Selects: Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, Feminist Physician
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Hi there, friends. It's me, Josh. And for this week's Select, I've chosen our April 2020 episode on Elizabeth Blackwell, who is a complex person, to say the least. And she's a great example of how nobody fits neatly into one group or another. And she's a great lesson in how a person who you might hold different views from and values from can still be one of your heroes. I hope you get a lot out of this episode about Elizabeth Blackwell, the feminist icon.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W., Charles Chuck Wayne, Twain Bryant. And there's Jerry Jerome Rowland, the Rizzy. And I'm just Josh. Like, just Jack was just Jack. Wow. Okay. That's a heck of an intro. Thank you. Let's do a little jazz hands there. Just call me Twain from now on. Twain.

It's not awkward to pronounce. It's really close to schwing. Remember that? Schwing. Oh, man. I totally forgot about it until just now. Schwing, Chuck. Schwing. Schwing. That's how you have to say it. No, you can say it anyway. Like, schwing. Yeah. Well, what I really love is that we're talking about America's first woman physician, an amazing woman named Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell.

who had an amazing family, and her story is incredible. And we're saying schwing. Schwing. At the beginning. Right. Especially considering that she was a rather puritanical person in a lot of senses. She would probably not have been down with us saying schwing. No. No, because you know what? She and her family were Quakers, and I know some Quakers and have known some Quakers. They hate schwing.

They do, but you know what they love? What? Being awesome. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, for sure. I get the impression that her entire family is a pretty good example of like a Quaker family. Every Quaker I've known has just had it all figured out, it seems like. They're like the Buddhists of the West. Yeah, yeah.

Pretty much. They also, I think they also go by the Society of Friends, which says a lot too.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure. And then if you'll remember correctly, Charles, our pacifist episode focused heavily on the Quakers because they're big-time pacifists too. So Elizabeth Blackwell, just by virtue of having been a Quaker, was a pretty interesting, like, upstanding, upright person with a good head on her shoulders. But she also, like, individually, personally, was a very amazing person. And not just the fact that she...

was the first licensed woman physician in America. Yeah. But to get there, she really had to blaze her own path and put up with a lot of BS, you might put it. Mm-hmm.

And so much so that even in her autobiography, which was published in 1895 when she was in her 70s, I think, she called it pioneering work. And there's really no better way to put it. She was absolutely a pioneer in not just getting herself established as a woman physician in America, but in making it so that there could be more women physician in America, physicians. And more. Yeah.

And more. Much more. So let's start with, oh, I don't know, February 3rd, 1821. What's significant about that date? She was born as a little BB near Bristol, England. She was the third of nine children. Her mom was Hannah Lane, who came from a family of merchants who had some dough. And her pops was Samuel Blackwell. He was a sugar refiner and also prosperous. And like we said, they were Quakers.

which means that they were very cool. They were not, and this was 1821, they were not down with slavery. They were activists against slavery. They were abolitionists. They supported women's suffrage.

Her brother, Henry, married Lucy Stone, who was a very famous women's rights activist. Her little sister, Emily, followed in her footsteps in medicine. Her sister-in-law, Antoinette Brown Blackwell, first female ordained minister in the Protestant denomination. Yeah. They were way ahead of their time. Yeah, and you can trace, I mean, both of her parents seem to be pretty cool, and you can trace their...

the roots of their sensibilities back to their parents. Like Samuel was a dissenter. Like he was a Quaker, which is, I guess, a form of Protestantism. But he was definitely, he didn't recognize like the sole religious authority of say, like the Church of England or anything like that.

And so as a result, his children could not go to public school. He said, fine, I've got some money. I'm a prosperous sugar merchant. I'm going to hire the best tutors I can find. And not only that, I'm going to defy the conventions of England and...

have these tutors teach my daughters the same stuff that they're going to teach my sons, which is unheard of. But that really formed the basis for especially Elizabeth's progression and education that she came to expect to be taught just like she was a boy because of how she was raised. Yeah.

Yeah, and, you know, by all accounts, her parents were both pretty great. Her dad was a very caring individual. He thought that all kids of any gender should reach their full potential. Sure. He didn't physically punish his kids, which was weird at the time. People were like, why ain't you hitting your kids? Yeah. And he said, I don't believe in it. I've got a switch right here you can borrow. Works really well. Yeah, did you not have a switch? That's what the deal is. He doesn't have a switch or a paddle. He's switchless. Let's get him a switch.

