Men of the Time, eleventh edition/Blackwell, Elizabeth
BLACKWELL, Elizabeth, born in Bristol, England, Feb. 3, 1821. Her father, in 1832, removed to the United States, where he died in 1838, leaving his widow and nine children almost penniless. Miss Blackwell aided in their support by teaching, at the same time studying medicine at Charleston, South Carolina, and at Philadelphia. She applied for admission to a number of medical schools, but was refused by all, except those of Castleton, Vermont, and Geneva, New York, and at the latter she was matriculated in 1847, and in 1849 received the first medical degree conferred upon a woman in the United States. After her graduation she spent a year and a half in the Maternité Hospital of Paris, and that of St. Bartholomew in London, and in 1851 established herself as a physician, mainly in the treatment of women and children, at New York, where, in 1857, she founded an infirmary for women and children, having also a large private practice. She has published "The Laws of Life," 1852; "Counsel to Parents on the Moral Education of their Children," 1879; and other professional works. In 1859 she again visited England, and delivered a course of medical lectures. Her younger sister, Emily Blackwell, took her degree of M.D. in 1854, completed her studies in the hospitals of New York, Edinburgh, Paris, and London, and is connected with the New York Infirmary for Women and Children.