A Moral CrusadeBy Elizabeth Blackwell(One of the brilliant Blackwell family, to which progress in our country owes so much. Henry Blackwell married Lucy Stone, and with her became a pioneer advocate of woman suffrage. Elizabeth took up the study of medicine, forcing the medical colleges to open their doors to women. From her letters.)
By Elizabeth Blackwell
(One of the brilliant Blackwell family, to which progress in our country owes so much. Henry Blackwell married Lucy Stone, and with her became a pioneer advocate of woman suffrage. Elizabeth took up the study of medicine, forcing the medical colleges to open their doors to women. From her letters.)
In the summer of 1847, with my carefully hoarded earnings, I resolved to seek an entrance into a medical school. Philadelphia was then considered the chief seat of medical learning in America, so to Philadelphia I went; taking passage in a sailing vessel from Charleston for the sake of economy....
Applications were cautiously but persistently made to the four medical colleges of Philadelphia for admission as a regular student. The interviews with their various professors were by turns hopeful and disappointing....
The fear of successful rivalry which at that time often existed in the medical mind was expressed by the dean of one of the smaller schools, who frankly replied to the application, “You cannot expect us tofurnish you with a stick to break our heads with;” so revolutionary seemed the attempt of a woman to leave a subordinate position and seek to obtain a complete medical education. A similarly mistaken notion of the rapid practical success which would attend a lady doctor was shown later by one of the professors of my medical college, who was desirous of entering into partnership with me on condition of sharing profits over $5,000 on my first year’s practice.
During those fruitless efforts my kindly Quaker adviser, whose private lectures I attended, said to me: “Elizabeth, it is no use trying. Thee cannot gain admission to these schools. Thee must go to Paris and don masculine attire to gain the necessary knowledge.” Curiously enough, this suggestion of disguise made by good Dr. Warrington was also given me by Dr. Pankhurst, the Professor of Surgery, in the largest college in Philadelphia. He thoroughly approved of a woman’s gaining complete medical knowledge; told me that although my public entrance into the classes was out of question, yet if I would assume masculine attire and enter the college he could entirely rely on two or three of his students to whom he should communicate my disguise, who would watch the class and give me timely notice to withdraw should my disguise be suspected.
But neither the advice to go to Paris nor the suggestion of disguise tempted me for the moment. It was to my mind a moral crusade on which I had entered, a course of justice and common sense, and it might be pursued in the light of day, and with public sanction, in order to accomplish its end.