July 13, 2024 • 49 mins
Becoming the first licensed woman physician in America was tough, convincing male surgeons to wash their hands between patients was even tougher. In this classic episode Josh and Chuck pay tribute to a genuine pioneer in medicine and society.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, their friends, It's me Josh, And for this week's Select,
I've chosen our April twenty twenty episode on Elizabeth Blackwell,
who is a complex person to say the least, and
she's a great example of how nobody fits neatly into
one group or another. And she's a great lesson and
how a person who you might hold different views from
and values from can still be one of your heroes.
(00:22):
I hope you get a lot out of this episode
about Elizabeth Blackwell, the feminist icon.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Charles w Charles Chuck, Wayne Twain Bryant, and there's Jerry
Jerome Roland, the Rizzy, And I'm just Josh, like just
Jack was just Jack Wow, Okay, heck coming in, Thank you.
Let's do a little jazz hands there.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Just call me Twain Chwain from now on, Chwain. It's
not awkward to pronounce.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
It's really close to schwing. Remember that shwing, Oh man,
I totally forgot about it until just now. Shwing, Chuck shwing, shwing.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
That's how you have to say it.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
No, you can say it anyway like schwing.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yeah. Well, what I really love is that we're talking
about America's first woman physician, an amazing woman named doctor
Elizabeth Blackwell, who had an amazing family and her story
is incredible, and we're saying shwing, shwing at the beginning.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Right, especially considering that she was a a rather puritanical
person in a lot of senses, she would probably not
have been down with us saying shwing.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
No, no, because you know what, uh, she and her
family were Quakers, And I know some Quakers and have
known some Quakers. They hate shwing, they do, but you
know what they love what being awesome?
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Yeah, yeah, no, I mean for sure this I get
the impression that her entire family is a pretty good
example of like a like a Quaker family.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Quaker.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Every Quaker I've known has just had it like had
it all figured out. It seems like they're like the
the Buddhists of the West.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Yeah, yeah, pretty much. They also I think they also
go by the Society of Friends, which says a lot too. Yeah,
I'm pretty sure. And then, if you remember correctly, Charles
are Pacifist episode focused heavily on the Quakers because they're
big time pacifists too. So Elizabeth Blackwell, just by virtue
(02:54):
of having been a Quaker, was a pretty interesting, like
upstanding up, bright person with a good head on her shoulders.
But she also, like individually personally, was a very amazing person.
And not just the fact that she was the first
licensed woman physician in America. Yeah, but to get there
(03:18):
she really had to blaze her own path and put
up with a lot of bs, you might put it,
and so much so that even in her autobiography, which
was published in eighteen ninety five when she was in
her seventies, I think she called it pioneering work, and
(03:39):
that there's really no better way to put it. She
was absolutely a pioneer, and not just getting herself established
as a woman physician in America, but in making it
so that there could be more women physician in America, physicians.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
And more and more, much more. So.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Let's start with, oh, I don't know, February eighteen twenty one.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
What's significant about that date.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
She was born as a little bebe near Bristol, England.
She was the third of nine children. Her mom was
Hannah Lane, who came from a family of merchants who
had some dough and her pops was Samuel Blackwell.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
He was a sugar refiner and also prosperous.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
And like we said, they were Quakers, which means that
they were very cool, and this was eighteen twenty one.
They were not down with slavery. They were activists against slavery.
They were abolitionists. They supported women's suffrage. Her brother Henry
married Lucy Stone, who was very famous women's rights activist.
(04:41):
Her little sister Emily followed in her footsteps in medicine.
Her sister in law Antoinette Brown Blackwell, first female ordained
minister in Protestant the Protestant denomination. Yeah, they were way
ahead of their time.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Yeah, and you can trace I mean, both of her
parents seem to be pretty cool, and you can trace
there the roots of their sensibilities back to their parents.
Like Samuel was a dissenter, like he was a Quaker,
which is I guess a form of Protestantism, but he
was definitely he didn't recognize like the sole religious authority
(05:17):
of say, like the Church of England or anything like that.
And so as a result his children could not go
to public school. He said, fine, I've got some money
I'm a prosperous sugar merchant. I'm going to hire the
best tutors I can find. And not only that, I'm
going to defy the conventions of England and have these
tutors teach my daughters the same stuff that they're going
(05:41):
to teach my sons, which is unheard of. But that
really formed the basis for especially Elizabeth's progression and education
that she came to expect to be taught just like
she was a boy because of how she was raised.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Yeah, and you know, by all accounts, her parents were
both pretty great. Her dad was a very caring individual.
He thought that all kids of any gender should reach
their full potential. Sure, he didn't physically punish his kids,
which was weird.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
At the time. People are like, why ain't you hitting
your kids? Yeah, and he said, I don't believe in it.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
I've got a switch right here you can borrow. Well, yeah, really,
do we.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Not have a switch? That's what the deal is. He
doesn't have a switch or a paddles. Let's get him
a switch so he you know, they would had sort
of like a demerit system in their house, and if
you add it up to too many demerits. You would
have to do something like eat by yourself in the
attic or something that sounds horrific, also like sticking a
(06:45):
kid in a closet. But I think it was just
a room removed from the family dinner.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Yeah, it was just you have to go away from
the family. We can't even bear to look at you. You
make us want a puke.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
That's right. But everything changed when he lost his sugar
refinery in a fire and said, you know what, let's
pack our bags and let's move to New York City.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
New York City.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
That's right, New York City.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Do you remember back in I don't know, like around
two thousand and seven eight. I feel like it was
right when we both started working around how stuff works,
that is sugar refinery and Savannah blew up.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Yeah, I remember that.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
I wrote an article about that. It's like that sugar
dust is volatile it they can catch fire, and I
wondering if that's what happened to his sugar refinery.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
I bet you.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Okay, So they moved to New York. They lived in
New York and New Jersey for six years, as you do. Yeah,
And one of the cool things that I liked about him.
He was a little paradoxical. So he was a sugar
refinery made his money off of sugar refining. But the
sugar industry was based almost entirely on slave labor around
(07:51):
the world how sugarcane was grown. That's how he didn't
use slaves, I can tell you that. But he still
made his money in an industry that was heavy, heavy
on slavery. And in fact, his children were such staunch abolitionists.
Even as young children, they refused to eat sugar because
they knew that slaves had had a hand in producing it,
(08:12):
so they would they wouldn't even eat it as kids.
Little kids wouldn't need sugar because of the slavery involved.
But he still made his money off of that. But
when he got to America, one of the first things
he tried was to introduce sugar beets, which don't require
slave labor. There's a much less labor intensive process of
(08:34):
extracting sugar from sugar beets, and this was really revolutionary
at the time. They think they first isolated sugar from
beats in eighteen hundred, like thirty years before, and they
had been introduced to America just like two years before.
He took this up, so he was on the cutting
edge of sugar beat production. But it didn't actually work
(08:56):
out very well.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
No, his original sugar refinery went went south in eighteen
thirty seven, so he said, let me move to Cincinnata
and I'll get in on the sugar beat thing. But
just a few weeks after they got to Cincinnati, in
August of eighteen thirty eight, he died of a fever.
And because he had lost that sugar refinery and didn't
have the next sugar beat operation up and going, they
(09:21):
didn't have a lot of dough. His family was left
without a lot of money.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Yeah, which I mean, that's kind of be really tough
to go from wealthy to not, you know, in just
one fell swoop. But that's kind of what happened with
Elizabeth's family. And a few years later she resolved, and
she was twenty one that she would not be dependent
on any man, that she was going to be self sufficient,
(09:46):
and she was never going to marry, and she wanted
to make her own way. And I mean, it's pretty
tough not to trace that line directly back to you
to state that her father left his family and not
in any way that you know, that was his own
doing or his own fault, but that was just the
conventions of the time. And so for a woman to
resolve that she would make her own way in life
(10:08):
was very unconventional. But if Elizabeth Blackwell was anything, she
was very unconventional.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
So she and her mom and a couple of her sisters,
they were teachers for a little while, and she eventually
and this is kind of jumping ahead a bit, but
she did adopt a girl, a seven year old Irish
immigrant orphan that she named Kitty. Her name was Catherine
Barry and went by Kitty, and she was with her
for the duration of her life. But she never got married,
(10:36):
and she decided to become a doctor when she had
a really close friend who was dying, said you know what,
I think that I might have lived if I might
have had a woman as a doctor, because they're more
compassionate and I might have gotten better treatment. And Elizabeth
Blackwell was like, WHOA, that really speaks to me.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Yeah, they think that the woman was probably dying of
uterine cancer, and she thinks that she would have she
would have disclosed more of her condition possible sooner and
at the very least she would have been more comfortable
in her dying days being treated by a woman rather
than poked and prodded by some man who seemed to
be less compassionate than she believed a woman would be.
(11:22):
The thing about Elizabeth Blackwell is she, first of all,
she was struck by this, and she was so struck
struck by it that she it moved her to want
to become a doctor. But not only that, she had
to overcome a natural, deep seated aversion to the idea
(11:42):
of the body or anatomy or medicine. Like she was
not at all interested in this to begin with, and
in fact, she had an aversion to it, but she
was so moved by that woman and her experience that
she resolved to overcome her disgust in her aversion at
bodily functions an anatomy and become a doctor herself.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
It's pretty I mean, that's a really key detail.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
It is a huge league. I mean that's enormous. Like
not only she like she just wasn't a kid who
wanted to be a doctor.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Right, Like, I love the side of blood and internal organs,
so this kind of fits anyway.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Yeah, she had to overcome an aversion to it on
top of overcoming the aversion that society had against a
woman becoming a doctor, because at the time it was
it was considered that a woman couldn't know enough about
the human body to be a physician and still be
considered a morally upright woman, that her morals were at
(12:37):
risk of being corrupted just by knowing everything there is
to know about the human body.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Yeah, I mean, let's be honest. They would have to
see a male penis as part of their training.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Sure, a pp.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
So, man, we're.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Such children, we are. So she said, all right, I'm
gonna do this. I'm gonna get over this. I'm going
to be a doctor. How do I do this? I'll
just go to medical school. Medical school said no, no, no, no, no.
