Surprisingly, neither of these champi- Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine recent book, The Doctors Blackwell: How By Janice P. Nimura ons of women’s advancement embraced Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Published 2020 by W.W.Norton the suffrage movement. Indeed, Elizabeth Women and Women to Medicine. her entry into the medical profession a condescendingly viewed women not as Arriving in America with her Bristol- “perversion of the laws of her Maker,” peers or equals but as objects toward born family in 1832, Elizabeth met a soci- Blackwell headed for Paris following her which she could exert her “divine gifts” ety and medical community with a narrow graduation in 1849 to learn obstetrics at La and guide them to a better version of vision of what women could and should Maternité, a hospital for indigent mothers. themselves. do, causing her to complain shortly after Meanwhile, her younger sister Emily en- Peppered with extensive quotations experiencing Cincinnati: “I wish I could dured a similar application gauntlet, first from both sisters that highlight their dis- devise some good way of maintaining my- accepting a position at Bellevue Hospital tinctive personalities, Nimura’s account is self but the restrictions which confine my then at Rush Medical College and even- a captivating look at two lives intersecting dear sex render all my aspirations useless.” tually transferring to Cleveland Medical with and challenging late 19th century Yet she doggedly followed her aspirations, College when the Rush board decided she medical practice. unsuccessfully applying to multiple medi- couldn’t finish her degree there. Seven years after my medical school in- cal schools and receiving rejections that Emily and Elizabeth then crossed paths doctrination, I started practice. With medi- expressed “outrage” at the idea of a female over the Atlantic, Emily to study in Edin- cal school classes approaching gender parity, physician. She finally was admitted to Ge- burgh, Elizabeth to open a “dispensary” for more women graced the medical profession neva Medical College after its dean asked poor women in Manhattan. After Emily in 1977, but the doctors’ lounges still felt like the all-male class to vote on her applica- returned to the United States, she joined a men’s club. The glass ceiling of medicine tion. The dean soon found that a “class- Elizabeth and became the chief clinician was still slowly cracking 128 years after room full of lawless desperados had been and surgeon at the dispensary while Eliza- Elizabeth Blackwell’s graduation. MM transformed into models of deportment” beth administered and taught. The dispen- Charles R. Meyer, MD, is former executive editor of by the mere presence of a bright female. sary expanded its mission with the 1869 Minnesota Medicine. Undiscouraged by one writer who labeled founding of the Woman’s Medical College 36 | MINNESOTA MEDICINE | JULY/AUGUST 2021.