W.W.Norton & Co.
toggle caption W.W.Norton & Co.
The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine, by Janice P. Nimura W.W.Norton & Co.
Smashing the patriarchy is hard work.
The Doctors Blackwell, by historian Janice P. Nimura, profiles two sisters who faced what was a daunting lack of choices for 19th century women. They achieved a series of near-impossible feats to become America s first and third certified women medical doctors. Nimura s account is not only an exhaustive biography, but also a window into egregious 19th century medical practices and the role these sisters played in building medical institutions.
Bettmann/Getty Images
toggle caption Bettmann/Getty Images
An illustration shows medical student Elizabeth Blackwell at Geneva Medical College (later Hobart College) in upstate New York, as she eyes a note dropped onto her arm by a male student, during a lecture in the college s operating room. Bettmann/Getty Images
In the 1840s, Elizabeth Blackwell was admitted to a U.S. medical school in part because the male students thought her application was part of an elaborate prank. She persisted and got her degree, becoming the first American woman to do so. A few years later, her younger sister Emily followed in her footsteps, earning her own medical degree from the institution that would become Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
Ann Levin
Special to USA TODAY
On a dreary Monday morning in the fall of 1847, 26-year-old Elizabeth Blackwell showed up for class at Geneva Medical College in upstate New York, en route to becoming the first woman in America to receive a medical degree. Five years later, her younger sister Emily would earn one of her own. Over the next two decades the two women would go on to establish the first hospital run for and by women, and the first women’s medical college with training as rigorous as that received by men.
Despite all these firsts, the remarkable story of Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell isn’t particularly well known. Now, historian Janice P. Nimura has written “The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women – and Women to Medicine” (Norton, 336 pp., ★★★ out of four), a fascinating dual biography that restores the two sisters to their rightful place in U.S. history and illuminates a period riven like our own with bitter disagreem
5 books not to miss: African Lookbook, Doctors Blackwell usatoday.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from usatoday.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.