>> i'm hear what "women in white coats" olivia campbell authors of "the doctors blackwell" how two pioneering sisters brought medicine to women and women to medicine, "women in white coats" and how the first women doctors changed the world of medicine. please start submitting your questions now. welcome olivia and janice. to get things kicked off i'd love for you to tell me about your books. olivia would you like to start? >> sure. my book is about victorian women among the first practicing in das who were women in the victorian era. they decided after receiving such terrible sexism and their attempt to get an m.d. they had to work together to establish a medical pool for women and they established the school -- medical school for women. >> and "the doctors blackwell" blackwell" -- elizabeth blackwell is the first woman in the country to receive a medical degree in 1849 and her sister emily who is five years younger was recruited into the field by her older sister and became the third woman doctor in history. they founded the new york infirmary for women and children and the medical college in new york. wonderful. these books are so fantastically complementary. janice's book dives into the lives of these trailblazers and olivia's book looks at how women change the course of medicine. i have to ask did you know each other before you wrote the book? >> no. >> they are was the convergence of great minds and thinking alike. >> it's a shows me when you look at history there are so many lessons we can learn in the moments today we are in and the fact that you both came upon these dual narratives. what do you think that tells us about the role of women in medicine now? >> olivia do you want to go ahead? >> well i think it's how much skepticism there still is in medicine and as a journalist writing about the sexism now. i think it was really sad to hear about the sexism in wanting a triumphant ending. they overcame sexism in medicine and everything's great. of course there are all sorts of specialties within medicine but at the same time still difficult in the profession. spirit the story of elizabeth blackwell if you've heard of her at all you probably heard of her because you read a children's biography of her when you were little. >> she's a complicated figure as well as her sister emily and part of the lesson that i learned from taking a deep dive into their lives was to remember that female hero's don't have to be adorable and likeable. i think we err in this country sometimes by insisting that our heroes be somebody we want to have a beer with. elizabeth ann emily blackwell were meticulously fabulous. they were challenging personalities. they were often out of step with the general direction of the women's movement that they were no less path breakers and trailblazers, so it's important i think sometimes to see past the personal and the larger picture when considering these figures of the past two or more complicated than the children's biography sometimes make them out. >> thank you. i would love to share what it was like to be diving into history in a very stressful time. what was it like to write a book during the pandemic and how did that if it did affect, what you are writing or were you pretty far along in that process? >> i was lucky in that i flew to london in the fall of 2019 so i just barely missed it. i went to scotland and i went to england through the archives and the files and all the letters and papers written by these women. for me the initial research part wasn't really affected by the pandemic. it was the editing process like checking copy edits and that kind of thing once a pandemic hit. for me it was an issue of trying to find a reason to keep going and to find a reason for feeling like my work was important in a global emergency. it was a very depressing time but i kept telling myself these women are the reason why they are women doctors waiting at the hospital to treat people right now and this is why there are women pulmonologist and respiratory therapists and all these professions and specialties. these women are the reason that they are are waiting for the hospital right now. >> i also was extremely lucky to have handed in my manuscript in the first week of march at 2020 and i'm still feeling grateful for that. and then i publish this book in january of 2021 at the peak of the inauguration. it was an incredible moment for stories both of public health and women. in some ways there was a silver lining to having a project in this moment and certainly personally having a sense of purpose that the book was coming out and to do the work regardless of what was happening all around and then the ability to connect to people and reintroduce them from the past virtually has been in some ways a gift. i have certainly spoken and connected with more people this year than i ever could have if i try to do it all in person so i just felt it was a silver lining this year. >> it's wonderful to be at events like this and i was thinking about how it's amazing that anyone can tune in and be part of these decisions and in a way the pandemic has opened that up. one of the things that struck me about your books was the power of women entering medicine you have to have some sort of equivalence because when you have inclusive perspective it's going to improve medical care. can you talk about how that happened or if that didn't happen, why not? >> i think in the case of elizabeth ann emily blackwell there was this intuitive sense that they had that the accepted wisdom of much of victorian medicine was wrong. they believed intuitively and the power of fresh air and cold water and had >> probably more time at the bedside growing up as women in the household then the men who were dominating the profession. they brought a unique perspective, an awareness of the body in a female body certainly that mail doctors didn't have and i found it fascinating to watch them not just be intuitive about innovation and the power of hygiene but also open-minded to fads and crazes that the mainstream profession often dismissed. things like homeopathic medicine and interesting alternative approaches. they were reluctant to dismiss them out of hand. they were open-minded and elizabeth wanted to commit heresy of intelligence and i think that's an approach that a lot of her male colleagues weren't really oriented towards. >> those were fascinating times to be researching medicine. elizabeth blackwell was the last of the old world medicine and the people that she trained in the people that are slightly younger than her like sophia and elizabeth garrett anderson were kind of in this new school of looking at science. elizabeth blackwell was a ahead of her time in