Women can't go to medical school. There are a few
ladies around the country that are unlicensed physicians that worked
as apprentices and learn their trade, but.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
You're not going to go this traditional route.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
And medical school at the time was just weird anyway,
which we'll get into a little bit later.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
But we I mean, we also got into it in
our grave robbing episode. Yees was similar to that time.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Around that time, it was crazy. It wasn't like it
wasn't the I don't think doctors were as respected back then.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Even No, they I know, because they were the ones
we who were cutting open bodies and just kind of
figuring stuff out as they went along. And if you
went to a doctor, there was like an eighty percent
chance you were walking out one limb short.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
So she while she was a teacher, she boarded with families,
and that she did a lot of this stuff in
the South, which we'll get to as well. But two
Southern physicians mentored her. She still could not get into
medical school. Of course, she had some physician friends who
were Quakers. She asked them about it. They said, that's
(14:11):
a great idea, but no, it costs too much. You're
never going to be able to get in. What you
should do is disguise yourself as a man and go
to France. And she was like, not a bad idea.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
If that's the best advice somebody's giving you, you need
to rethink the people who you take advice from.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
It sounds like she was game, though, but she decided
to save money instead and apply to medical school in
the United States.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
So in today dollars that did the.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Old inflation calculator three grand back then, it would be
about eighty five thousand dollars today, So that's a.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
Lot of money.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
And she between I think, for a period of two
or three years, went south and taught school and slave states,
which was very hard for her to do in order
to save money for medical school. Yeah, she didn't know
what she could get into anyway.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Right exactly. In the first place she taught in Kentucky,
she only lasted a year. She's just found the social
climate so intolerable. Yeah, she was really you know, she
couldn't put up with it. And I don't know how
she was able to better in North and South Carolina,
but yeah, I mean she managed in two years to
raise eighty three grand from teaching I guess rich kids
(15:25):
in North and South Carolina. But she also while she
was there, she's like, well, I want to teach the
slave kids too. I'll do it pro bono. And they said, well,
it's against the law for you to teach slave kids.
And they said, but you can teach them Sunday school.
And she said, fine, I'll do that. And there was
a great quote that came from her in a letter
(15:47):
to her family in eighteen forty five, and I'm not
sure what state she was in, maybe even Kentucky, but
she said, I assure you I felt a little odd
sitting down before those degraded little beings, saying they were
naturally degraded, that they had been degraded by other people.
I believe to teach them a religion which the owners
profess to follow whilst violating its very first principles. It
(16:12):
really does. She was like, you know, these people are
profess to be Christians, but do not treat other people
like Christians. And that's just such a Quaker thing to do.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Huh, that is a very Quaker thing to do.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
You want to take a little break, Yeah, let's do it. Okay,
We're going to take a break, everybody, and we'll be
back to tell you more about Elizabeth Blackwell's progress towards
med school. So, Chuck, like you said, she was mentored
(16:54):
by a couple of doctors who she stayed with while
she was teaching in North and South Carolina, one of
whom was actually a professor of medicine, so he had
all the books. He was very encouraging to her. He
taught her everything he could. And that was, like you said,
a way that a woman could become a physician, but
an unlicensed physician certainly not one that was in any
(17:18):
way established as an actual legitimate physician. And that was
ultimately her goal.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Yeah, Like she continued to get sort of tutored by
different people in the South that she knew who were physicians,
and it was great that these.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
Men encouraged her and tutored her. Said, here, used my books.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
But again, like you said, she wanted to do the
real deal and forge a path and not just kind
of go the back door route. So she applied to
all the medical schools in New York and Philly. She
applied to twelve more in the Northeast. She was rejected
by all of them, and on the thirtieth application to
(17:58):
Geneva Medical College in Western New York in eighteen forty seven,
she was accepted. And I raised my voice because she
got accepted. Because it was a joke that well everyone
thought it was a practical joke. The professor there, the
dean of the medical med school, basically said.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Hey, let's take a vote here.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
We'll have all the men here that go here vote
on whether or not a woman can come to school here.
And if every single person says yes, she can come here,
and if one person says no.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
She won't.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
They all thought it was a prank from I guess
the neighboring rival medical school, say West Geneva. Yeah, they said, sure,
let her in and it wasn't a joke. And they
did let her in.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
They did, and apparently they were all very surprised. Like
this almost sounds like an urban legend, but from what
I saw, like this is across the board. What happened
that they thought it was a practical joke and it
turned out to be real. And that is how she
up going to medical school.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
So when she showed up, she was taking this quite seriously.
She was twenty six already, she'd spent some time like
living around, seeing the country. Just she was twenty six,
Like that says a lot about a person over say
like twenty or nineteen or something like that. And so
she when she showed up, not only was she a
little more mature, probably than some of her contemporaries, she
(19:24):
also was she was well aware of the convention she
was breaking, of the challenges and the obstacles that laid
ahead of her. And there's a pretty good report like
the fact that she showed up at medical school made
the papers, and in fact, the Boston Medical Journal even
wrote up something about the fact that she was Yeah,
(19:46):
that she was there taking medical classes. The Boston Medical
Journal said that she comes into the class with great composure,
takes off her bonnet and puts it under the seat,
exposing a fine phrenology.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Are you kidding me? You're talking about the shape of
her head.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Yeah, yeah, but this is the Boston Medical Journal at
the time. Hopefully the BMJ has officially stopped using phrenology, yeah,
in any way, shape or form. But we'll have to
We'll have to get a subscription and find out.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
So we talked earlier about the fact that medical school
at the time was really different. It sounds like animal
house or something. It was very raucous. Apparently when there
were lecturers, you would make crude jokes out loud, and
no matter what you're talking about. It sounds like a
bunch of children taking sex at or something. Yeah, in
(20:37):
like the sixth grade. But apparently Blackwell's effect on the whole,
like every class she went into was everyone took it
a lot more seriously because she was there.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Yeah. Because again, like if you were a man, you
acted far, far, far differently around a woman at the time,
where you were just much more genteel. It was just
the social convention, and so you had to bite your tongue.
In medical school if Elizabeth Blackwell is in your class,
so you just did. That was just kind of the
effect that she had on class just by being a woman.
(21:10):
But even beyond that, there was this whole view that
these guys were somehow contributing to this woman's moral corruption
by even being in the same class with her, let
alone being the instructor teaching her. And so one of
the things she ran into in med school was she
would sometimes be asked to go step outside because this
(21:33):
particular lecture is a little rough, and Elizabeth Blackwell did
not truck to that at all. She was very adamant that. Remember,
she was educated like a boy by the tutors her
father hired. She had a full expectation to be left
out of absolutely nothing. At med school. She was to
be a full physician, and so she was to learn
everything that any physician would learn. And eventually, over time
(21:56):
she kind of overcame this genteel opposition to her presence
by her professors, in male classmates.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Yeah, and I think in no small part due to
her serious take in her fastidiousness, in her the fact
that in the end she graduated first in her class.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Yeah, this says a lot.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
She was the best student in eighteen forty nine. She
graduated first, ultimately earned the respect of her fellow students.
Not to say that it was a it was a cakewalk.
There were still plenty of jerks there, and you know,
a lot of them had animosity toward her.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Remember a cakewalk is racist?
Speaker 3 (22:37):
Is it really?
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Yeah? I remember we did a show on what was it?
I can't remember. The words that have different origins than
you would think, are different meanings than you would think.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
You remember, Yeah, I think I do remember that.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
I'm sorry, everybody, I'm sorry for interrupting you.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
That's okay.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
So it was no pie walk, good save chuck.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
Still plenty of jerks.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
There were some men there that would would laugh at her,
some in there that would support her, some men that
would jeer at her, some men that would help her out.
But like I said, in the end, she got that
degree first in her class. Apparently, and I don't know
if this is the movie version, but the medical School's
Dean bowed to her when she accepted her diploma, and
(23:26):
everyone busted out in applause.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Yeah, that's what a newspaper account said from the correspondent
who was there. And they also added and brother Bluto
became Senator Blue Tarski. Nice. That wrapped everything up.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Do you think that movie age as well? We're talking
about Animal House again.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
I haven't seen it in a wive should say sorry
in a while. I'm not sure. Okay, I have seen
it plenty of times, but I haven't seen it in
a while. I'm sure it doesn't it can't. Uh.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
I don't know, man, I think it's kind of timeless.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
However, I've heard certain people that I won't name say
it doesn't age well nol Oh yeah, yeah, Noel didn't
think you think there's a there's a raft of comedies
from that era that just are not funny.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Now wait, not funny or politically?
Speaker 3 (24:19):
Oh no, no, no, not funny.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Oh gotcha, Yeah, it doesn't age wells in like, why
is this? Why do people think this is a comedy classic?
It's not even that good?
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Gotcha? Gotcha? Okay, Yeah, I'll have to watch it again.
I haven't I haven't seen it.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
I don't know, man, I think it's kind of timeless
in its comedy, Okay, I mean sure there are parts
that don't age well in every other respect, like any
comedy made before like four years ago.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Sure, that's what I or know, Like like the last
five minutes, I thought that's what you were talking about. No,
I mean it's entirely possible, because I've seen some comedies
where I'm like, this is this is not at all funny,
like spies like us give me a break?
Speaker 3 (24:52):
Not good. No, I haven't seen it in a long time.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
It's not good.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
See now, I'm afraid to watch some of those oldies. Yeah,
I do.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
My dad taught me well. But if you if, if
you want to continue to cherish any movie that you
used to love, I would not risk it.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
No, we'll see.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Unless it's Ghostbusters. It definitely holds up. Friend.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Yeah, that new one looks good too. Was the new
one the sequel sort of?
