Elizabeth Blackwell

“ To this ought also to be added the steadfastness and talent of a young American woman, and the reputation which she obtained abroad. Elizabeth Blackwell, after having for several years, by hard work, helped to educate and maintain several younger sisters, devoted herself to the profession of medicine, firmly resolved to open in this way a career for herself and other women. She was met by a thousand difficulties; prejudice and ill-will threw impediments in every step. But she overcame all; and finally studied and graduated as physician at the city of Geneva, in Western New York. ”

“ There are two points never to be forgotten in speaking of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell: one is that, although much of her life was passed in America, she did not go to that country until she was 11 years old, and always regarded herself as English. ”

“ Elizabeth Blackwell, while not the first woman practitioner of medicine even in America, was yet the pioneer in the movement which insisted that medical women should be educated so as to stand equal with men physicians in medical knowledge and in legalized position. ”

“ HE piety and domestic virtues of Elizabeth Blackwell entitle her to rank among the best women whose names have found their way into public history; a fortune which has happened to her and Lady Rachel Russel, and two or three other virtuous women; but which has, in the instance of most of their sex who have attained to celebrity, been a calamity upon their memory, being a rank at which it is not easy for a woman to arrive by the practice of those private and retiring virtues and graces which are the real solid ornaments of the female character. ”

“ Discouraged, however, by some intrigues which sprang up after the death of her powerful friend, Fräulein Zakzrewska decided to abandon the home where a career seemed ready marked out for her, and to seek a wider horizon and larger fortunes in America. Here she arrived in 1853. Her pluck and courage carried her safely through the first difficult year of an almost penniless exile; then the generous kindness of Elizabeth Blackwell secured her a place among the advance guard of women physicians, taught her English, and procured her admission to the Medical School at Cleveland. ”

“ A chaste woman does not think of her own purity; she thinks of the poor girl drudging in cellars, or hurrying at night, waylaid by tempters, to her poor home, or ‘drilled’ in the rich man’s shop; she thinks of her cherished sons with their noble and innocent young manhood exposed to the influence of the corrupt adult. Women’s responsibility for the purity of society commands her to announce the conditions of purity, and unmask with a relentless justice—which is now the truest mercy—those destroyers of national purity, the upholders of a double standard of sexual morality. ”

“ Meantime, I do not know that self-respecting and benevolent women can have a better example or encouragement than Elizabeth Blackwell, with her silent determination, her indomitable fortitude, and her womanly mind and manners, shown in her quiet dress, her gentle demeanour, her steady industry, her devotedness to the suffering, and her life-long practical testimony to social right and feminine duty. The women of all civilised nations may be thankful for her as the Representative of an ever-enlarging class. ”

“ Elizabeth Blackwell no eccentric person who wanted to bring about the millennium for women, for I soon learned from her of the great obstacles which were to be overcome in the social stratum. Soon, indeed, I learned that social prejudices, habits and customs can be as strong barriers to intellectual development as those placed in the way of reform by a despotic German government. ”

“ Elizabeth Blackwell, who, though well established in her newly acquired house, in East Fifteenth Street, could not speak very encouragingly as to practice. For entirely social reasons, people were afraid to employ a woman physician openly, although desirous [Pg 149] and ready to consult her privately. Yet even this unsatisfactory practice had prevented her from continuing the little dispensary regularly and it was still closed. ”

“ In 1867 the two sisters organized the women's medical college of the New York infirmary, in which Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell held the chair of hygiene and Dr. Emily Blackwell the chair of obstetrics and diseases of women. In 1869, leaving Dr. Emily in charge of their joint work, Dr. Elizabeth returned to London and practised there for several years, taking an active part in organizing the women's medical college, in which she was elected professor of the diseases of women. ”

“ Blackwell; in 1863 the New York Medical College and Hospital for Women. "Females are ambitious to dabble in medicine as in other matters with a view to reorganising society," sarcastically commented the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal. Society as also the medical profession coldly averted its face from these pioneer women doctors.
"Good" women used to draw aside their skirts when they passed Elizabeth Blackwell in church. When she started in practice in New York City she had to buy a house because no respectable residence would rent her office room. ”

“ Elizabeth Blackwell.
Another important and active influence was exerted by the admirers of the socialist Fourier. A movement was initiated similar to the Brook Farm movement, in Boston. Mr. Marcus Spring had erected a phalanstery, in Eagleswood, New Jersey, where ideal housekeeping, education, the cultivation of literature and high-grade amusement were the objects pursued. To this phase of social life, I was introduced through Mrs. Theodore Weld, Miss Sarah Grimké, Miss Elizabeth P. Peabody and Mrs. Horace Mann. Menial labor was abhorred, in contradistinction to Brook Farm ideas ”

“ When Elizabeth Blackwell was finishing her professional education in Europe, she received very characteristic advice at Paris, where the Faculty would not hear of her attending lectures and hospitals under her own name and aspect, but advised her to wear men’s clothes. Her reply was, that as her aim was to open the profession to women, she must appear as a woman. ”

“ Elizabeth Blackwell deserves well of the moral community for having recently said bravely and pointedly some things which most of our moralists, however good their intentions, are not stout-hearted or clever enough to say openly and inoffensively. ”

“ From the window just below on the left can be seen the house of one of Miss Betham-Edwards's confrères, Mr. Coventry Patmore, the poet. A little further on is the picturesque villa which Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell (the first woman doctor) inhabits. "As remarkable and good a woman as ever lived," she adds. "I do not go much into society, for I find the winter is the best time for writing. I lead a completely retired literary life, but I have a few kindred spirits around me, and I occasionally hold little receptions when we all meet." ”