So he, you know, they would have sort of like a demerit system in their house. And if you added up too many demerits, you would have to do something like eat by yourself in the attic or something. That sounds horrific also, like sticking a kid in a closet. But I think it was just a room removed from the family dinner. Yeah, it was just you have to go away from the family. We can't even bear to look at you. You make us want to puke. That's right. But everything changed when he lost his sugar refinery in a fire.

and said, you know what? Let's pack our bags, and let's move to New York City. New York City? That's right, New York City. Do you remember back in, I don't know, like around 2007, 2008? I feel like it was right when we both started working around how stuff works.

that a sugar refinery in Savannah blew up. Yeah, I remember that. I wrote an article about that. It's like that sugar dust is volatile. It can catch fire. And I wonder if that's what happened to his sugar refinery. I bet you. Okay, so they moved to New York. They lived in New York and in Jersey for six years. As you do. Yeah, and one of the cool things that I liked about him, he was a little paradoxical. So he was a sugar refiner. He made his money off of sugar refining. Right.

But the sugar industry was based almost entirely on slave labor around the world. That's how sugar cane was grown. He didn't use slaves, I can tell you that. But he still made his money in an industry that was heavy, heavy on slavery. And in fact, his children were such staunch abolitionists, even as young children. They refused to eat sugar because they knew that slaves...

had a hand in producing it. So they wouldn't even eat it as kids. Little kids would need sugar because of the slavery involved. But he still made his money off of that. But when he got to America, one of the first things he tried was to introduce sugar beets, which don't require slave labor. It's a much less labor-intensive process of extracting sugar from sugar beets

And this is really revolutionary at the time. Like they think they first isolated sugar from beets in 1800, like 30 years before.

And they had been introduced to America just like two years before he took this up. So he was on the cutting edge of sugar beet production, but it didn't actually work out very well. No. His original sugar refinery went south in 1837. So he said, let me move to Cincinnati and I'll get in on the sugar beet thing. But just a few weeks after they got to Cincinnati in August of 1838, he

He died of a fever, and because he had lost that sugar refinery and didn't have the next sugar beet operation up and going, they didn't have a lot of dough. His family was left without a lot of money. Yeah, which, I mean, that's got to be really tough to go from wealthy to not, you know, in just one fell swoop. But that's kind of what happened with Elizabeth's family.

And a few years later, she resolved when she was 21 that she would not be dependent on any man. She was going to be self-sufficient and she was never going to marry. And she wanted to make her own way. And, I mean, it's pretty tough not to trace that line directly back to, you know, the state that her father left his family in. Not in any way that, you know, that was—

doing or his own fault, but that was just the conventions of the time. And so for a woman to resolve that she would make her own way in life was very unconventional. But if Elizabeth Blackwell was anything, she was very unconventional. That's right. So she and her mom and a couple of her sisters, they were teachers for a little while.

And she eventually – and this is kind of jumping ahead a bit, but she did adopt a girl, a seven-year-old Irish immigrant orphan that she named Kitty. Her name was Catherine Barry and went by Kitty. And she was with her for the duration of her life, but she never got married. And she decided to become a doctor when she had a really close friend who was dying, said, you know what? I think that I might have lived longer.

If I might have had a woman as a doctor because they're more compassionate and I might have gotten better treatment. And Elizabeth Blackwell was like, whoa, that really speaks to me.

Yeah, they think that the woman was probably dying of uterine cancer. And she thinks that she would have disclosed more of her condition, possibly sooner. And at the very least, she would have been more comfortable in her dying days being treated by a woman rather than poked and prodded by some man. Right. Who seemed to be less compassionate than she believed a woman would be. The thing about Elizabeth Blackwell is she, first of all, she was struck by this.

And she was so struck by it that it moved her to want to become a doctor. But not only that...

she had to overcome a natural deep-seated aversion to the idea of the body or anatomy or medicine. Like she was not at all interested in this to begin with. And in fact, she had an aversion to it. But she was so moved by that woman and her experience that she resolved to overcome her disgust and her aversion at bodily functions and anatomy and become a doctor herself. I mean, that's a really key detail. Yeah.

It is a huge leak. I mean, that's enormous. Like, not only—like, she just wasn't a kid who wanted to be a doctor. Right. Like, I love the sight of blood and internal organs, so this kind of fits anyway. Yeah, she had to overcome an aversion to it on top of overcoming the aversion that society had against a woman becoming a doctor because at the time—

It was considered that a woman couldn't know enough about the human body to be a physician and still be considered a morally upright woman, that her morals were at risk of being corrupted just by knowing everything there is to know about the human body. Yeah, I mean, let's be honest. They would have to see a male penis as part of their training. Sure. A pee-pee. So, oh, man, we're such children. We are.