Speaker 1 (25:23):
So it's technically Ghostbusters three?
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Yeah? Or four? I mean we or wait? Was there
a third or was just the first two? Yeah? The
second one?
Speaker 1 (25:32):
It was the first two and then the third one
had like Kate, I think Kate McKinnon. Different universe, didn't it.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Yeah, yeah, that was That was just a reboot, which
was great, I thought. But this new one is a
sequel many years later. And I think it's one of
their grandkids. You know, stuff starts happening.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
It looks good. Okay, And what's his name's kid?
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Rightman's kid is directing it.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
It's a oh, he's great Jason.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
Yeah, it's a Jason, rightman, jam So.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
That's good stuff. That might he might be a little
too high high brow for a Ghostbusters man.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
Man.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Well, hey, I can tell you you know who's spinning
in her grave right now about a thousand RPMs? Who
Elizabeth Blackwell?
Speaker 3 (26:15):
I know.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
I'm so sorry, doctor Blackwell. Should we take a break.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
I don't know who knows anymore?
Speaker 2 (26:20):
All right, let's take a break and we'll stop talking
about dumb old movies right for this.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
All right, So, Chuck, I think where we officially left off,
Elizabeth Blackwell received her diploma. The dean of the medical
school stood up and bowed, and the auditorium broke out
into applause, which is pretty awesome. Apparently, she when she
although she won over her classmates, there were still like
(27:03):
a lot of women actually of the time who were
not very happy with what she'd done. But she said,
nuts to you guys, that's right. I'm going to move
to Paris and London and I'm going to pursue my
practice there to start.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
That's right, which is a great idea. And when she
got there, they said, wow, you were a real deal
doctor and you have a medical degree. Here be a midwife.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Yeah, a woman Zachabu.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Yeah, she was led into midwife rein nursing. But she's
like really sort of trying to be revolutionary here because
all she sees are these men walking around not washing
their hands at all, and she's like, you know, what
is probably super important is personal hygiene and preventive care.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
And they're like, what's that.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Yeah, well they literally were what's that? Because this was
early eighteen fifties and remember our great stink episode.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Oh man, that was so good.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
So they were still operating under the miasma theory that
it was like bad vapors and smells that made you sick.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
Crazy.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
So her idea that it was like that hand washing
was part of this preventative medicine was really ahead of
its time. And so in addition, to being a woman,
who they were just discrediting out of hand anyway, just
for being a woman. They were also saying, like, you're
talking kooky stuff. Everybody knows it smells that make you sick.
Your nut job, go over there and deliver a baby.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
And she's like, but I haven't washed my hands, Like
we just told you. It doesn't matter. Babies are dirty.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
As long as your hands don't stink, it's fine.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Yeah, we should also mention it's right about here where
she lost sight in her left eye from an accident
that I can barely even talk about.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Oh, I want to can I please? So she contracted
purulent ophthalmia, which is an which is an of the eye,
and her I became infected because she was tending to
an infant who I guess had some sort of wound
that was infected, and Puss squirted in her left eye
(29:11):
from the infection and infected her left eye to such
a terrible degree that she became blind in her left eye.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Yes, and that is Puss.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
That is sad, but really sad because she was not
able to become a surgeon, which is what she really
wanted to do.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
It's also said that there was a baby with an infection. Well, sure,
a pussy infection.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
Let's not forget about that baby.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Sure that baby grew up to be Roy Kohane.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
She moved to the that's really good.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
She moved to the UK then from Paris, and this
is where she hooked up with a little buddy named
Florence Nightingale.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Yeah, who deserves her own episode too.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
Oh sure, totally. They became good friends. They were like,
you like to wash your hands? I do too, isn't
it awesome?
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Look, go do it together.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
That's kind of the long and short of it.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
They sat around and saying ABC's or I don't want
no scrubs wash their hands. And they were both like,
why are none of these men doctors ever washing their hands?
And they were both like, because they're dummies.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Yeah, just give them a few years in germ theory
will be developed and then they'll listen to Louis past
year or not. Yeah exactly, But I think that's pretty awesome.
It's almost like I don't know, Einstein and somebody else meeting,
you know, like, just it's cool to know that these
these two like legendary figures met and were friends at
one point in time.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Oh, totally.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
It's almost like a movie. You know what I'm saying,
This totally should be a movie. I'm surprised it's not
yet agreed. Maybe Jason Rightman could direct it.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
That's right, and maybe uh uh no, who's the guy
that Wolverine pretty Jackman?
Speaker 3 (30:55):
Yeah, maybe Hugh Jackman can be in it.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
He would play doctor Elizabeth Blackwell.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
That's right. And Jared from Subway can played the pus baby.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Yeah, everything would come full circle and the universe would
collapse in on.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
It, and then the Sharknado would kill them all.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Yeh.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
So she is pals with Laurence Nightingale. She decides, you
know what, I'm going to go back to New York.
It's eighteen fifty one and I really want to get
a practice going there. She got back, and of course
discrimination against women in the doctoring industry was still there,
so she didn't have a lot of opportunities. She didn't
(31:32):
have a lot of patience, she didn't have a lot
of other doctors that she could even exchange ideas with,
and so she started applying for jobs instead of starting
her own practice at the women's department in a big
city dispensary.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
But she was not.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
She was not hired. No, and I had to look
up a dispensary. Is it like a charity or public clinic.
So this ambition, yeah, woman's ambition, this first woman doctor
in the United States. Now, her ambition was to help
the poor. That was what she wanted to do. Her
(32:11):
missions in life were to help the poor, help women
retain their chastity and purity in the hopes of having
a good moral impact on the world around them, and
then to make it so that more women could become doctors.
And she was like a tireless fighter and champion of
(32:32):
all of these things. And so, in typical Elizabeth Blackwell fashion,
when she was turned down for a job at a dispensary,
she just opened her own dispensary.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
That's right, in a little single rented room. She saw
patients a few afternoons each week. It was incorporated in
eighteen fifty four, where they moved to a small house
there on the lower east Side East Village area of
Tompkins Square. Her sister, we mentioned that she followed. I
believe at the very beginning she followed in her sister's footsteps.
By this point she was doctor Emily Blackwell. She got
(33:06):
her degree at Western Reserve University in Cleveland, and she
joined her in eighteen fifty six with another doctor, doctor Marie.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
Ooh, zach.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Zak Zuska. Wow, that's the doctor Seuss pronunciation.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
That's a tough one.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
I would say, zach Vrevska. Okay, Zakrevska, all right.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
And they all opened the New York Infirmary for Women
and Children on Bleeker Street there in the West Village
in eighteen fifty seven.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Yep. And now you can go left out of the
doorway and hit a Swatch store. I know you're going
to say it the street and see and go get
a sandwich at La pan Quotidien.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
I saw this watch joke coming because I did the
old Google Earth too, and I was like, I guarantee
you that poked out to Josh.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
But what's crazy? So sixty four, at least as far
as the Google company is concerned, the sixty four Bleaker
Street doesn't exist anymore. Yeah, but that means that it
was subsumed by either the Kith Clothing or the Swatch store.
Somebody took over this. But there's a I.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
Think the Swatch store did in eighteen fifty.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Eight, there's Yeah, they were all on chains, right, but
there's a there's a physical structure that's still there. That
was the first women run infirmary or clinic, i should say,
in New York and what became one of the first
(34:34):
women's medical schools, amazing in the country. Not the first,
but one of the first. And there's no plaque, there's
no sign, there's no nothing really but the building is
not that I could see, but the building is still there.
You can still visit the spot where poor people went
and doctor Elizabeth Blackwell treated them.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Yeah with one eye.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Yeah, let's not forget that.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
Of sight in one eye, I should say.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
So she starts going, she's like to do this in
England too, in my home country. I'm gonna go back
and forth. I'm going to try and raise some money
to do the same thing over there. At the same time,
she's also taking on and it's amazing what you can
do when you don't get married and have to be
subservient to a man. Right, Like she was living singles,
(35:18):
so she had nothing but time. You know, she had
this adopted daughter. But I imagine as she grew she helped
her mom out with this stuff.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Yeah, and in their off time, they would watch Living
Single Together.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
So she was getting on other social reform movements, all
kinds of things to do with women's rights, family planning,
even way back then hygiene. Always did we mention eugenics
and how deep she got in that?
Speaker 3 (35:45):
Do we even know?
Speaker 1 (35:47):
I looked, and I could not see, because you would
think there'd be people that would say, like, oh, Elizabeth
Blackwell her, but listen to this eugenic stuff she's into.
I saw basically one of those things where it was
this list was repeated basically in the same order across
the right net. So I have no idea how much
(36:07):
she was into eugenics, but I do know I did
get an impression of her as far as women's rights
were concerned. She was a feminist through and through. Oh sure,
absolutely a feminist. But she was also a moralist and
a prude that died in the wool prude, and so
(36:29):
she was really concerned with.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
The moral purity.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Yeah, I guess the moral purity of women, because her
her whole thing was if a woman has basically had
sex out of wedlock, she has corrupted her morals, she's
traded in her morals, and now she's going to be
interested in men, She's going to think about other men
rather than her husband. She's not going to be able
to focus on her home, and so the home will
(36:57):
start to come apart because this woman had sex out
of wedlock before she got married or whatever, and so
that's one home broken. And if more and more women
do this, then all of a sudden, the whole country's
morals are corrupt and there's nothing but crime and drinking
and all sorts of horrible things that come out of it.
And she definitely identified men as a aggressor in this
(37:20):
that it was definitely men who came along and like
persuaded girls to have sex out of wedlock because these
girls were too naive to know the ramifications and consequences.
