03/03/2026
Women Who Changed Healthcare:
Elizabeth Blackwell, MD (1821-1910): A fabulous first
Black and white photo of Elizabeth Blackwell
National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health
In 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman in the United States to be granted an MD degree. Blackwell began her pioneering journey after a deathly ill friend insisted she would have received better care from a female doctor.
Turned away by more than 10 medical schools, Blackwell refused a professor’s suggestion that she disguise herself as a male to gain admission. “It was to my mind a moral crusade,” she wrote at the time. “It must be pursued in the light of day, and with public sanction, in order to accomplish its end.”
Blackwell ultimately attended Geneva Medical College in western New York: Male students there asked their opinion agreed to admit her, thinking the matter a mere prank.
In the years following graduation, Blackwell struggled to find work, but in 1857, she co-founded the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children to serve the poor. The hospital, like the Woman’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary she created in 1867 and many other efforts, was also intended to support and encourage women hoping to pursue careers in medicine.
credit: National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health; aamc.org
