Happy National Women Physicians Day!

Today, February 3rd, is the 202nd birthday of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the very first woman in the United States to earn a medical degree.  Dr. Blackwell was famously allowed to attend medical school as a prank by her fellow students.  She had applied to a number of medical schools, only to be told that medicine was a profession not meant for women.  She applied to Geneva Medical College (now known as Norton College of Medicine at SUNY Upstate Medical University).  Apparently the faculty asked the other (both current and incoming) medical students to vote on whether to accept her or not (the stipulation was that the vote had to be unanimous).  The students voted unanimously for her acceptance as a funny way to get back at the faculty.  Dr. Blackwell entered medical school with the 1847 class and graduated in 1849.  During those days, medical school consisted of a one year course of study that was repeated in the second year.  The faculty and students eventually came around, and when the dean of the medical school awarded Dr. Blackwell her diploma, he stood up and bowed to her.

Dr. Blackwell continued to encounter prejudice throughout her career, and later left the United States to continue her training in Europe.  There, while caring for an infant with ophthalmia neonatorum, she accidentally contaminated her own eye and contracted the infection.  Unfortunately, she became blind in that eye, which forced her to abandon her dream of becoming a surgeon.  She would later return to the United States, where she founded the New York Infirmary for Women and Children with her younger sister, Emily Blackwell (who incidentally was the third woman to graduate from a U.S. medical school).  Both Drs. Blackwell focused on women’s health, pediatrics, and social justice.  

The Doctors Blackwell were pioneers in medicine and early advocates for a woman’s right to practice our profession.  Their story was superbly told in an excellent book by the author Janice Nimura (The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine) National Women Physicians Day was established to honor Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell and recognizes the contributions of all women in medicine.  While we have come a long way since Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell graduated from Geneva Medical College, the struggles for women’s equity in our profession remains a real one today (see just one example from my own specialty, pediatric critical care medicine, in an article my colleagues and I published a few years ago).  There is work ahead, and we all must play a role.  However, for now, congratulations to all of my women colleagues and friends in medicine, and Happy National Women Physicians Day!