So she tried to in books and pamphlets and lectures
and all this Warren mothers to warn their daughters away
from men like this and also teach them about the
(37:41):
consequences of having like pre marital sex and also basically
identifying as you know, men as the aggressors the wolves
in this situation. But so she was super into that,
and she was very widely and well received because her
line of thinking was very in line with Victorian suit
rigid morals. But at the same time, I mean, it's
(38:06):
it's difficult to reconcile with just straight ahead feminism that
you know, of the type that we're used to today.
But there's really no one who could discredit her as
a feminist. No, I mean a feminist in a Victorian way.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
It was a time where you can be like girl,
own your sexuality and like you asked the man to
marry you, like that just didn't happen at all.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
So this was the opposite of that. When she was
touting she was also what would be known today as
a feminist for life, a staunch anti abortion feminist. As
a matter of fact that if you read her diary
in a certain way, you can make the case that
one of the reasons she became a doctor is because
she read an article about a woman who was an
abortionist at the time, who was termed a female physician,
(38:51):
which I guess was code for women abortionists. That's interesting
back then, and she was so appalled by this that
she wanted to reform the term female physician to mean
an actual like just a woman doctor, a general doctor.
And that's one of the things that drove her too. So, yeah,
she was a very complicated character. It reminds us, right,
(39:13):
But I think she reminds us that over time, when
you become a legend, you know, a legend grows up
around you and you know, the different edges get you know,
smoothed over or overlooked or whatever, and people are complicated
and complex and that's the way that it should be
and they should be understood as such, you know. Yeah,
But none of that underminds her, depending on your way
(39:38):
of thinking. I don't think anything undermines her that she
did or thought undermines the work that she did and
the good that she did.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
Oh, of course not.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
And I think maybe people should try to remember what
it might be like to be a trailblazing feminist in
the eighteen forties through the eighties, you know.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Yeah, yeah, So the Silvil War that was very nicely said,
good job, hope, so oh gotcha?
Speaker 3 (40:03):
Civil War rolls around.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
She and her sisters trained nurses for the Union for
their hospitals. She said, you know what we really need
is a medical school for women. And so she continued
to try and get support from Britain. She finally raised
enough backing in America to add that medical school to
her women's hospital in New York. In eighteen sixty eight,
(40:26):
this was this one you were talking about. The New
York Infirmary was finally established with fifteen students, nine faculty,
and she was the professor of hygiene and her sister,
Emily was taught was the outwel taught obstetrics and diseases
(40:47):
of women.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
Yep, she handled all of the surgery too at the clinic.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
Oh Emily did, yeah, because her sister couldn't rite.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
But so think about this, like, she established not just
this this clinic, this dispensary, but also a college to
teach women doctors. Right, And not only did she do
that in New York, she did it in London too.
After she had managed to establish this, she said, okay, Emily,
(41:15):
you got this, I'm moving back to England and I'm
going to do this over here. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
And what it did was it provided about a thirty
two year stopgap until eighteen ninety nine when medical schools
Cornell University finally began accepting women into their program. So
for thirty two years she was running the show and
she was providing that almost aid service.
Speaker 3 (41:41):
But it kind of is in a way.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
You know, until medical until mainstream medical schools began catching on.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
Yeah, no, for sure. And the fact that she was
establishing this college like that this was one of her
big dreams and focuses and drives. It just kind of
goes to underscore the fact that she was trying to
make it so that more women could become doctors. Yeah,
(42:08):
it's as easy to overlook when you're like, oh, well,
she went and became a doctor herself and then she
did doctoring. She also simultaneously was trying to expand access
to medical training for women as well to become a
licensed physician.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
And she did in a big way in eighteen sixty
nine when she was in her late forties. This is
when she established the London practice. She had passed on
the New York Medical College to her sister at that point,
and founded the National Health Society in eighteen seventy one
and was one of the first champions of prevention is
(42:41):
better than cure, which is a very obviously important thing
today in all of medicine, but at the time it
was kind of a revolutionary kind of way.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
To go about things.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
They were all about cures, and she was one of
the first people standing up and be like, Hey, let's
not get to the point where we need to cure
by preventing things with handwhish and lifestyle and hygiene.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
Yeah, wash your hands, Yeah, what's your problem?
Speaker 2 (43:05):
In eighteen seventy she finally set up a private practice
in London. In eighteen seventy four, along with physicians Sophia
Jex Blake and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson established that London School
of Medicine for Women.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
Yeah. So again she did this in New York. She
also did it in London. She agitated for legislation to
be passed in eighteen seventy six to allow women to
get medical degrees. She was the first woman added to
the medical register in England. So she did this in
two continents. She opened up the door for women to
(43:43):
become doctors on two different continents at about the same time.
And ultimately she stopped had to stop practicing. She had
to stop seeing patients because she had something called billiary colic,
which is where a gallstone blocks the bile ducked, which
is not good for you and it apparently it is
(44:04):
a very painful condition. And especially back then before they
could do a lot with it or so you can
break it up with lasers or something. It could knock
you out of your career, and it did for decades.
I think she had billiary colic twenty or thirty years
before she died.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Yeah, she basically didn't practice for the last twenty years,
and very sadly. In nineteen oh seven, at the ripe
old age of eighty six, which is great, she.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
Had an accident.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
She fell down a flight of stairs and was mentally
and physically disabled after that. Lived a few more years
after that, and then eventually died of stroke in nineteen ten.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
Yeap, that was it.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Great, great lady.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
Yeah, there's this statistic here in eighteen eighty one, so
she'd moved to the UK permanently in eighteen sixty nine.
In eighteen eighty one there are only twenty five registered
women doctors in England and Wales, but thirty years later,
nineteen eleven, it was up to four hundred and ninety five.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
There you have it.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
Now, I would guess that there's at least double that, probably.
Speaker 3 (45:16):
More probably so.
Speaker 1 (45:18):
So hats off to doctor Elizabeth Blackwell. Way to go.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
My bonnet is off and under my seat.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
Oh that's a fine phrenology. You've just exposed there, Charne.
Speaker 3 (45:27):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
If you want to know more about doctor Elizabeth Blackwell,
there's a lot of good stuff on the Internet, including
a site that we used, among others, famous scientists dot
org check them out, and scientists is plural. I just
have a thick tongue, so sometimes it's tough to add
that extra asset in. And since I said I have
a thick tongue, it's time for listener male.
Speaker 3 (45:52):
This is from Isaac.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
Hey, guys, I am on day two of six weeks
of staying home in quarantine. I live in Seattle, Washington,
which was the place where the first North American coronavirus
case was. There have been rumors at my school I'm
in the seventh grade that would close for cleaning. But
six weeks is nearly all of third quarter. Yeah, I've
got a long stretch of time ahead of me, and
I've spent most of that time playing video games great,
(46:17):
reading great.
Speaker 3 (46:19):
And listening to stuff you should know.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (46:22):
It's a nice three pronged.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Approach, a little fun, little knowledge, and little goofy knowledge.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (46:28):
I listened to nearly ten episodes today alone. Wow, it
will be plenty more rushing through my ear holes. So
I wanted to say thank you for helping me through
a worry sometime. I loved the Seattle Show that is
from Isaac. Isaac, buddy, glad, We're there for you. Hang
in there, be safe, wash your hands.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
And the fact that you use the word ear holes
means that you're the coolest kid.
Speaker 3 (46:51):
I know.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
Yeah, you're pretty cool, Isaac. We appreciate that. I wonder
what video game he's playing, Chuck, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (46:57):
I just finished Red Dead Redemption and now I'm onto
a new and I've been gaming a bit lately.
Speaker 1 (47:01):
I heard that Red Dead Redemption is like one of
the most amazing games ever. But it's just so good
in highbrow like a Jason Rightman film, that it's it's boring,
unlike a Jason Rightman film. Have you heard that?
Speaker 3 (47:16):
Well? I played part two. I did not get the
first one, although I might go.
Speaker 1 (47:19):
I think it was Part two that I'm talking about.
Speaker 3 (47:21):
I enjoyed it.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
Okay, good good. I'm glad to hear that, because I
like to think that things that are well done aren't boring.
You know.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
Yeah, I had to learn to shoot animals, and which
was not fun, but no, hunting.
Speaker 3 (47:32):
Is a part of it.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
Really.
Speaker 3 (47:33):
Yeah, I never shot up funny though.
Speaker 1 (47:35):
Maybe you had to like put them out of the
misery or something because they were rabid.
Speaker 3 (47:38):
Oh that too. If you have a you crash your horse,
you might have to do the right thing. You know
what I mean?
Speaker 1 (47:43):
Is that right? You have to strangle it.
Speaker 3 (47:44):
Yeah, it's very sad because you get very attached to
these horses.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
I'll bet. Do you name them?
Speaker 3 (47:49):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (47:50):
You name them like you'd actually name them for fun
or like they come with names or they like the
game makes you name your horse.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
When you go to a stable.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
You can upgrade your horse in a lot of ways
with the saddles and stuff, and then you can also
you can also name your horse when you go to
a stable and type it in and then your horse
name is up there.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
Did you name any Josh?
Speaker 3 (48:09):
I did not. I feel bad now.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
I had three or four horses, and the name them
all variations of my wife and daughter's names.
Speaker 3 (48:15):
But oh that's you what, budd It's fine, you'll be next.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
I appreciate that. But you'll be like, oh yeah, Josh
turned lame. I guess I have to put him out
of his misery.
Speaker 3 (48:23):
Yeah, Josh got run over by a train.
Speaker 1 (48:26):
Let me know how Josh turns out. Okay? And video
game I will okay. And Isaac thanks again for writing
in and like Chuck said, stay safe, stay smart, and
wash your hands and don't panic. Doesn't sound like you are.
If you're like Isaac and you're hanging out listening to
Stuff you Should Know, we want to hear from you.