“ Elizabeth Blackwell makes a foreible appeal to parents to stop the ever-growing deterioration of morals among the young men and women of the present day. . . . .'The first falsehood,' says Dr. Blackwell, 'that must disappear, is the belief that the higher classes of women — the cultivated, the refined, the virtuous—have nothing to do with sexual vice; that they must remain ignorant of facts and see nothing but what is pleasant to see. . . . .'"
The Nobility of Sex. ”

“ Some well-dressed man would walk by my side on Broadway, saying in a low voice, ‘Turn down Duane Street to the right;’ or whilst waiting for a horse-car at midnight by the City Hall a policeman would try to take my hand; or a group of late revellers would shout across the street, ‘See that lone woman walking like mad!’ But with common sense, self-reliance, and attention to the work in hand, any woman can pursue the medical calling without risk.
The heat of a New York summer also was at this time very trying to an English constitution. A letter to my sister in 1853 exclaims:—
Oh, dear! ”

“ Mass-meetings to sympathize with the "strikers" of Massachusetts are being called in this metropolis by women. Women are ordained ministers, and licensed physicians. Elizabeth Blackwell has founded a hospital in this city, where she proposes a thorough medical education, both theoretical and practical, for young women. And this Institute in which we are now assembled, with its school of design, its library and reading-room, where the arts and sciences are freely taught to women, and this hall, so cheerfully granted to our Convention, shows the magnanimity of its founder, Peter Cooper. ”

“ She knows in advanced age no diminution of her zeal for right over wrong. In addition to her long and arduous labors as a teacher, as a student and as the pioneer woman physician. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell has been a prolific author. Naturally, her works lie in the field of her profession. ”

“ Elizabeth Blackwell discusses, with commendable frankness and earnestness, a subject which is of the gravest importance not only to parents and the youth they have in charge, but also to society at large, which is, in fact, only a family circle of wider dimensions, whose interests are clearly identical, and not easily separated from those of the narrower band of home members. ”

“ One sex may experience more physical evil, the other more mental degradation, from similar vicious habits; but the evil, if not identical, is entirely parallel, and a loss of truthfulness, honour, and generosity accompanies the loss of purity.
The women more directly involved in this widespread evil of licentiousness are the women of the poorer classes of society. The poorer classes constitute in every country the great majority of the people ”

“ It is wrong to retain a young servant in a household without entering into her joys and sorrows, being acquainted with her family and friends, providing her with honourable amusements, and helping her to grow. In connection with this branch of our subject there are two important principles that should be acted on by intelligent women. The first is the necessity of educating the sentiment of sex in girls into a self-controlling force, conscious of the weighty responsibility which its great influence involves. The second principle is the resolute abolition of an outcast class of women. ”

“ But in the defence of their children the mothers of the race must be heard; their right to act in such a cause is indisputable, and when women call on men to support them in this sacred duty of motherhood—the guardianship of the young—men will rally to their aid, and no power of ancient or modern evil custom can withstand their united energy.
The great and urgent need of our civilization is the united action of men and women in the mighty contest with social evil which is now beginning. The conflict will be tremendous; but this age is full of promise. ”

“ She was married to Samuel C. Blackwell, a brother of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, 24th January, 1856. She began the study of some of the great questions concerning vice and crime and published the result under the title of "Shadows of Our Social System." Her life as a preacher, lecturer and writer has been a very useful one. In the latter direction she has done work that reflects great credit upon her sex, having received much praise for her logical methods of thought. ”

“ There was at that time a certain Madame Restell flourishing in New York. This person was a noted abortionist, and known all over the country. She was a woman of great ability, and defended her course in the public papers. She made a large fortune, drove a fine carriage, had a 30 pew in a fashionable church, and though often arrested, was always bailed out by her patrons. She was known distinctively as a ‘female physician,’ a term exclusively applied at that time to those women who carried on her vile occupation. ”

“ It is rarely that a book is written which dares to treat of the themes here embodied with the simplicity, earnestness, and candor that the evil of society demands. But Dr. Blackwell's little book may be placed in the hands of our sons and daughters unhesitatingly, and it can not fail to make them wiser and better, inasmuch as it will teach them that the happiness of the individual and of the race hangs upon the proper use and the reasonable discipline of the functions of sex. ”

“ The mistresses pique themselves on the advantageous situation of their blacks; they positively think them very well off, and triumphantly compare their position with that of the poor in England and other countries. I endeavour, in reply, to slide in a little truth through the small apertures of their minds, for were I to come out broadly with my simple, honest opinion I should shut them up tight, arm all their prejudices, and do ten times more harm than good. I do long to get hold of someone to whom I can talk frankly ”

“ Customs and institutions which injure the character of women, which weaken their virtue and crush out the germs of higher life, must be the source of deadliest evil to any nation. It behoves the legislators of the present generation to be careful in their social and legal sanction of vice amongst males, lest they be blindly undermining the whole social fabric, amongst women as well as men, in a way which they would least wish to do, if they knew what they were doing. ”

“ If in the future, in addition to the suppression of ordinary begging by men and women, another edict goes forth forbidding women to present themselves for sale, but not forbidding men to purchase them, gross injustice to women will be added to a cruel abuse of power, and fresh impulse given to male vice. Certainly, if it were in the nature of women to become murderous criminals, any increasingly harsh and unjust attempts to crush their misery and degradation out of sight, would drive them into violent crime. ”