So she said, all right, I'm going to do this. I'm going to get over this. I'm going to be a doctor. How do I do this? I'll just go to medical school. Medical school said, no, no, no, no, no. Women can't go to medical school. There are a few ladies around the country that are unlicensed physicians that worked as apprentices and learned their trade. But you're not going to go this traditional route. And medical school at the time was just weird anyway.

Which we'll get into a little bit later. But we, I mean, we also got into it in our grave robbing episode. Yeah. This was similar to that time. Oh, totally. This was around that time. It was crazy. It wasn't like, it wasn't the, I don't think doctors were as respected back then even. No. No, because they were the ones who were cutting open bodies and just kind of figuring stuff out as they went along. And if you went to a doctor, there was like an 80% chance you were walking out one limb short. Yeah.

Yeah. So she, while she was a teacher, she boarded with families and she did a lot of this stuff in the South, which we'll get to as well. But two Southern physicians mentored her. She still could not get into medical school, of course.

She had some physician friends who were Quakers. She asked them about it. They said that's a great idea, but no, it costs too much. You're never going to be able to get in. What you should do is disguise yourself as a man and go to France. And she was like, not a bad idea. If that's the best advice somebody's giving you, you need to rethink the people who you take advice from. It sounds like she was game, though, but she decided to save money instead of

and apply to medical school in the United States. So in today dollars, I did the old inflation calculator. Three grand back then would be about $85,000 today. So that's a lot of money. And she, between, I think for a period of two or three years, went south and taught school in slave states there.

which was very hard for her to do in order to save money for medical school. She didn't know what she could get into anyway. Right, exactly. And the first place she taught in Kentucky, she only lasted a year. She just found the social climate so intolerable. She was really, you know, she couldn't put up with it. And I don't know how she was able to better in North and South Carolina, but...

But, yeah, I mean, she managed in two years to raise $83,000 from teaching, I guess, rich kids in North and South Carolina. And she – but she also, while she was there, she's like, well, I want to teach the slave kids too. I'll do it pro bono. And they said, well, it's against the law for you to teach slave kids there.

And they said, but you can teach them Sunday school. And she said, fine, I'll do that. And there was a great quote that came from her in a letter to her family in 1845. And I'm not sure what state she was in, maybe even Kentucky. But she said, I assure you, I felt a little odd sitting down before those degraded little beings, not saying they were naturally degraded, that they had been degraded by other people, I believe. Sure.

to teach them a religion which the owners profess to follow whilst violating its very first principles. It says it all, doesn't it? It really does. She was like, you know, these people profess to be Christians but do not treat other people like Christians. That's just such a Quaker thing to do, huh? That is a very Quaker thing to do. You want to take a little break? Yeah, let's do it. Okay, we're going to take a break, everybody, and we'll be back to tell you more about Elizabeth Blackwell's progress toward med school.

Thank you.

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So Chuck, like you said, she was mentored by a couple of doctors who she stayed with while she was teaching in North and South Carolina, one of whom was actually a professor of medicine. So he had all the books. He was very encouraging to her. He taught her everything he could. And that was, like you said, a way that a woman could become a physician. But

But an unlicensed physician, certainly not one that was in any way established as an actual legitimate physician. And that was ultimately her goal. Yeah, like she continued to get sort of tutored by different people in the South that she knew who were physicians. And it was great that these men encouraged her and tutored her, said, here, use my books.

But again, like you said, she wanted to do the real deal and forge a path and not just kind of go the backdoor route. So she applied to all the medical schools in New York and Philly. She applied to 12 more in the Northeast. She was rejected by all of them. And on the 30th application to Geneva Medical College in Western New York in 1847, she was accepted and

And I say, I raise my voice because she got accepted because it was a joke that, well, everyone thought it was a practical joke. The professor there, the dean of the medical, the med school basically said, hey, let's take a vote here. We'll have all the men here that go here vote on whether or not a woman can come to school here. And if every single person says yes,

She can come here. And if one person says no, she won't. They all thought it was a prank from, I guess, the neighboring rival medical school. West Geneva. Yeah, they said, sure, let her in. And it wasn't a joke. And they did let her in.