You can send us an email, wrap it up, spank
it on the bottom, and send it off to Stuff
(48:47):
Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (48:56):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple pod Tests, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
M
Hi, their friends, It's me Josh, And for this week's Select,
I've chosen our April twenty twenty episode on Elizabeth Blackwell,
who is a complex person to say the least, and
she's a great example of how nobody fits neatly into
one group or another. And she's a great lesson and
how a person who you might hold different views from
and values from can still be one of your heroes.
(00:22):
I hope you get a lot out of this episode
about Elizabeth Blackwell, the feminist icon.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Charles w Charles Chuck, Wayne Twain Bryant, and there's Jerry
Jerome Roland, the Rizzy, And I'm just Josh, like just
Jack was just Jack Wow, Okay, heck coming in, Thank you.
Let's do a little jazz hands there.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Just call me Twain Chwain from now on, Chwain. It's
not awkward to pronounce.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
It's really close to schwing. Remember that shwing, Oh man,
I totally forgot about it until just now. Shwing, Chuck shwing, shwing.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
That's how you have to say it.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
No, you can say it anyway like schwing.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yeah. Well, what I really love is that we're talking
about America's first woman physician, an amazing woman named doctor
Elizabeth Blackwell, who had an amazing family and her story
is incredible, and we're saying shwing, shwing at the beginning.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Right, especially considering that she was a a rather puritanical
person in a lot of senses, she would probably not
have been down with us saying shwing.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
No, no, because you know what, uh, she and her
family were Quakers, And I know some Quakers and have
known some Quakers. They hate shwing, they do, but you
know what they love what being awesome?
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Yeah, yeah, no, I mean for sure this I get
the impression that her entire family is a pretty good
example of like a like a Quaker family.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Quaker.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Every Quaker I've known has just had it like had
it all figured out. It seems like they're like the
the Buddhists of the West.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Yeah, yeah, pretty much. They also I think they also
go by the Society of Friends, which says a lot too. Yeah,
I'm pretty sure. And then, if you remember correctly, Charles
are Pacifist episode focused heavily on the Quakers because they're
big time pacifists too. So Elizabeth Blackwell, just by virtue
(02:54):
of having been a Quaker, was a pretty interesting, like
upstanding up, bright person with a good head on her shoulders.
But she also, like individually personally, was a very amazing person.
And not just the fact that she was the first
licensed woman physician in America. Yeah, but to get there
(03:18):
she really had to blaze her own path and put
up with a lot of bs, you might put it,
and so much so that even in her autobiography, which
was published in eighteen ninety five when she was in
her seventies, I think she called it pioneering work, and
(03:39):
that there's really no better way to put it. She
was absolutely a pioneer, and not just getting herself established
as a woman physician in America, but in making it
so that there could be more women physician in America, physicians.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
And more and more, much more. So.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Let's start with, oh, I don't know, February eighteen twenty one.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
What's significant about that date.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
She was born as a little bebe near Bristol, England.
She was the third of nine children. Her mom was
Hannah Lane, who came from a family of merchants who
had some dough and her pops was Samuel Blackwell.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
He was a sugar refiner and also prosperous.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
And like we said, they were Quakers, which means that
they were very cool, and this was eighteen twenty one.
They were not down with slavery. They were activists against slavery.
They were abolitionists. They supported women's suffrage. Her brother Henry
married Lucy Stone, who was very famous women's rights activist.
(04:41):
Her little sister Emily followed in her footsteps in medicine.
Her sister in law Antoinette Brown Blackwell, first female ordained
minister in Protestant the Protestant denomination. Yeah, they were way
ahead of their time.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Yeah, and you can trace I mean, both of her
parents seem to be pretty cool, and you can trace
there the roots of their sensibilities back to their parents.
Like Samuel was a dissenter, like he was a Quaker,
which is I guess a form of Protestantism, but he
was definitely he didn't recognize like the sole religious authority
(05:17):
of say, like the Church of England or anything like that.
And so as a result his children could not go
to public school. He said, fine, I've got some money
I'm a prosperous sugar merchant. I'm going to hire the
best tutors I can find. And not only that, I'm
going to defy the conventions of England and have these
tutors teach my daughters the same stuff that they're going
(05:41):
to teach my sons, which is unheard of. But that
really formed the basis for especially Elizabeth's progression and education
that she came to expect to be taught just like
she was a boy because of how she was raised.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Yeah, and you know, by all accounts, her parents were
both pretty great. Her dad was a very caring individual.
He thought that all kids of any gender should reach
their full potential. Sure, he didn't physically punish his kids,
which was weird.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
At the time. People are like, why ain't you hitting
your kids? Yeah, and he said, I don't believe in it.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
I've got a switch right here you can borrow. Well, yeah, really,
do we.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Not have a switch? That's what the deal is. He
doesn't have a switch or a paddles. Let's get him
a switch so he you know, they would had sort
of like a demerit system in their house, and if
you add it up to too many demerits. You would
have to do something like eat by yourself in the
attic or something that sounds horrific, also like sticking a
(06:45):
kid in a closet. But I think it was just
a room removed from the family dinner.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Yeah, it was just you have to go away from
the family. We can't even bear to look at you. You
make us want a puke.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
That's right. But everything changed when he lost his sugar
refinery in a fire and said, you know what, let's
pack our bags and let's move to New York City.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
New York City.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
That's right, New York City.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Do you remember back in I don't know, like around
two thousand and seven eight. I feel like it was
right when we both started working around how stuff works,
that is sugar refinery and Savannah blew up.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Yeah, I remember that.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
I wrote an article about that. It's like that sugar
dust is volatile it they can catch fire, and I
wondering if that's what happened to his sugar refinery.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
I bet you.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Okay, So they moved to New York. They lived in
New York and New Jersey for six years, as you do. Yeah,
And one of the cool things that I liked about him.
He was a little paradoxical. So he was a sugar
refinery made his money off of sugar refining. But the
sugar industry was based almost entirely on slave labor around
(07:51):
the world how sugarcane was grown. That's how he didn't
use slaves, I can tell you that. But he still
made his money in an industry that was heavy, heavy
on slavery. And in fact, his children were such staunch abolitionists.
Even as young children, they refused to eat sugar because
they knew that slaves had had a hand in producing it,
(08:12):
so they would they wouldn't even eat it as kids.
Little kids wouldn't need sugar because of the slavery involved.
But he still made his money off of that. But
when he got to America, one of the first things
he tried was to introduce sugar beets, which don't require
slave labor. There's a much less labor intensive process of
(08:34):
extracting sugar from sugar beets, and this was really revolutionary
at the time. They think they first isolated sugar from
beats in eighteen hundred, like thirty years before, and they
had been introduced to America just like two years before.
He took this up, so he was on the cutting
edge of sugar beat production. But it didn't actually work
(08:56):
out very well.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
No, his original sugar refinery went went south in eighteen
thirty seven, so he said, let me move to Cincinnata
and I'll get in on the sugar beat thing. But
just a few weeks after they got to Cincinnati, in
August of eighteen thirty eight, he died of a fever.
And because he had lost that sugar refinery and didn't
have the next sugar beat operation up and going, they
(09:21):
didn't have a lot of dough. His family was left
without a lot of money.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Yeah, which I mean, that's kind of be really tough
to go from wealthy to not, you know, in just
one fell swoop. But that's kind of what happened with
Elizabeth's family. And a few years later she resolved, and
she was twenty one that she would not be dependent
on any man, that she was going to be self sufficient,
(09:46):
and she was never going to marry, and she wanted
to make her own way. And I mean, it's pretty
tough not to trace that line directly back to you
to state that her father left his family and not
in any way that you know, that was his own
doing or his own fault, but that was just the
conventions of the time. And so for a woman to
resolve that she would make her own way in life
(10:08):
was very unconventional. But if Elizabeth Blackwell was anything, she
was very unconventional.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
So she and her mom and a couple of her sisters,
they were teachers for a little while, and she eventually
and this is kind of jumping ahead a bit, but
she did adopt a girl, a seven year old Irish
immigrant orphan that she named Kitty. Her name was Catherine
Barry and went by Kitty, and she was with her
for the duration of her life. But she never got married,
(10:36):
and she decided to become a doctor when she had
a really close friend who was dying, said you know what,
I think that I might have lived if I might
have had a woman as a doctor, because they're more
compassionate and I might have gotten better treatment. And Elizabeth
Blackwell was like, WHOA, that really speaks to me.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Yeah, they think that the woman was probably dying of
uterine cancer, and she thinks that she would have she
would have disclosed more of her condition possible sooner and
at the very least she would have been more comfortable
in her dying days being treated by a woman rather
than poked and prodded by some man who seemed to
be less compassionate than she believed a woman would be.
(11:22):
The thing about Elizabeth Blackwell is she, first of all,
she was struck by this, and she was so struck
struck by it that she it moved her to want
to become a doctor. But not only that, she had
to overcome a natural, deep seated aversion to the idea
(11:42):
of the body or anatomy or medicine. Like she was
not at all interested in this to begin with, and
in fact, she had an aversion to it, but she
was so moved by that woman and her experience that
she resolved to overcome her disgust in her aversion at
bodily functions an anatomy and become a doctor herself.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
It's pretty I mean, that's a really key detail.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
It is a huge league. I mean that's enormous. Like
not only she like she just wasn't a kid who
wanted to be a doctor.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Right, Like, I love the side of blood and internal organs,
so this kind of fits anyway.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Yeah, she had to overcome an aversion to it on
top of overcoming the aversion that society had against a
woman becoming a doctor, because at the time it was
it was considered that a woman couldn't know enough about
the human body to be a physician and still be
considered a morally upright woman, that her morals were at
(12:37):
risk of being corrupted just by knowing everything there is
to know about the human body.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Yeah, I mean, let's be honest. They would have to
see a male penis as part of their training.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Sure, a pp.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
So, man, we're.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Such children, we are. So she said, all right, I'm
gonna do this. I'm gonna get over this. I'm going
to be a doctor. How do I do this? I'll
just go to medical school. Medical school said no, no, no, no, no.