medicine. that was that era that was kind of unheard-of and she was a little skeptical of medicine probably rightfully so because a lot of it was poison. these women were interested in researching women's health in a way that the mail doctors were not and if you look at her inventories of many of these women the whole reason i went to medicine was because they had a female relative who died of a death or went to a man who couldn't talk to them the way they wanted to about the nature of their problem. most mailed doctors rode off women's problems and you have a is the whole reason you are sick. you are a woman and that's the reason you are sick. newer younger women were coming in and saying let's look at what's really causing these problems. it's not because i have a and i'm getting sick. it's something else. the heavy clothing that women wore and most of them are kept indoors and didn't get exercised away boys did. they were things that were totally radical at the time. >> in a wasn't just what women wore, there wasn't a lot of research into women's health. and how did their work change that? >> d want to go ahead olivia? >> sorry. one of the theories at the time was that women shouldn't be working in shouldn't be going to college because you were using up your energy especially during your period so all your forces being used by having your period. if you go to school you are going to rot your uterus out and you'll be rendered infertile basically. if you exert yourself too much mentally or physically during your period. some of these early women in the things they were fighting against the often said let's look at the working process. women are working during their period all the time. they didn't say you can't go to college because you want to have babies later. you don't want to use up all your life force so they pointed out the hypocrisy inherent in the classist ideas. they took women in gathered them up and tested their vitality during their period and said this is false. we don't have the science to prove it. said there's an interesting dispirited when you look at elizabeth ann emily of -- blackwell. elizabeth blackwell didn't go into medicine because she cared deeply about women she went into medicine because she cared deeply about enlightening humanity and the idea that women could be anything they wanted to be. she's chose medicine strategically as a way to rip that point. with emily was more interested in actual practices of healing humans and emily became a surgeon and was interested in advancing certain techniques like fistula surgery which was a way to rescue certain women from a living death and injury caused by prolonged labor. she was part of refining those techniques are at i would say though the blackwell sisters interestingly and this is part of the complication of their story and why they end up on the children shelf is that they were more interested in women's medical education i would argue then individual health. they do a lot about educating women about hygiene and about childbearing practices and neonatal and prenatal care but i think their primary and their most proud achievement were promoting medical education of women more than women's individual patient care. >> and what was their reception and practice? olivia d want to take that first? >> they are three women that i write on have different have. elizabeth blackwell had a relatively easy time is the big sister figure and it was when she got into practicing that she really had problems getting patients in the first place and the other two women had a family life rate they don't have the problems that elizabeth blackwell does. in the u.s. at the time getting an undergrad degree anyone can go if you are a man you don't even have to apply. you might not ever seen a patient. luckily since the blackwell's understood they could get more training they got training in hospital settings and things like that. elizabeth had a terrible time. she fused together training with private tutors and she was thrown out of a nurse -- in a hospital. most of them medical schools were attached to a hospital. she would try to enable her way in and say can i take this class and the marty here? she went to multiple places. she was cobbling together what she learned in finally did earn her license. she did eventually get her m.d. and went to paris and gutter and the they are afraid she was a celebrity. but she had a pretty good practice. sophia is another one that isn't interesting complicated character. she had a temper. she was not the kind of person that history like to remember but it was her idea and it was her baby. she had the worst time of all and getting a medical degree. she went to university and said hey can i apply and be in your program in the middle local school and they were like we can't afford to do it for just one woman so no, you can't come. she said i will get more women. he puts out an ad that they seque says they are our group of women that want to go to medical school and is there anyone who wants to come within she gets a small group of men and women and they go back to university and say okay there's more than one woman. can i become a tech now and they are like okay, i guess so. they go through four years of intense training and they do all the classes to get a medical degree and at the end of it the university doesn't give them their degree. they were not able to get a license to practice because of the degree in the uk. they had a hard time earning a degree and they don't actually get it and they can't practice. eventually years later she takes that sam and does get her license and she got them to open up two women. because of her temper she was pushed out of the school that she establishes and she didn't have connection to the store so it's -- to the school so was a sad story for her. spamming even after they receive their degrees in the case of the blackwell sisters having an empty did not confer anything. quite the contrary there were plenty of people in society new york who didn't want to have anything to do with a woman who had m.d. attached to her name. it was fine to talk about lawrence not -- florence nightingale and nursing because nursing remained in this sphere that women should inhabit but when we started to talk about women doctors that was unthinkable. i think elizabeth blackwell certainly more so than emily really craved and regretted that struggle that she had for recognition. emily i think was much more drawn to just doing the work of medical practice and wanted to get on with it. i think that was a very poignant part of the story that the work that she did not necessarily when her the recognition that a man in her position with would have