They did. And apparently they were all very surprised. Like, this almost sounds like an urban legend, but from what I saw, like, this is across the board what happened. That they thought it was a practical joke and it turned out to be real, and that is how she ended up going to medical school. Unbelievable. Yeah.

So when she showed up, she was taking this quite seriously. She was 26 already. She'd spent some time like living around, seeing the country. Just she was 26. Like that says a lot about a person over, say, like 20 or 19 or something like that. And so when she showed up, not only was she a little more mature probably than some of her contemporaries, she also was –

She was well aware of the convention she was breaking, of the challenges and the obstacles that laid ahead of her. And there's a pretty good report. Like the fact that she showed up at medical school, made the papers. And in fact, the Boston Medical Journal even wrote up something about the fact that she was there taking medical classes. The Boston Medical Journal said that she comes into the class with great composure, takes off her bonnet, and...

and puts it under the seat, exposing a fine phrenology. Are you kidding me? You're talking about the shape of her head? Yeah, yeah. This is the Boston Medical Journal at the time. Hopefully the BMJ has officially stopped using phrenology. Yeah.

in any way, shape, or form, but we'll have to get a subscription and find out. So we talked earlier about the fact that medical school at the time was really different. It sounds like Animal House or something. It was very raucous. Apparently when there were lecturers, you would make crude jokes out loud no matter what you're talking about. It sounds like a bunch of children taking sex ed or something.

Yeah. And like the sixth grade. Yeah. But apparently Blackwell's effect on the whole, like every class she went into was everyone took it a lot more seriously because she was there.

Yeah, because, again, like if you were a man, you acted far, far, far differently around a woman at the time where you were just much more genteel. It was just the social convention. And so you had to bite your tongue in medical school if Elizabeth Blackwell was in your class or you just did. That was just kind of the effect that she had on class just by being a woman. But even beyond that, there was this whole –

Right. Oh, sure. Yeah.

And Elizabeth Blackwell did not truck to that at all. No, no, no. She was very adamant that... Remember, she was educated like a boy by the tutors her father hired. She had a full expectation to be...

left out of absolutely nothing at med school. She was to be a full physician, and so she was to learn everything that any physician would learn. And eventually, over time, she kind of overcame this genteel opposition to her presence by her professors and male classmates. Yeah, and I think in no small part due to her serious take and her

fastidiousness in her. The fact that in the end, she graduated first in her class. Yeah, that says a lot. She was the best student. In 1849, she graduated first, ultimately earned the respect of her fellow students. Not to say that it was a cakewalk. There were still plenty of jerks there.

And, you know, a lot of them had animosity toward her. I remember Cakewalk is racist. Is it really? Yeah, I remember we did a show on, what was it? I can't remember the, like, words that have different origins than you would think or different meanings than you would think. You don't remember? Yeah, I think I do remember that. I'm sorry, everybody. I'm sorry for interrupting you. That's okay. So it was no pie walk.

Good save, Chuck. Still plenty of jerks. There were some men there that would laugh at her, some men there that would support her, some men that would jeer at her, some men that would help her out. But like I said, in the end, she got that degree first in her class. Apparently, and I don't know if this is the movie version, but

But the medical school's dean bowed to her when she accepted her diploma, and everyone busted out in applause. Yeah, that's what a newspaper account said from the correspondent who was there. And they also added, and Brother Bluto became Senator Blutarski. Very nice. That wrapped everything up. Do you think that movie ages well? We're talking about Animal House again. I haven't seen it.

I should say, sorry, in a while. I'm not sure. Oh, okay. I have seen it plenty of times, but I haven't seen it in a while. I'm sure it doesn't. It can't. I don't know, man. I think it's kind of timeless. However, I've heard certain people that I won't name say it doesn't age well, Noel. Oh, yeah? Yeah, Noel doesn't think. He thinks there's a raft of comedies from that era that just are not funny now.

Wait, not funny or politically correct? Oh, no, no, no. Not funny. Oh, gotcha. Yeah, it doesn't age well as in like, why do people think this is a comedy classic? It's not even that good. Gotcha, gotcha. Okay, yeah, I'll have to watch it again. I haven't seen it in a while. I don't know, man. I think it's kind of timeless in its comedy. Okay. I mean, sure, there are parts that don't age well in...

every other respect like any comedy made before like four years ago. Sure, that's what I, or no, like the last five minutes. I thought that's what you were talking about. No, I mean, it's entirely possible because I've seen some comedies where I'm like, this is not at all funny. Like Spies Like Us, give me a break. Not good? No. I haven't seen it in a long time. It's not good. See, now I'm afraid to watch some of those oldies. Yeah. You hate Chevy Chase though.