Women can't go to medical school. There are a few
ladies around the country that are unlicensed physicians that worked
as apprentices and learn their trade, but.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
You're not going to go this traditional route.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
And medical school at the time was just weird anyway,
which we'll get into a little bit later.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
But we I mean, we also got into it in
our grave robbing episode. Yees was similar to that time.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Around that time, it was crazy. It wasn't like it
wasn't the I don't think doctors were as respected back then.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Even No, they I know, because they were the ones
we who were cutting open bodies and just kind of
figuring stuff out as they went along. And if you
went to a doctor, there was like an eighty percent
chance you were walking out one limb short.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
So she while she was a teacher, she boarded with families,
and that she did a lot of this stuff in
the South, which we'll get to as well. But two
Southern physicians mentored her. She still could not get into
medical school. Of course, she had some physician friends who
were Quakers. She asked them about it. They said, that's
(14:11):
a great idea, but no, it costs too much. You're
never going to be able to get in. What you
should do is disguise yourself as a man and go
to France. And she was like, not a bad idea.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
If that's the best advice somebody's giving you, you need
to rethink the people who you take advice from.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
It sounds like she was game, though, but she decided
to save money instead and apply to medical school in
the United States.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
So in today dollars that did the.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Old inflation calculator three grand back then, it would be
about eighty five thousand dollars today, So that's a.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
Lot of money.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
And she between I think, for a period of two
or three years, went south and taught school and slave states,
which was very hard for her to do in order
to save money for medical school. Yeah, she didn't know
what she could get into anyway.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Right exactly. In the first place she taught in Kentucky,
she only lasted a year. She's just found the social
climate so intolerable. Yeah, she was really you know, she
couldn't put up with it. And I don't know how
she was able to better in North and South Carolina,
but yeah, I mean she managed in two years to
raise eighty three grand from teaching I guess rich kids
(15:25):
in North and South Carolina. But she also while she
was there, she's like, well, I want to teach the
slave kids too. I'll do it pro bono. And they said, well,
it's against the law for you to teach slave kids.
And they said, but you can teach them Sunday school.
And she said, fine, I'll do that. And there was
a great quote that came from her in a letter
(15:47):
to her family in eighteen forty five, and I'm not
sure what state she was in, maybe even Kentucky, but
she said, I assure you I felt a little odd
sitting down before those degraded little beings, saying they were
naturally degraded, that they had been degraded by other people.
I believe to teach them a religion which the owners
profess to follow whilst violating its very first principles. It
(16:12):
really does. She was like, you know, these people are
profess to be Christians, but do not treat other people
like Christians. And that's just such a Quaker thing to do.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Huh, that is a very Quaker thing to do.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
You want to take a little break, Yeah, let's do it. Okay,
We're going to take a break, everybody, and we'll be
back to tell you more about Elizabeth Blackwell's progress towards
med school. So, Chuck, like you said, she was mentored
(16:54):
by a couple of doctors who she stayed with while
she was teaching in North and South Carolina, one of
whom was actually a professor of medicine, so he had
all the books. He was very encouraging to her. He
taught her everything he could. And that was, like you said,
a way that a woman could become a physician, but
an unlicensed physician certainly not one that was in any
(17:18):
way established as an actual legitimate physician. And that was
ultimately her goal.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Yeah, Like she continued to get sort of tutored by
different people in the South that she knew who were physicians,
and it was great that these.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
Men encouraged her and tutored her. Said, here, used my books.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
But again, like you said, she wanted to do the
real deal and forge a path and not just kind
of go the back door route. So she applied to
all the medical schools in New York and Philly. She
applied to twelve more in the Northeast. She was rejected
by all of them, and on the thirtieth application to
(17:58):
Geneva Medical College in Western New York in eighteen forty seven,
she was accepted. And I raised my voice because she
got accepted. Because it was a joke that well everyone
thought it was a practical joke. The professor there, the
dean of the medical med school, basically said.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Hey, let's take a vote here.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
We'll have all the men here that go here vote
on whether or not a woman can come to school here.
And if every single person says yes, she can come here,
and if one person says no.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
She won't.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
They all thought it was a prank from I guess
the neighboring rival medical school, say West Geneva. Yeah, they said, sure,
let her in and it wasn't a joke. And they
did let her in.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
They did, and apparently they were all very surprised. Like
this almost sounds like an urban legend, but from what
I saw, like this is across the board. What happened
that they thought it was a practical joke and it
turned out to be real. And that is how she
up going to medical school.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
So when she showed up, she was taking this quite seriously.
She was twenty six already, she'd spent some time like
living around, seeing the country. Just she was twenty six,
Like that says a lot about a person over say
like twenty or nineteen or something like that. And so
she when she showed up, not only was she a
little more mature, probably than some of her contemporaries, she
(19:24):
also was she was well aware of the convention she
was breaking, of the challenges and the obstacles that laid
ahead of her. And there's a pretty good report like
the fact that she showed up at medical school made
the papers, and in fact, the Boston Medical Journal even
wrote up something about the fact that she was Yeah,
(19:46):
that she was there taking medical classes. The Boston Medical
Journal said that she comes into the class with great composure,
takes off her bonnet and puts it under the seat,
exposing a fine phrenology.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Are you kidding me? You're talking about the shape of
her head.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Yeah, yeah, but this is the Boston Medical Journal at
the time. Hopefully the BMJ has officially stopped using phrenology, yeah,
in any way, shape or form. But we'll have to
We'll have to get a subscription and find out.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
So we talked earlier about the fact that medical school
at the time was really different. It sounds like animal
house or something. It was very raucous. Apparently when there
were lecturers, you would make crude jokes out loud, and
no matter what you're talking about. It sounds like a
bunch of children taking sex at or something. Yeah, in
(20:37):
like the sixth grade. But apparently Blackwell's effect on the whole,
like every class she went into was everyone took it
a lot more seriously because she was there.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Yeah. Because again, like if you were a man, you
acted far, far, far differently around a woman at the time,
where you were just much more genteel. It was just
the social convention, and so you had to bite your tongue.
In medical school if Elizabeth Blackwell is in your class,
so you just did. That was just kind of the
effect that she had on class just by being a woman.
(21:10):
But even beyond that, there was this whole view that
these guys were somehow contributing to this woman's moral corruption
by even being in the same class with her, let
alone being the instructor teaching her. And so one of
the things she ran into in med school was she
would sometimes be asked to go step outside because this
(21:33):
particular lecture is a little rough, and Elizabeth Blackwell did
not truck to that at all. She was very adamant that. Remember,
she was educated like a boy by the tutors her
father hired. She had a full expectation to be left
out of absolutely nothing. At med school. She was to
be a full physician, and so she was to learn
everything that any physician would learn. And eventually, over time
(21:56):
she kind of overcame this genteel opposition to her presence
by her professors, in male classmates.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Yeah, and I think in no small part due to
her serious take in her fastidiousness, in her the fact
that in the end she graduated first in her class.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Yeah, this says a lot.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
She was the best student in eighteen forty nine. She
graduated first, ultimately earned the respect of her fellow students.
Not to say that it was a it was a cakewalk.
There were still plenty of jerks there, and you know,
a lot of them had animosity toward her.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Remember a cakewalk is racist?
Speaker 3 (22:37):
Is it really?
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Yeah? I remember we did a show on what was it?
I can't remember. The words that have different origins than
you would think, are different meanings than you would think.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
You remember, Yeah, I think I do remember that.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
I'm sorry, everybody, I'm sorry for interrupting you.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
That's okay.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
So it was no pie walk, good save chuck.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
Still plenty of jerks.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
There were some men there that would would laugh at her,
some in there that would support her, some men that
would jeer at her, some men that would help her out.
But like I said, in the end, she got that
degree first in her class. Apparently, and I don't know
if this is the movie version, but the medical School's
Dean bowed to her when she accepted her diploma, and
(23:26):
everyone busted out in applause.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Yeah, that's what a newspaper account said from the correspondent
who was there. And they also added and brother Bluto
became Senator Blue Tarski. Nice. That wrapped everything up.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Do you think that movie age as well? We're talking
about Animal House again.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
I haven't seen it in a wive should say sorry
in a while. I'm not sure. Okay, I have seen
it plenty of times, but I haven't seen it in
a while. I'm sure it doesn't it can't. Uh.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
I don't know, man, I think it's kind of timeless.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
However, I've heard certain people that I won't name say
it doesn't age well nol Oh yeah, yeah, Noel didn't
think you think there's a there's a raft of comedies
from that era that just are not funny.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Now wait, not funny or politically?
Speaker 3 (24:19):
Oh no, no, no, not funny.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Oh gotcha, Yeah, it doesn't age wells in like, why
is this? Why do people think this is a comedy classic?
It's not even that good?
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Gotcha? Gotcha? Okay, Yeah, I'll have to watch it again.
I haven't I haven't seen it.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
I don't know, man, I think it's kind of timeless
in its comedy, Okay, I mean sure there are parts
that don't age well in every other respect, like any
comedy made before like four years ago.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Sure, that's what I or know, Like like the last
five minutes, I thought that's what you were talking about. No,
I mean it's entirely possible, because I've seen some comedies
where I'm like, this is this is not at all funny,
like spies like us give me a break?
Speaker 3 (24:52):
Not good. No, I haven't seen it in a long time.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
It's not good.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
See now, I'm afraid to watch some of those oldies. Yeah,
I do.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
My dad taught me well. But if you if, if
you want to continue to cherish any movie that you
used to love, I would not risk it.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
No, we'll see.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Unless it's Ghostbusters. It definitely holds up. Friend.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Yeah, that new one looks good too. Was the new
one the sequel sort of?
