Elizabeth Blackwell

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2004-10-9

(THEME)

ANNCR:

Every week we tell about someone important in the history of the
United States. Today, Shirley Griffith and Ray Freeman tell about
the first western woman in modern times to become a doctor. Now, the
story of Elizabeth Blackwell on the VOA Special English program
People in America.

(THEME)

VOICE ONE:

Elizabeth Blackwell was born in Bristol, England in eighteen
twenty-one. Her parents, Hannah and Samuel Blackwell, believed
strongly that all human beings are equal. Elizabeth's father owned a
successful sugar company. He worked hard at his job. He also worked
to support reforms in England. He opposed the slave trade. He tried
to help improve low pay and poor living conditions of workers. And
he wanted women to have the same chance for education as men.

He carried this out in his own home. Elizabeth had three brothers
and four sisters. All followed the same plan of education. They all
studied history, mathematics, Latin and Greek. These subjects were
normally taught only to boys. Friends asked Samuel Blackwell what he
expected the girls to do with all that education. He answered, "They
shall do what they please".

VOICE TWO:

In eighteen thirty-two, Samuel Blackwell's sugar factory was
destroyed by fire. He and his wife decided to move the family to the
United States. Elizabeth was eleven years old.

The Blackwells settled in New York City. But Mister Blackwell's
business there failed. The family moved west, to the city of
Cincinnati, on the Ohio river.

Samuel Blackwell was sick for much of the trip. He died soon
after arriving in Ohio. To help support the family, Elizabeth and
her two older sisters started a school for girls in their home. Two
younger brothers found jobs.

In the next few years, Elizabeth's brothers became successful in
business. The girls continued operating their school. But Elizabeth
was not happy. She did not like teaching.

Elizabeth began to visit a family
friend who was suffering from cancer. The woman knew she was dying.
She said women should be permitted to become doctors because they
are good at helping sick people. The dying friend said that perhaps
her sickness would have been better understood if she had been
treated by a woman. And she suggested that Elizabeth study medicine.

VOICE ONE:

Elizabeth knew that no woman had ever been permitted to study in
a medical school. But she began to think about the idea seriously
after the woman who had suggested it died.

Elizabeth discussed it with the family doctor. He was opposed.
But her family supported the idea. So Elizabeth took a teaching job
in the southern state of North Carolina to earn money for medical
school.

Another teacher there agreed to help her study the sciences she
would need. The next year, she studied medicine privately with a
doctor. He was also a medical school professor. He told Elizabeth
that the best medical schools were in Philadelphia.

VOICE TWO:

No medical school in Philadelphia would accept her. College
officials told her she must go to Paris and pretend to be a man if
she wanted to become a doctor. Elizabeth refused. She wrote to other
medical colleges -- Harvard, Yale, and other, less well-known ones.
All rejected her, except Geneva Medical College in the state of New
York.

She went there immediately, but did not feel welcome. It was not
until much later that she learned the reason: her acceptance was a
joke. The teachers at the college decided not to admit a woman. But
they did not want to insult the doctor who had written to support
Elizabeth's desire to study medicine. So they let the medical
students decide.

The male students thought it funny that a woman wanted to attend
medical school. So, as a joke, they voted to accept her. They
regretted their decision by the time Elizabeth arrived, but there
was nothing they could do. She was there. She paid her money. She
wanted to study.

VOICE ONE:

Elizabeth Blackwell faced many problems in medical school. Some
professors refused to teach her. Some students threatened her. But
finally they accepted her. Elizabeth graduated with high honors from
Geneva Medical School in eighteen forty-nine. She was the only woman
in the western world to have completed medical school training.

Three months later, Doctor Elizabeth Blackwell went to Paris to
learn to be a surgeon. She wanted to work in a hospital there to
learn how to operate on patients. But no hospital wanted her. No one
would recognize that she was a doctor.

A hospital for women and babies agreed to let her study there.
But she had to do the tasks of a nursing student. At the hospital,
Doctor Blackwell accidentally got a chemical liquid in her eye. It
became infected. She became blind in that eye. So she was forced to
give up her dreams of becoming a surgeon.

Instead, she went to London to study at Saint Bartholomew's
Hospital. There, she met the famous nurse Florence Nightingale.

Elizabeth returned to the United States in eighteen fifty-one.
She opened a medical office in New York City. But no patients came.
So doctor Blackwell opened an office in a poor part of the city to
help people who lived under difficult conditions. And she decided to
raise a young girl who had lost her parents.

VOICE TWO:

Elizabeth Blackwell had many dreams. One was to start a hospital
for women and children. Another was to build a medical school to
train women doctors. She was helped in these efforts by her younger
sister Emily. Emily also had become a doctor, after a long struggle
to be accepted in a medical school.

With the help of many people, the
Blackwell sisters raised the money to open a hospital in a re-built
house. The work of the two women doctors was accepted slowly in New
York. They treated only three hundred people in their hospital in
its first year. Ten times as many people were treated the second
year.

VOICE ONE:

Elizabeth Blackwell's work with the poor led her to believe that
doctors could help people more effectively by preventing sickness.
She started a program in which doctors visited patients in their
homes. The doctors taught patients how to clean the houses and how
to prepare food so sickness could be prevented.

News of Elizabeth's theories spread. Soon, she was asked to start
a hospital in London. She spoke to groups in London about disease
prevention. And she worked with her friend Florence Nightingale.

Elizabeth returned to the United States to start America's first
training school for nurses. And in eighteen sixty-eight, she opened
her medical college for women. She taught the women students about
disease prevention. It was the first time the idea of preventing
disease was taught in a medical school. Soon other medical schools
for women opened in Boston and Philadelphia.

VOICE TWO:

Elizabeth Blackwell felt her work in America was done. She
returned to England. She started a medical school for women in
London. She wrote books, and made speeches about preventing disease.

Doctor Blackwell talked of deaths that should never have
happened, of sickness that should never have been suffered. She
spoke about the dangers of working too hard, of eating poor food, of
houses without light, of dirt and other causes of disease. And she
told doctors that their true responsibility was to prevent pain and
suffering from ever happening.

In eighteen seventy-one, she started the British National Health
Society. It helped people learn how to stay healthy.

VOICE ONE:

Elizabeth Blackwell never married. Neither did her sisters. They
believed in treating men like equals. And they expected to be
treated like equals themselves. Most men of that time did not accept
such treatment. This belief caused problems for their brothers too.
They had trouble finding wives who wanted to be considered as
equals.

Two of Elizabeth's brothers did marry, however. Both their wives
were famous workers for the cause of women's rights.

VOICE TWO:

Elizabeth Blackwell died in England in nineteen ten. She was
eighty-nine years old.

She was a very strong woman. She once wrote that she understood
why no woman before her had done what she did. She said it was hard
to continue against every kind of opposition. Yet she kept on
because she felt the goal was very important. Toward the end of her
life, she received many letters of thanks from young women. One
wrote that doctor Blackwell had shown the way for women to move on.

(Theme)

VOICE ONE:

This Special English program was written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm
Shirley Griffith.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Ray Freeman. Join us again next week for another People
in America program on the Voice of America.