I do. My dad taught me well. But if you want to continue to cherish any movie that you used to love, I would not risk it. No, we'll see. Unless it's Ghostbusters. That definitely holds up, friend. Yeah, that new one looks good too. What is the new one? The sequel sort of.

So it's technically Ghostbusters 3? Yeah, or 4. Or wait, was there a third or was just the first two? Yeah, the second one wasn't that great. There was a first two and then the third one had, I think, Kate McKinnon in it, but it existed in a different universe, didn't it? Yeah, yeah, that was just a reboot, which was great, I thought. But this new one is a sequel many years later, and I think it's one of their grandkids'

you know, stuff starts happening. It looks good. Paul Rudd's in it. Okay. Oh, there you go. And what's his name's kid? Reitman's kid is directing it. Oh, he's great. Jason? Yeah, it's a Jason Reitman jam. That's good stuff. He might be a little too highbrow for a Ghostbusters movie. I don't know, man. Well, hey, I can tell you, you know who's spinning in her grave right now about 1,000 RPMs? Who? Elizabeth Blackwell. I know. I'm so sorry. Dr. Blackwell, should we take a break?

I don't know. Who knows anymore? All right, let's take a break, and we'll stop talking about dumb old movies right after this. Hi, icons. It's Paris Hilton. Check out my new single, Chasin', featuring Meghan Trainor. Out today. Hi.

I feel so lucky to collaborate with Megan and how perfectly she put my experience into words. Listen to Chasen from my new album, Infinite Icon, on iHeartRadio or wherever you stream music. Don't forget to visit InfiniteIcon.com to pre-save my album. Sponsored by 1111 Media.

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All right. So, Chuck, I think where we officially left off. Caddyshack. Elizabeth Blackwell received her diploma. Right. The dean of the medical school stood up and bowed and the auditorium broke out into applause, which is pretty awesome.

And apparently, although she won over her classmates, there were still like a lot of women actually of the time who were not very happy with what she'd done. But she said, nuts to you guys. That's right. I'm going to move to Paris and London, and I'm going to pursue my practice there to start. That's right.

Which is a great idea, and when she got there, they said, wow, you're a real deal doctor, and you have a medical degree. Here, be a midwife. Yeah, a woman, sacre bleu. Yeah, she was led into midwifery and nursing, but she's really sort of trying to be revolutionary here, because all she sees are these men walking around, not washing their hands, and

And she's like, you know what is probably super important is personal hygiene and preventative care. And they're like, what's that?

Well, they literally were what's that because this was early 1850s. And remember our great stink episode? Oh, man. That was so good. So they were still operating under the miasma theory that it was like bad vapors and smells that made you sick. Crazy. So her idea that it was like hand washing was part of this preventative medicine was wrong.

really ahead of its time. And so in addition to being a woman, who they were just discrediting out of hand anyway just for being a woman, they were also saying like, you're talking kooky stuff. Everybody knows it's smells that make you sick, you nut job. Go over there and deliver a baby. And she's like, but I haven't washed my hands. We just told you, it doesn't matter. Babies are dirty. As long as your hands don't stink, it's fine.

Yeah, we should also mention it's right about here where she lost sight in her left eye from an accident that I can barely even talk about. Oh, I want to. Can I? Please.

So she contracted purulent ophthalmia, which is an infection of the eye. And her eye became infected because she was tending to an infant who I guess had some sort of wound that was infected. And pus squirted in her left eye from the infection and infected her left eye to such a terrible degree that she became blind in her left eye. Yes, and that is sad, but really sad because...

she was not able to become a surgeon which is what she really wanted to do it's also said that there was a baby with an infection well sure a pussy infection let's not forget about that baby sure uh that baby grew up to be roy cone she she moved to the that's really good um she moved to the uk then from paris and this is where she hooked up with a little buddy

Florence Nightingale. Yeah, who deserves her own episode too, for sure. Oh, totally. They became good friends. They were like, you like to wash your hands? I do too. Isn't it awesome? Let's go do it together. That's kind of the long and short of it. They sat around and sang ABCs or I Don't Want No Scrubs, washed their hands...

And they were both like, why are none of these men doctors ever washing their hands? And they were both like, because they're dummies. Yeah. Just give them a few years and germ theory will be developed and then they'll listen to Louis Pasteur. Yeah, exactly. But I think that's pretty awesome. It's almost like...