Speaker 1 (25:23):
So it's technically Ghostbusters three?
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Yeah? Or four? I mean we or wait? Was there
a third or was just the first two? Yeah? The
second one?
Speaker 1 (25:32):
It was the first two and then the third one
had like Kate, I think Kate McKinnon. Different universe, didn't it.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Yeah, yeah, that was That was just a reboot, which
was great, I thought. But this new one is a
sequel many years later. And I think it's one of
their grandkids. You know, stuff starts happening.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
It looks good. Okay, And what's his name's kid?
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Rightman's kid is directing it.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
It's a oh, he's great Jason.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
Yeah, it's a Jason, rightman, jam So.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
That's good stuff. That might he might be a little
too high high brow for a Ghostbusters man.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
Man.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Well, hey, I can tell you you know who's spinning
in her grave right now about a thousand RPMs? Who
Elizabeth Blackwell?
Speaker 3 (26:15):
I know.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
I'm so sorry, doctor Blackwell. Should we take a break.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
I don't know who knows anymore?
Speaker 2 (26:20):
All right, let's take a break and we'll stop talking
about dumb old movies right for this.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
All right, So, Chuck, I think where we officially left off,
Elizabeth Blackwell received her diploma. The dean of the medical
school stood up and bowed, and the auditorium broke out
into applause, which is pretty awesome. Apparently, she when she
although she won over her classmates, there were still like
(27:03):
a lot of women actually of the time who were
not very happy with what she'd done. But she said,
nuts to you guys, that's right. I'm going to move
to Paris and London and I'm going to pursue my
practice there to start.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
That's right, which is a great idea. And when she
got there, they said, wow, you were a real deal
doctor and you have a medical degree. Here be a midwife.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Yeah, a woman Zachabu.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Yeah, she was led into midwife rein nursing. But she's
like really sort of trying to be revolutionary here because
all she sees are these men walking around not washing
their hands at all, and she's like, you know, what
is probably super important is personal hygiene and preventive care.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
And they're like, what's that.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Yeah, well they literally were what's that? Because this was
early eighteen fifties and remember our great stink episode.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Oh man, that was so good.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
So they were still operating under the miasma theory that
it was like bad vapors and smells that made you sick.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
Crazy.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
So her idea that it was like that hand washing
was part of this preventative medicine was really ahead of
its time. And so in addition, to being a woman,
who they were just discrediting out of hand anyway, just
for being a woman. They were also saying, like, you're
talking kooky stuff. Everybody knows it smells that make you sick.
Your nut job, go over there and deliver a baby.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
And she's like, but I haven't washed my hands, Like
we just told you. It doesn't matter. Babies are dirty.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
As long as your hands don't stink, it's fine.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Yeah, we should also mention it's right about here where
she lost sight in her left eye from an accident
that I can barely even talk about.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Oh, I want to can I please? So she contracted
purulent ophthalmia, which is an which is an of the eye,
and her I became infected because she was tending to
an infant who I guess had some sort of wound
that was infected, and Puss squirted in her left eye
(29:11):
from the infection and infected her left eye to such
a terrible degree that she became blind in her left eye.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Yes, and that is Puss.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
That is sad, but really sad because she was not
able to become a surgeon, which is what she really
wanted to do.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
It's also said that there was a baby with an infection. Well, sure,
a pussy infection.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
Let's not forget about that baby.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Sure that baby grew up to be Roy Kohane.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
She moved to the that's really good.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
She moved to the UK then from Paris, and this
is where she hooked up with a little buddy named
Florence Nightingale.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Yeah, who deserves her own episode too.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
Oh sure, totally. They became good friends. They were like,
you like to wash your hands? I do too, isn't
it awesome?
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Look, go do it together.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
That's kind of the long and short of it.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
They sat around and saying ABC's or I don't want
no scrubs wash their hands. And they were both like,
why are none of these men doctors ever washing their hands?
And they were both like, because they're dummies.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Yeah, just give them a few years in germ theory
will be developed and then they'll listen to Louis past
year or not. Yeah exactly, But I think that's pretty awesome.
It's almost like I don't know, Einstein and somebody else meeting,
you know, like, just it's cool to know that these
these two like legendary figures met and were friends at
one point in time.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Oh, totally.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
It's almost like a movie. You know what I'm saying,
This totally should be a movie. I'm surprised it's not
yet agreed. Maybe Jason Rightman could direct it.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
That's right, and maybe uh uh no, who's the guy
that Wolverine pretty Jackman?
Speaker 3 (30:55):
Yeah, maybe Hugh Jackman can be in it.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
He would play doctor Elizabeth Blackwell.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
That's right. And Jared from Subway can played the pus baby.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Yeah, everything would come full circle and the universe would
collapse in on.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
It, and then the Sharknado would kill them all.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Yeh.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
So she is pals with Laurence Nightingale. She decides, you
know what, I'm going to go back to New York.
It's eighteen fifty one and I really want to get
a practice going there. She got back, and of course
discrimination against women in the doctoring industry was still there,
so she didn't have a lot of opportunities. She didn't
(31:32):
have a lot of patience, she didn't have a lot
of other doctors that she could even exchange ideas with,
and so she started applying for jobs instead of starting
her own practice at the women's department in a big
city dispensary.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
But she was not.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
She was not hired. No, and I had to look
up a dispensary. Is it like a charity or public clinic.
So this ambition, yeah, woman's ambition, this first woman doctor
in the United States. Now, her ambition was to help
the poor. That was what she wanted to do. Her
(32:11):
missions in life were to help the poor, help women
retain their chastity and purity in the hopes of having
a good moral impact on the world around them, and
then to make it so that more women could become doctors.
And she was like a tireless fighter and champion of
(32:32):
all of these things. And so, in typical Elizabeth Blackwell fashion,
when she was turned down for a job at a dispensary,
she just opened her own dispensary.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
That's right, in a little single rented room. She saw
patients a few afternoons each week. It was incorporated in
eighteen fifty four, where they moved to a small house
there on the lower east Side East Village area of
Tompkins Square. Her sister, we mentioned that she followed. I
believe at the very beginning she followed in her sister's footsteps.
By this point she was doctor Emily Blackwell. She got
(33:06):
her degree at Western Reserve University in Cleveland, and she
joined her in eighteen fifty six with another doctor, doctor Marie.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
Ooh, zach.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Zak Zuska. Wow, that's the doctor Seuss pronunciation.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
That's a tough one.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
I would say, zach Vrevska. Okay, Zakrevska, all right.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
And they all opened the New York Infirmary for Women
and Children on Bleeker Street there in the West Village
in eighteen fifty seven.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Yep. And now you can go left out of the
doorway and hit a Swatch store. I know you're going
to say it the street and see and go get
a sandwich at La pan Quotidien.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
I saw this watch joke coming because I did the
old Google Earth too, and I was like, I guarantee
you that poked out to Josh.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
But what's crazy? So sixty four, at least as far
as the Google company is concerned, the sixty four Bleaker
Street doesn't exist anymore. Yeah, but that means that it
was subsumed by either the Kith Clothing or the Swatch store.
Somebody took over this. But there's a I.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
Think the Swatch store did in eighteen fifty.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Eight, there's Yeah, they were all on chains, right, but
there's a there's a physical structure that's still there. That
was the first women run infirmary or clinic, i should say,
in New York and what became one of the first
(34:34):
women's medical schools, amazing in the country. Not the first,
but one of the first. And there's no plaque, there's
no sign, there's no nothing really but the building is
not that I could see, but the building is still there.
You can still visit the spot where poor people went
and doctor Elizabeth Blackwell treated them.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Yeah with one eye.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Yeah, let's not forget that.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
Of sight in one eye, I should say.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
So she starts going, she's like to do this in
England too, in my home country. I'm gonna go back
and forth. I'm going to try and raise some money
to do the same thing over there. At the same time,
she's also taking on and it's amazing what you can
do when you don't get married and have to be
subservient to a man. Right, Like she was living singles,
(35:18):
so she had nothing but time. You know, she had
this adopted daughter. But I imagine as she grew she helped
her mom out with this stuff.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Yeah, and in their off time, they would watch Living
Single Together.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
So she was getting on other social reform movements, all
kinds of things to do with women's rights, family planning,
even way back then hygiene. Always did we mention eugenics
and how deep she got in that?
Speaker 3 (35:45):
Do we even know?
Speaker 1 (35:47):
I looked, and I could not see, because you would
think there'd be people that would say, like, oh, Elizabeth
Blackwell her, but listen to this eugenic stuff she's into.
I saw basically one of those things where it was
this list was repeated basically in the same order across
the right net. So I have no idea how much
(36:07):
she was into eugenics, but I do know I did
get an impression of her as far as women's rights
were concerned. She was a feminist through and through. Oh sure,
absolutely a feminist. But she was also a moralist and
a prude that died in the wool prude, and so
(36:29):
she was really concerned with.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
The moral purity.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Yeah, I guess the moral purity of women, because her
her whole thing was if a woman has basically had
sex out of wedlock, she has corrupted her morals, she's
traded in her morals, and now she's going to be
interested in men, She's going to think about other men
rather than her husband. She's not going to be able
to focus on her home, and so the home will
(36:57):
start to come apart because this woman had sex out
of wedlock before she got married or whatever, and so
that's one home broken. And if more and more women
do this, then all of a sudden, the whole country's
morals are corrupt and there's nothing but crime and drinking
and all sorts of horrible things that come out of it.
And she definitely identified men as a aggressor in this
(37:20):
that it was definitely men who came along and like
persuaded girls to have sex out of wedlock because these
girls were too naive to know the ramifications and consequences.
