Elizabeth Blackwell: The First Female Pioneer

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Female Pioneer! “It’s not easy to be a Pioneer, but oh, it is fascinating! I would not trade one moment, even the worst moment, for all the riches in the world. “ This quote by Elizabeth Blackwell sends a message that it is hard to be the first but, to be the first and succeed is worth more than anything in the world. Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman doctor in the USA and was the first woman to get her name added to the Medical Register in the United Kingdom. Without her there wouldn’t be as many woman doctors as there are today. According to the 2010 U.S Census Bureau there are a proximally 294,000 female physicians and surgeons United States alone. The person I am commemorating today is Elizabeth Blackwell. The importance…show more content…
In 1832 her family moved to America where she became an avid abolitionist throughout her late childhood and early adulthood. In 1836 her father’s sugar refinery burned down and in 1838 her family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio in an attempt to re-establish the business, unfortunately three weeks after their move Samuel died from Bilary Fever. Pressed financially after her father’s death Elizabeth and her three sisters started a school for Young Girls. In 1894 her sister Anna, helped Elizabeth acquire a teaching job paying $400 a year in Henderson, Kentucky. In 1856 Blackwell adopted Katherine “Kitty” Barry a Scottish Orphan. In her late years she was fairly active, in 1898 she published her autobiography at the time it was not successful. In 1906 she visited the United States and took her first and last automobile ride. In 1907 Blackwell fell down a flight of stairs thus leaving her almost completely mentally and physically disabled. On May 13, 1910 Elizabeth Blackwell died in her home in Hastings, England after suffering from a stroke that left half her body paralyzed, she was buried in Kilmun, Scotland and her obituaries were published in The Lancet and the British Medical…show more content…
Not only did Blackwell have a governess but also a private tutors to held aide in her intellectual development. The idea to pursue medical school came to Blackwell when her friend who was dying said that in her opinion that a female physician would have made her treatments more comfortable. In 1845 Blackwell began perusing medical school but she didn’t know where it would be or how she would pay for it. So Elizabeth took a job teaching at a music academy in Asheville, NC with the goal of saving the $3000 needed for Medical School. While trying to gain entry to medical school many Physicians told her to either go to Paris or disguise herself as a man. The main reason for this was she was a woman and therefore intellectually inferior and she may have been competition and prove herself equal to the men attending medical school a thought that most men at the time did not receive very well. In October of 1847she was accepted into Geneva Medical College in upstate New York after being rejected by 29 different medical schools. On January 11, 1849 Elizabeth Blackwell became the first female physician in the United States she also graduated top of her class. April of 1849 she decided to move to Europe and in November while treating a patient with Ophtalmia Neonatorium she

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