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Part of the American
History & Genealogy Project |
Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D. 1821 ~ 1910


Elizabeth Blackwell MD
The first woman physician in the United
States was born in England, February 3, 1821, but her father
brought his family to New York when she was eleven years old.
After five or six years in that city,
his business failed and he moved to Cincinnati. He had been
there but a few weeks when he died, leaving a widow and nine
children in very embarrassed circumstances.
Elizabeth, who was his third daughter,
together with her two oldest sisters opened a Young Ladies'
Seminary and supported the family. Finding a better opportunity
for private teaching in South Carolina, she went there in 1845,
teaching music and French in a few wealthy families, while she
read medicine with Doctor Samuel H. Dickson, of Charleston.
After two or three years of hard labor
in South Carolina, and about two years more devoted to the study
of medicine in Philadelphia and Geneva, New York, she received
her medical diploma.
In receiving it from the head director,
she replied, "I thank you sir. With the help of the Most High it
shall be the effort of my life to shed honor upon this diploma."
Nor was this resolution in vain. Elizabeth Blackwell may be said
to be the dean of the corps of splendid women physicians in the
United States, and few if any have exceeded her in conscientious
skill.
Women of
America

Source: The Part Taken by Women in
American History, By Mrs. John A. Logan, Published by The Perry-Nalle
Publishing Company, Wilmington, Delaware, 1912.
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