I don't know, Einstein and somebody else meeting. You know, like, it's cool to know that these two, like, legendary figures met and were friends at one point in time. Oh, totally. It's almost like a movie, you know what I'm saying? This totally should be a movie. I'm surprised it's not yet. Agreed. Maybe Jason Reitman could direct it. That's right. And maybe...

Paul Rudd? No, who's the guy that Wolverine? Hugh Jackman. Yeah, maybe Hugh Jackman can be in it. He would play Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell. That's right. And Jared from Subway can play the Puss Baby. Yeah. Everything would come full circle and the universe would collapse in on itself. And then a Sharknado would kill them all. Yeah. Oh, man. So she is pals with Florence Nightingale. She decides, you know what? I'm going to go back to New York and

It's 1851, and I really want to get a practice going there. She got back, and of course, discrimination against women in the doctoring industry was still there. Oh, yeah. So she didn't have a lot of opportunity. She didn't have a lot of patients. She didn't have a lot of other doctors that she could even exchange ideas with. And so she started applying for jobs.

instead of starting her own practice at the women's department in a big city dispensary, but she was not hired. No, and I had to look up a dispensary as like a charity or public clinic. Where you buy weed? Yeah, this woman's ambition, this first woman doctor in the United States now, her ambition was to help the poor, right?

That was what she wanted to do. Her missions in life were to help the poor, help women retain their chastity and purity in the hopes of having a good moral impact on the world around them. And then...

to make it so that more women could become doctors. That's right. And, like, she was, like, a tireless fighter and champion of all of these things. That's right. And so, in typical Elizabeth Blackwell fashion, when she was turned down for a job at a dispensary, she just opened her own dispensary. That's right. And a little single rented room. She saw patients a few afternoons each week. It was incorporated in 1854 where they moved to a small house in

They're on the lower east side, East Village area of Tompkins Square. Her sister, we mentioned that she followed, I believe at the very beginning, that she followed in her sister's footsteps. By this point, she was Dr. Emily Blackwell. She got her degree at Western Reserve University in Cleveland, and she joined her in 1856 with another doctor, Dr. Marie – ooh –

Zach... Zach... Zach... Wow. That's the Dr. Seuss pronunciation. That's a tough one. I would say Zach... Zach... Okay. Zach... All right. And they all opened the New York Infirmary for Women and Children...

on Bleeker Street there in the West Village in 1857. Yep. And now you can go left out of the doorway and hit a Swatch store or go across the street and go get a sandwich at Le Pain Quotidien. I saw the Swatch joke coming because I did the old Googler too, and I was like, I guarantee you that poked out to Josh. But what's crazy, so 64, at least as far as the Google company is concerned, 64 Bleeker Street doesn't exist anymore. Yeah.

That means that it was subsumed by either the Kith clothing or the swatch store. Somebody took over this, but there's a— I think the swatch store did it in 1858. There's a—yeah, they were all on chains. Right. But there's a physical structure that's still there that was the first women-run infirmary

or clinic, I should say, in New York and what became one of the first women's medical schools in the country. Not the first, but one of the first. And there's no plaque. There's no sign. There's no nothing. Really? But the building is, not that I could see, but the building is still there. You can still visit the spot where poor people went and Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell treated them. Wow. Yeah, with one eye.

Yeah, let's not forget that. A sight in one eye, I should say. So she starts going, she's like, I want to do this in England too, my home country. I'm going to go back and forth. I'm going to try and raise some money to do the same thing over there. At the same time, she's also taking on, and it's amazing what you can do when you don't get married and have to be subservient to a man. Right. Like she was living single, so she had nothing but time. She had this adopted daughter, but-

I imagine as she grew, she helped her mom out with this stuff. Yeah, and in their off time, they would watch Living Single together. So she was getting on other social reform movements, all kinds of things to do with women's rights, family planning, even way back then, hygiene always. Did we mention eugenics and how deep she got in that? Do we even know?

