Elizabeth Blackwell (Great Britain): 

Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman to be admitted to the British Medical Register, enabling her to practice medicine in the UK as well as in the USA
Born near Bristol, England on February 3, 1821, Blackwell was the third of nine children of Hannah Lane and Samuel Blackwell, a sugar refiner, Quaker, and anti-slavery activist. Blackwell’s famous relatives included brother Henry, a well-known abolitionist and women’s suffrage supporter who married women’s rights activist Lucy Stone; Emily Blackwell, who followed her sister into medicine; and sister-in-law Antoinette Brown Blackwell, the first ordained female minister in a mainstream Protestant denomination. In 1832, the Blackwell family moved to America, settling in Cincinnati, Ohio. Elizabeth, her mother, and two older sisters worked as teachers after the passing of their father in 1831. Blackwell was inspired to pursue medicine by a dying friend who said her ordeal would have been better had she had a female physician. There were few medical colleges and none that accepted women, though a few women also apprenticed and became unlicensed physicians. In 1847, she returned to Philadelphia, hoping that Quaker friends could assist her entrance into medical school. Rejected everywhere she applied, she was ultimately admitted to Geneva College in rural New York, however, her acceptance letter comical. Blackwell faced discrimination and obstacles in college: professors forced her to sit separately at lectures and often excluded her from labs; local townspeople shunned her as a “bad” woman for defying her gender role.

Blackwell eventually earned the respect of professors and classmates, graduating first in her class in 1849. She continued her training at London and Paris hospitals, though doctors there relegated her to midwifery or nursing. In 1851, Dr. Blackwell returned to New York City, where discrimination against female physicians meant few patients and difficulty practicing in hospitals and clinics. With help from Quaker friends, Blackwell opened a small clinic to treat poor women; in 1857, she opened the New York Infirmary for Women and Children with her sister Dr. Emily Blackwell and colleague Dr. Marie Zakrzewska. Its mission included providing positions for women physicians. During the Civil War, the Blackwell sisters trained nurses for Union hospitals. In 1868, Blackwell opened a medical college in New York City. A year later, she placed her sister in charge and returned permanently to London, wherein 1875, she became a professor of gynecology at the new London School of Medicine for Women. She also helped found the National Health Society and published several books, including an autobiography, Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women 1895. Dr. Blackwell in 1910, after suffering a paralytic stroke at her home in Hastings, East Sussex, England. Dr. Blackwell will always be remembered as the woman who went against the gender roles and became the first female American doctor.
 
Cite: 
Michals, E. (n.d.). Elizabeth Blackwell. Retrieved March 05, 2021, from https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/elizabeth-blackwell
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