Elizabeth Blackwell, MD (1821-1910). Born in England in 1821, Elizabeth moved at an early age to the US. She became a teacher to support her family after her father died, but yearned to train as a physician after the death of a suffering friend. She apprenticed herself to a physician and studied science and classics to apply to medical school, though no woman had yet done so. Accepted at Geneva Medical College in Geneva, NY she began her training, shunned by most and considered insane. Dr. Blackwell won the respect of her classmates with her intelligence, purpose a, tact and decorum, and went on to graduate first in her class on January 23, 1849—the first female Doctor of Medicine in the US. She donated her time to indigent care while in school, working with Philadelphia’s poor Irish community, and published a work on typhus in the Buffalo Medical journal. After graduation, she trained at La Maternitie hospital in Paris and St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, focusing on women’s and children’s health and obstetrics. Returning to NY, she devoted her practice to hygiene and preventative medicine and was among the first to advocate physical education for women and children. She opened the NY Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children in 1857, now NYU Downtown Hospital, which served the poor and provide faculty position and education in the Women’s Medical College.

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