enjoyed. >> it seems like elizabeth grappled with legacy and thought a lot about what this meant for the practice of medicine. >> i felt like she could have chosen a profession. but her goal was social change. and how women can be anything and not just nurses. and they would say why are you making it so hard for yourself? just go be a nurse. that's not the point. just go dressed as a man. that's not the point. the point is the woman to be a doctor and to be in charge. >> we have some questions coming in so i want to make sure we get to as many as we can. how do you think things might be different in texas and elsewhere regarding the body rights of people if there were more women and non-binary people in medicine both now and historically? >> that's a big question. i think the issues in texas and elsewhere have more to do with the people and government than the people in the hospitals. i suspect and i can't back that up with research today but i suspect if you spoke to many if not most physicians they would be eager to help their patients however they need to be helped and their constraints have to do with the law and not with medical. >> i think the general consensus is unfortunate out there and i've seen dr. speaking out about how it shouldn't be restrict did. >> do you think the sexism is an uphill battle with these women and did it push them to champion the suffrage movement collects. >> elizabeth blackwell did mike the suffrage people. she's such a fascinating character. i call her an odd duck the tissues very centric. she had this view of society is being men and women are equal but not stepping on men's toes by achieving it. she did not want to fight the man for woman's role. she thought she could be harmonious and well received. >> i think in addition first of all she was not much of a team player and collaborate with the leaders of the women's group was not her cup of tea. i think her primary piece with the suffrage is well they weren't suffrage is when she was there. they were in emerging women's rights movement but the first rarity of that movement was the vote. the first party was votes were renan. i don't think elizabeth was against the votes for women. she just didn't think it made any sense to give women the vote before they could think independently from men. he gave women the vote before any of the other works wouldn't they just vote the way their man told them to and you've heard that phrase the cart before the horse. >> elizabeth was a member one of the earliest organizations in london. she was an organizer and an advocate. i feel they were advocating for women to have greater rights despite the sheer fact of what they were doing. >> certain medical practices and nutritional standards. it still assumes that men are the standard body and women are a barrier on that. how has that changed in the days of the women that you wrote about and what else needs to happen? >> not enough is the answer to that. the joke in medical school is it's the norm of a guy named norm. the white guy of middle height is what all of the standards are calibrated on the net needs to be changed quickly and it isn't changing quickly enough. >> i think we definitely need more studies. i think it's a taboo thing but it's important overall. >> very true. and then one of the things i always wonder about when i'm reading a book is what was on the cutting room floor that you found interesting but couldn't find a way to work it in? >> in the beginning of this book the idea was an essay and what i left out because it was this epic scene of a riot that happened in philadelphia. i wanted to originally to talk about a lot more women in then i did include in the book that i wanted to talk about the medical college of pennsylvania popped up around the same time that elizabeth blackwell's medical school did. these two women worked together to found the london school of medicine for women are they had this amazing time. i had so much great material with these female medical students come to do a surgical demonstration or lecture there were 300 medical students waiting for them throwing tinfoil and spitball since hitting tobacco juice on their dresses and yelling things at them. just because these women want to train a stock years. i felt like it set the stage for exactly what these women were going through but in the end it was the narrative of these women. i still loved that. >> for me the arc of the book that i settled on was the story of elizabeth and emily blackwell together and is 1870 when they founded the institute new new york they parted ways and spent the last 40 years of their lives on separate continents. emily stayed in new york and randy of petitions that they had founded. both of them lead fascinating lives after 1870 but i wanted this book to be a double portrait and you can't necessarily write a double biography when there are two separate lights going on so the action of the look in in the 1870s in there so much fascinating stuff beyond that both emily being a surgeon i'm running a hospital and having a female partner and having a child in the elizabeth is doing reform in england studying the contagious disease active into some increasingly eccentric pursuits of being anti-vax and more in more pro spirits was a much as an avid 19th century per se. there's lots of stuff but that's probably another book. >> i think a double biography is in the works are ready. the theme of the national book festival this year is open a book, open the world and how have books open the world for you? >> rowing up we didn't have a lot of money but we always have the library. one of the children's libraries was next door. every week there was no limit and reading was such a huge part of my childhood. never felt like -- we have the stories and we had the histories and all those children's books it helps so much and it really open the world to me for sure. >> i had a similar bookworm childhood and as an adult i discovered the wonders of the archives, different kind of library with a different kind of librarian in charge but no fewer into deeper world to explore. took me a long time to realize that history is just stories about people and if you can dig down into the things left behind and hear their voices you really can travel in time and that's one of my favorite things to do is lose myself in the world contained in archives and time travel. >> thank you for bringing us along with you as readers. i'm sorry to say that we are out of time so thank you both for sharing your time with us so generously and thanks to the audience for your questions and i hope you keep enjoying the national book festival at llc.gov/book fest.

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