When Elizabeth Blackwell was a 24-year-old teacher, she visited a close family friend dying of uterine cancer who spoke of how she had suffered at the hands of male doctors during her medical treatment.
“Why not study medicine?” the friend asked. “If I could have been treated by a lady doctor, my worst sufferings would have been spared me.”
Elizabeth immediately rejected the idea. “I hated everything connected with the body and could not bear the sight of a medical book,” she wrote in her autobiography, Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women.
What Do You Think Of That Genius?
You Might Also Be Interested In
Florence Nightingale: The Making of a Hospital Reformer
Biological generality: general anatomy from Xavier Bichat to Louis Ranvier
Indian prodigies we should be proud of!
Daniel Sennert, The Philosophical Hen, and The Epistolary Quest for a (Nearly-)Universal Medicine
Cancer's conceptions of Marie François Xavier Bichat (1771-1802), founder of histology.
Stimulation of the human cortex and the experience of pain: Wilder Penfield's observations revisited
Susumu Tonegawa—Japan's First Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine
7 YEAR OLD SURGEON IS IN PURSUIT TO ACHIEVE A GOAL THAT WILL CURE THE TWO DEADLIEST DISEASES
Hippocrates transformed: crafting a Hippocratic discourse of medical semiotics in English, 1850–1930
Insights into infectious disease in the era of Hippocrates
The Montreal procedure: The legacy of the great Wilder Penfield
John Hunter (1728–1793) and his legacy to science
People Who Read This Article Also Read About...
The Posthumous Mystique of Thomas Chatterton
Charles James Fox, Valiant Voice for Liberty
ORIGEN’S LADDER
Martin Gardner
Remembering Big Bang Basher Fred Hoyle
The Fracking of Rachel Carson
Frank Drake Is Still Searching for E.T.
William Wilberforce and the Abolition of the Slave Trade: Did You Know?
STEINWAY ARTIST FEATURE: LANG LANG REFLECTS ON THE JOURNEY
The life and legacy of Marie Curie.
The Ethical and Political Philosophy of Pierre Gassendi
Centenary of Jean François Champollion