I looked and I could not see, because you would think there'd be people that would say like, oh, Elizabeth Blackwell, but listen to this eugenics stuff she's into. I saw basically one of those things where it was this list was repeated basically in the same order across the internet. So I have no idea how much she was into eugenics. But I do know, I did get an impression of her, as far as women's,

rights were concerned, she was a feminist through and through. Oh, sure. Absolutely a feminist. But she was also a moralist and a prude, a dyed-in-the-wool prude. And so she was really concerned with the moral— Purity? Yeah, I guess the moral purity of women. Because her whole thing was if a woman has basically had sex out of wedlock—

She has corrupted her morals. She's traded in her morals. And now she's going to be interested in men. She's going to think about other men rather than her husband. She's not going to be able to focus on her home. And so the home will start to come apart eventually.

because this woman had sex out of wedlock before she got married or whatever. And so that's one home broken. And if more and more women do this, then all of a sudden the whole country's morals are corrupt and there's nothing but crime and drinking and all sorts of horrible things that come out of it. And she definitely identified men

as a aggressor in this, that it was definitely men who came along and like persuaded girls to have sex out of wedlock because these girls were too naive to know the ramifications and consequences. So she tried to in books and pamphlets and lectures and all this,

warn mothers to warn their daughters away from men like this and also teach them about the consequences of having, like, premarital sex and also basically identifying as, you know, men as the aggressors, the wolves in the situation. So she was super into that, and she was very widely and well-received because her line of thinking was very in line with Victorian super rigid morals. But at the same time, I mean, it's...

it's difficult to reconcile with just straight ahead feminism that, you know, of the type that we're used to today. But there's really no one who could discredit her as a feminist. She's a feminist in a Victorian way. Exactly. It was a time where you couldn't be like, girl, own your sexuality. And like, you asked the man to marry you. Like,

That just didn't happen at all. So this was the opposite of that. She was telling she was also what would be known today as a feminist for life, a staunch anti-abortion feminist.

As a matter of fact, if you read her diary in a certain way, you can make the case that one of the reasons she became a doctor is because she read an article about a woman who was an abortionist at the time who was termed a female physician, which I guess was code for women abortionists back then. And she was so appalled by this that she wanted to reform the term.

female physician to mean an actual, like just a woman doctor, a general doctor. And that's one of the things that drove her too. So yeah, she was a very complicated character. She was a quaker. Right. But I think she reminds us that

Over time, when you become a legend, a legend grows up around you and the different edges get smoothed over or overlooked or whatever. And people are complicated and complex and that's the way that it should be and they should be understood as such. But none of that undermines her ability.

Depending on your way of thinking, I don't think anything undermines her that she did or thought undermines the work that she did and the good that she did. Well, of course not. And I think maybe people should try to remember what it might be like to be a trailblazing feminist in the 1840s through the 80s, you know? Yeah, yeah. So the Civil War, that was very nicely said. Good job.

I hope so. Oh, God, I hope so. Civil War rolls around. She and her sisters train nurses for the Union for their hospitals. She said, you know what? What we really need is a medical school for women. And so she continued to try and get support from Britain,

She finally raised enough backing in America to add that medical school to her women's hospital in New York in 1868. Was this one you were talking about? The New York infirmary was finally established with 15 students, nine faculty, and she was the professor of hygiene there.

And her sister Emily was the obstetrician and taught obstetrics and diseases of women. Yeah, she handled all the surgery too at the clinic. Oh, Emily did? Yeah, because her sister couldn't. Right. So think about this. She established not just this clinic.

this dispensary, but also a college to teach women doctors, right? And not only did she do that in New York, she did it in London too. After she had managed to establish this, she said, okay, Emily, you got this. I'm moving back to England and I'm going to do this over here. Yeah. And what it did was it provided about a 32-year stopgap for

until 1899 when medical schools, Cornell University, finally began accepting women into their program. So for 32 years, she was running the show and she was providing that, I almost said service, but it kind of is in a way, you know, until mainstream medical schools began catching on. Yeah, no, for sure. And the fact that

that she was establishing this college, like that this was one of her big dreams and focuses and drives, just kind of goes to underscore the fact that like she was trying to make it so that more women could become doctors. It's just easy to overlook when you're like, oh, well, she went and became a doctor herself and then she did doctoring. She also simultaneously was trying to expand access to medical training for women as well to become a licensed physician.

And she did in a big way. In 1869, when she was in her late 40s, this is when she established the London practice. She had passed on the New York Medical College to her sister at that point.

and founded the National Health Society in 1871 and was one of the first champions of prevention is better than cure, which is a very obviously important thing today in all of medicine. But at the time, it was kind of a revolutionary kind of way to go about things. They were all about cures. And she was one of the first people standing up and being like, hey, let's not get to the point where we need to cure by preventing things with handwashing and lifestyle and hygiene. Yeah, wash your hands regularly.

Yeah. What's your problem? In 1870, she finally set up a private practice in London. And in 1874, along with physicians Sophia Jex Blake and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, established that London School of Medicine for Women.

