Elizabeth Blackwell, MD, is well known as the first woman doctor in America. Less well known is her sister Emily in becoming a physician. Emily followed Elizabeth’s path through the hardships of initially not receiving a degree despite doing the work. They co-founded a women’s hospital in New York City along with a women’s medical college.
Today, around half of all medical students are female. Their careers are the Blackwell sisters’ legacies. Florence Nightingale saw nursing as women’s place in medicine. The Blackwell sisters showed that physicians, too, can be female.
In this biography, Nimura chronicles the hardships, twists, and turns of Emily and Elizabeth’s lives. She tells how they built impeccable resumes in their training, only to struggle in initially drumming up enough business in their practice together. (“Who would want to whisper medical secrets to women anyways?” contemporaries thought.) They found ways to push forward and become both national luminaries and excellent physicians.
This work can inspire anyone who lives around the American healthcare system, especially budding female physicians. It reminds us of the history of struggle behind common contemporary practices. It also teach us to empathize with others’ difficulties because of uncontrollable things – like gender or race. In their lives, Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell showed how excellence can be sought out and attained. Nimura brings that tale home for a new cadre of female medical students.
The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine
By Janice P. Nimura
Copyright (c) 2021
W.W. Norton Company
ISBN13 9780393635546
Page Count: 336
Genre: Biography, History of Medicine
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