So she tried to in books and pamphlets and lectures
and all this Warren mothers to warn their daughters away
from men like this and also teach them about the
(37:41):
consequences of having like pre marital sex and also basically
identifying as you know, men as the aggressors the wolves
in this situation. But so she was super into that,
and she was very widely and well received because her
line of thinking was very in line with Victorian suit
rigid morals. But at the same time, I mean, it's
(38:06):
it's difficult to reconcile with just straight ahead feminism that
you know, of the type that we're used to today.
But there's really no one who could discredit her as
a feminist. No, I mean a feminist in a Victorian way.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
It was a time where you can be like girl,
own your sexuality and like you asked the man to
marry you, like that just didn't happen at all.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
So this was the opposite of that. When she was
touting she was also what would be known today as
a feminist for life, a staunch anti abortion feminist. As
a matter of fact that if you read her diary
in a certain way, you can make the case that
one of the reasons she became a doctor is because
she read an article about a woman who was an
abortionist at the time, who was termed a female physician,
(38:51):
which I guess was code for women abortionists. That's interesting
back then, and she was so appalled by this that
she wanted to reform the term female physician to mean
an actual like just a woman doctor, a general doctor.
And that's one of the things that drove her too. So, yeah,
she was a very complicated character. It reminds us, right,
(39:13):
But I think she reminds us that over time, when
you become a legend, you know, a legend grows up
around you and you know, the different edges get you know,
smoothed over or overlooked or whatever, and people are complicated
and complex and that's the way that it should be
and they should be understood as such, you know. Yeah,
But none of that underminds her, depending on your way
(39:38):
of thinking. I don't think anything undermines her that she
did or thought undermines the work that she did and
the good that she did.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
Oh, of course not.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
And I think maybe people should try to remember what
it might be like to be a trailblazing feminist in
the eighteen forties through the eighties, you know.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Yeah, yeah, So the Silvil War that was very nicely said,
good job, hope, so oh gotcha?
Speaker 3 (40:03):
Civil War rolls around.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
She and her sisters trained nurses for the Union for
their hospitals. She said, you know what we really need
is a medical school for women. And so she continued
to try and get support from Britain. She finally raised
enough backing in America to add that medical school to
her women's hospital in New York. In eighteen sixty eight,
(40:26):
this was this one you were talking about. The New
York Infirmary was finally established with fifteen students, nine faculty,
and she was the professor of hygiene and her sister,
Emily was taught was the outwel taught obstetrics and diseases
(40:47):
of women.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
Yep, she handled all of the surgery too at the clinic.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
Oh Emily did, yeah, because her sister couldn't rite.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
But so think about this, like, she established not just
this this clinic, this dispensary, but also a college to
teach women doctors. Right, And not only did she do
that in New York, she did it in London too.
After she had managed to establish this, she said, okay, Emily,
(41:15):
you got this, I'm moving back to England and I'm
going to do this over here. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
And what it did was it provided about a thirty
two year stopgap until eighteen ninety nine when medical schools
Cornell University finally began accepting women into their program. So
for thirty two years she was running the show and
she was providing that almost aid service.
Speaker 3 (41:41):
But it kind of is in a way.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
You know, until medical until mainstream medical schools began catching on.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
Yeah, no, for sure. And the fact that she was
establishing this college like that this was one of her
big dreams and focuses and drives. It just kind of
goes to underscore the fact that she was trying to
make it so that more women could become doctors. Yeah,
(42:08):
it's as easy to overlook when you're like, oh, well,
she went and became a doctor herself and then she
did doctoring. She also simultaneously was trying to expand access
to medical training for women as well to become a
licensed physician.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
And she did in a big way in eighteen sixty
nine when she was in her late forties. This is
when she established the London practice. She had passed on
the New York Medical College to her sister at that point,
and founded the National Health Society in eighteen seventy one
and was one of the first champions of prevention is
(42:41):
better than cure, which is a very obviously important thing
today in all of medicine, but at the time it
was kind of a revolutionary kind of way.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
To go about things.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
They were all about cures, and she was one of
the first people standing up and be like, Hey, let's
not get to the point where we need to cure
by preventing things with handwhish and lifestyle and hygiene.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
Yeah, wash your hands, Yeah, what's your problem?
Speaker 2 (43:05):
In eighteen seventy she finally set up a private practice
in London. In eighteen seventy four, along with physicians Sophia
Jex Blake and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson established that London School
of Medicine for Women.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
Yeah. So again she did this in New York. She
also did it in London. She agitated for legislation to
be passed in eighteen seventy six to allow women to
get medical degrees. She was the first woman added to
the medical register in England. So she did this in
two continents. She opened up the door for women to
(43:43):
become doctors on two different continents at about the same time.
And ultimately she stopped had to stop practicing. She had
to stop seeing patients because she had something called billiary colic,
which is where a gallstone blocks the bile ducked, which
is not good for you and it apparently it is
(44:04):
a very painful condition. And especially back then before they
could do a lot with it or so you can
break it up with lasers or something. It could knock
you out of your career, and it did for decades.
I think she had billiary colic twenty or thirty years
before she died.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Yeah, she basically didn't practice for the last twenty years,
and very sadly. In nineteen oh seven, at the ripe
old age of eighty six, which is great, she.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
Had an accident.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
She fell down a flight of stairs and was mentally
and physically disabled after that. Lived a few more years
after that, and then eventually died of stroke in nineteen ten.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
Yeap, that was it.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Great, great lady.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
Yeah, there's this statistic here in eighteen eighty one, so
she'd moved to the UK permanently in eighteen sixty nine.
In eighteen eighty one there are only twenty five registered
women doctors in England and Wales, but thirty years later,
nineteen eleven, it was up to four hundred and ninety five.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
There you have it.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
Now, I would guess that there's at least double that, probably.
Speaker 3 (45:16):
More probably so.
Speaker 1 (45:18):
So hats off to doctor Elizabeth Blackwell. Way to go.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
My bonnet is off and under my seat.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
Oh that's a fine phrenology. You've just exposed there, Charne.
Speaker 3 (45:27):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
If you want to know more about doctor Elizabeth Blackwell,
there's a lot of good stuff on the Internet, including
a site that we used, among others, famous scientists dot
org check them out, and scientists is plural. I just
have a thick tongue, so sometimes it's tough to add
that extra asset in. And since I said I have
a thick tongue, it's time for listener male.
Speaker 3 (45:52):
This is from Isaac.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
Hey, guys, I am on day two of six weeks
of staying home in quarantine. I live in Seattle, Washington,
which was the place where the first North American coronavirus
case was. There have been rumors at my school I'm
in the seventh grade that would close for cleaning. But
six weeks is nearly all of third quarter. Yeah, I've
got a long stretch of time ahead of me, and
I've spent most of that time playing video games great,
(46:17):
reading great.
Speaker 3 (46:19):
And listening to stuff you should know.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (46:22):
It's a nice three pronged.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Approach, a little fun, little knowledge, and little goofy knowledge.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (46:28):
I listened to nearly ten episodes today alone. Wow, it
will be plenty more rushing through my ear holes. So
I wanted to say thank you for helping me through
a worry sometime. I loved the Seattle Show that is
from Isaac. Isaac, buddy, glad, We're there for you. Hang
in there, be safe, wash your hands.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
And the fact that you use the word ear holes
means that you're the coolest kid.
Speaker 3 (46:51):
I know.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
Yeah, you're pretty cool, Isaac. We appreciate that. I wonder
what video game he's playing, Chuck, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (46:57):
I just finished Red Dead Redemption and now I'm onto
a new and I've been gaming a bit lately.
Speaker 1 (47:01):
I heard that Red Dead Redemption is like one of
the most amazing games ever. But it's just so good
in highbrow like a Jason Rightman film, that it's it's boring,
unlike a Jason Rightman film. Have you heard that?
Speaker 3 (47:16):
Well? I played part two. I did not get the
first one, although I might go.
Speaker 1 (47:19):
I think it was Part two that I'm talking about.
Speaker 3 (47:21):
I enjoyed it.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
Okay, good good. I'm glad to hear that, because I
like to think that things that are well done aren't boring.
You know.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
Yeah, I had to learn to shoot animals, and which
was not fun, but no, hunting.
Speaker 3 (47:32):
Is a part of it.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
Really.
Speaker 3 (47:33):
Yeah, I never shot up funny though.
Speaker 1 (47:35):
Maybe you had to like put them out of the
misery or something because they were rabid.
Speaker 3 (47:38):
Oh that too. If you have a you crash your horse,
you might have to do the right thing. You know
what I mean?
Speaker 1 (47:43):
Is that right? You have to strangle it.
Speaker 3 (47:44):
Yeah, it's very sad because you get very attached to
these horses.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
I'll bet. Do you name them?
Speaker 3 (47:49):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (47:50):
You name them like you'd actually name them for fun
or like they come with names or they like the
game makes you name your horse.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
When you go to a stable.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
You can upgrade your horse in a lot of ways
with the saddles and stuff, and then you can also
you can also name your horse when you go to
a stable and type it in and then your horse
name is up there.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
Did you name any Josh?
Speaker 3 (48:09):
I did not. I feel bad now.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
I had three or four horses, and the name them
all variations of my wife and daughter's names.
Speaker 3 (48:15):
But oh that's you what, budd It's fine, you'll be next.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
I appreciate that. But you'll be like, oh yeah, Josh
turned lame. I guess I have to put him out
of his misery.
Speaker 3 (48:23):
Yeah, Josh got run over by a train.
Speaker 1 (48:26):
Let me know how Josh turns out. Okay? And video
game I will okay. And Isaac thanks again for writing
in and like Chuck said, stay safe, stay smart, and
wash your hands and don't panic. Doesn't sound like you are.
If you're like Isaac and you're hanging out listening to
Stuff you Should Know, we want to hear from you.
You can send us an email, wrap it up, spank
it on the bottom, and send it off to Stuff
(48:47):
Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (48:56):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple pod Tests, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
M
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Josh Clark
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