Everything that we know has to have a first. There is the first time on the moon, the first time humans lived in societal groups and the first games humans played. The first person or people that do something like that are called pioneers. Elizabeth Blackwell is one of those pioneers. What she did for women’s rights and the medical profession is epic.

In the 1800’s women did not have many rights. They could not vote or own land. They were not welcomed at many colleges and the jobs they were allowed to have were limited. If a woman did have a job and was married she was expected to give all her earnings to her husband. Elizabeth Blackwell was determined to follow her dream and became a medical doctor despite what the world thought. Becoming a doctor was just the first battle she had to fight in a world where men had more rights than women. 

Elizabeth was born in 1821. Her father was the owner of a sugar refinery. The family was not rich but they were not poor either. When she was 11 years old the sugar refinery burned down and Elizabeth’s father decided to move to America. When she was 16 her father died. To help her mother with paying the bills Elizabeth became a teacher. The year was 1836 and teaching was one of the jobs that women could do. She really didn’t want to teach so when a friend died of cancer she decided she would become a doctor. Just getting into a college was hard. More than 20 medical schools said no when she applied. When she applied to Geneva Medical College in New York instead of turning her down, the leaders of the school thought the other students should vote on her application. All of the students voted yes as a joke. They thought she would either not show up or she would quit. She graduated in 1849 as the first woman in the United States to get a medical degree.

Not long after graduating Elizabeth went back to England to study more. She really wanted to become a surgeon. Then she went to France. While she was in France working at a hospital Elizabeth got an eye infection from one of her patients. Even though the other doctors tried to save her left eye, there was no hope and they had to remove it. Elizabeth would never be a surgeon but she never quit being a doctor.Elizabeth returned to the United States in 1851 but she couldn’t get a job at a hospital. No one wanted to hire a woman, especially a woman with only one eye. She did not give up. Instead she built her own clinic with her sister’s help. This clinic for women and children only had female doctors and nurses. It was the first of its kind in the whole world.

In 1861 the United States Civil War started. Elizabeth was against slavery and she and her sister wanted to help. They decided to train nurses on how to take care of war injuries. The male doctors did not like this and thought women were only qualified to be nurses. They even went to the government and said they wouldn’t work with anyone trained by the Blackwell sisters.

Elizabeth Blackwell passed away in 1910 in England. Since 1949, the American Medical Women’s Association has awarded the Elizabethwell Medal every year to a female physician. In 1974, The US Postal Service created a commemorative stampin her name  and in 2018, she was honored with her own Google Doodle.