Yeah. So, again, she did this in New York. She also did it in London. She agitated for legislation to be passed in 1876 to allow women to get medical degrees. She was the first woman added to the medical register in England. Yeah. So, she did this on two continents.

She opened up the door for women to become doctors on two different continents at about the same time. And ultimately, she had to stop practicing. She had to stop seeing patients because she had something called biliary colic, which is where a gallstone blocks the bile duct.

which is not good for you. And apparently it's a very painful condition. And especially back then, before they could do a lot with it or say break it up with lasers or something, it could knock you out of your career. And it did for decades. I think she had biliary colic disease.

20 or 30 years before she died. Yeah, she basically didn't practice for the last 20 years. Yeah. And very sadly, in 1907, at the ripe old age of 86, which is great, she had an accident. She fell down a flight of stairs and was mentally and physically disabled after that, lived a few more years after that, and then eventually died of stroke in 1910. Yeah, that was it. Great, great lady.

Yeah, there's this statistic here. In 1881, so she'd moved to the UK permanently in 1869. In 1881, there were only 25 registered women doctors in England and Wales.

But 30 years later, 1911, it was up to 495. There you have it. Now I would guess that there's at least double that. Probably more. Probably so. So hats off to Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell. Way to go. My bonnet is off and under my seat. Oh, that's a fine phrenology. You've just exposed their charms. Thank you.

If you want to know more about Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, there's a lot of good stuff on the Internet, including a site that we used, among others, FamousScientists.org. Check them out. And scientist is plural. I just have a thick tongue, so sometimes it's tough to add that extra S at the end. And since I said I have a thick tongue, it's time for listener mail.

This is from Isaac. Hey, guys. I am on day two of six weeks of staying home in quarantine. I live in Seattle, Washington, which was the place where the first North American coronavirus case was. There have been rumors at my school, I'm in the seventh grade, that we're closed for cleaning, but six weeks is nearly all of third quarter. Yeah. I've got a long stretch of time ahead of me, and I've spent most of that time playing video games, playing video games,

Great. Reading, great. Okay. And listening to stuff you should know. Nice. That's a nice three-pronged approach. A little fun, a little knowledge, and a little goofy knowledge. Sure. I listened to nearly 10 episodes today alone. Wow. There will be plenty more rushing through my ear holes. So I wanted to say thank you for helping me through a worrisome time. I loved the Seattle show. That is from Isaac. Isaac, buddy, glad we're there for you. Hang in there. Be safe.

Wash your hands. Yeah. And the fact that you use the word ear holes means that you're the coolest kid I know. Yeah, you're pretty cool, Isaac. We appreciate that. I wonder what video game he's playing, Chuck.

i don't know i just finished red dead redemption and now i'm on to a new one i've been gaming a bit lately i heard that red dead redemption is like one of the most amazing games ever but it's just so good and and highbrow like a jason reitman film that it's it's boring unlike a jason reitman film have you heard that well i played part two i did not get the first one although i might go i think it was part two that i'm talking about i enjoyed it okay good good i

I'm glad to hear that because I like to think that things that are well done aren't boring, you know? Yeah, I had to learn to shoot animals, which was not fun, but hunting is a part of it. Really? Yeah, I never shot a bunny, though. Maybe you had to put them out of the misery or something because they were rabid. Oh, that too. If you crash your horse, you might have to do the right thing, you know what I mean? Is that right? You have to strangle it? Yeah, it's very sad because you get very attached to these horses. I'll bet. Do you name them? Yeah, you name them.

Like you'd actually name them for fun or like they come with names or they like the game makes you name your horse? When you go to a stable you can upgrade your horse in a lot of ways with the saddles and stuff and then you can also you can also name your horse when you go to a stable and type it in and then your horse name is up there. Did you name any Josh?

I did not. I feel bad now. I had three or four horses and I named them all variations of my wife and daughter's names. But I'll tell you what, buddy. Oh, that's fine. You'll be next. I appreciate that. But you'll be like, oh, yeah, Josh turned lame. I guess I have to put him out of his misery. Yeah, Josh got run over by a train. Let me know how Josh turns out, okay, in video game. I will. Okay. And Isaac, thanks again for writing in. And like Chuck said, stay safe, stay smart, and wash your hands and don't panic. Doesn't sound like you are.

If you're like Isaac and you're hanging out listening to Stuff You Should Know, we want to hear from you. You can send us an email, wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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