Elizabeth Blackwell - part IV

June 14, 2010

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The dispensary was incorporated in 1854 and moved to a small house she bought on 15th Street. When her sister Dr. Emily Blackwell finished &#&medical school&#& she joined Elizabeth, later Dr. Marie Zakrzewska did the same. Both of them had recently graduated from Western Reserve &#&Medical School&#&.

Elizabeth Blackwell never got married nor had any children of her own. In 1856 she adopted Katherine "Kitty" Barry, an orphan of Irish origin. Kitty was her companion for the rest of her life.

On May 12, 1857, Elizabeth, Emily and Marie opened the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children, a clinic with an all-female staff. That same year, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman listed on the British Medical Register while she had been lecturing there.

A decade later, a few years after the end of the war, in November 1868, Elizabeth, with the help of her sister Emily, opened the Women's &#&Medical College&#& adjacent to the New York Infirmary. Elizabeth Blackwell was as professor of hygiene. She had developed the plan for its creation years before in conjunction with Florence Nightingale in England.

The Women's &#&Medical College&#& was the first school entirely dedicated to the medical education of women and to upgrading that education.

This institution grew to be so important that later became one of the first &#&medical schools&#& in America to mandate four years of study. One of the first graduates of the Women's &#&Medical College&#& was Rebecca Cole, the first black woman to become a doctor.

In 1869, Elizabeth returned to England leaving her sister Emily Blackwell in charge of the college. In her birth country she opened, with Florence Nightingale, the Women's &#&Medical College &#&.

She also helped to form the National Health Society in 1871, and accepted a chair in gynecology at the New Hospital and London School of Medicine for Women in 1875. In 1879 Elizabeth moved permanently to the village of Hastings on the English Channel, where she finally gave up private practice and spent the rest of her life lecturing and writing.

She died on 31 May 1910, at the age of 89, at her home in Hastings, Sussex after a stroke, leaving behind her a legacy that would pave the way for countless generations of female physicians.

Gradually female students began to be accepted at more established universities, because of it and due to scarce funds the Medical College closed in 1989. However the hospital Elizabeth Blackwell founded, now renamed New York Infirmary-Strang Clinic and greatly enlarged still operates on East 15th Street.