The life and times of the Doctors Blackwell
IF you want to find out more about the life and times of Elizabeth Blackwell, then you need to get a copy of The Doctors Blackwell by New York-based American scholar Janice P. Nimura.
Subtitled “How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine”, her book has only just been published, and it is as scholarly as it is readable. While it places Elizabeth Blackwell at the centre of a story, it also makes much of the medical career of her younger sister Emily.
Nimura has been fortunate in that so much of the Blackwells’ correspondence has been preserved, but her meticulous research is also the basis for fluent storytelling which brings the drama of the sisters’ careers vividly to life.
We asked her a few questions:
Normally, medical historians focus on the life and career of Elizabeth as the “first” woman doctor. Why did you decide your book should be about her sister Emily as well?
Being first is a loud, proud thing, and it often obscures the equally extraordinary lives of those who come along just behind. As I dug into the sources, it was quickly clear that Emily Blackwell, anointed by her older sister to follow her into medicine, was a critically important part of Elizabeth’s achievement. Elizabeth chose medicine to prove a point about women, but it was Emily who actually proved the more dedicated scientist and practitioner, and Emily whose leadership sustained the hospital and college the sisters founded in New York.
Given the choice, which of the two would you prefer to be trapped in a lift for two hours with?
Perhaps the better question is, who would I prefer as my own doctor? And that would be Emily. She was not just the more dedicated practitioner, she was also more at ease with other people, less judgmental and less prickly, more open to alternatives and aware of her own doubts. Although if we are talking about being stuck in an elevator, I’d go with Elizabeth – her sheer force of will would have the thing fixed in much less than two hours.
If you could ask either sister just one question, what would it be?
I would ask Elizabeth, was medicine the right choice to prove what you wanted to prove about the unlimited capabilities of women? Was there ever a moment when you wished you had chosen to study the law? Or gone into politics or business? Or, as Margaret Fuller suggested, become a sea captain?
What was your most interesting or surprising discovery when researching the book?
My favourite part of this kind of research is following in the footsteps of my subjects and trying to grasp the reality of their lives with all five senses. Those trips are like treasure hunts, from tiny Geneva, NY, where Elizabeth went to medical school, to New York City, Paris, Edinburgh, and London.
My visit to Bristol was a true highlight – I explored the Blackwells’ native city with Mary Wright, a Bristol historian and Blackwell expert, who showed me the house where they lived as children, on Wilson Street and Lemon Lane; the sugar refinery owned by their father (now a hotel); the Downs where they walked and picnicked; and the harbour from which they sailed to America in 1832.
Elizabeth comes across as difficult, judgemental and priggish. Is this just how she was, or did her life experiences make her that way?
Both, though I would add a few more adjectives, like steely and disciplined and idealistic. Teenaged Elizabeth, as captured in her own journals, had a healthy self-esteem, an unusually (alarmingly?) welldeveloped sense that she could Be Someone, and no patience for fools. That’s what set her on the steep and difficult path she chose. Once launched on her quest, the opposition and outrage she faced from men and women alike only toughened her resolve – and her emotional armour. She was not what anyone would call nice, but then people who break taboos often aren’t.
If we believe Frances Trollope (she’s from Bristol, too), American society in the early/ mid 19th century was socially and morally more conservative than Britain at the time. Would Elizabeth’s path into the medical profession have been any easier had the family stayed in England?
Fanny Trollope may have been reacting against the Puritanism she encountered on her American travels – the teetotallers, the sober dress and relative lack of pageantry – but in fact as far as women’s issues were concerned, England was behind the U.S. Elizabeth and Emily were each sorely tempted to remain in London after their European training was finished, but returned to New York because they felt there was more scope for the idea of women’s medical education. The first woman in Britain to qualify as a physician, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, didn’t achieve that distinction until 1865.
Elizabeth Blackwell received her degree in 1849.
Given Elizabeth’s connection with what we might call the progressive causes of the day – abolitionism, working with the poor, becoming the first woman doctor etc. – why was she so uninterested in women’s suffrage?
Elizabeth wasn’t against women’s suffrage per se, but she thought it was wrongheaded to make it the first priority of the women’s movement. She believed that women needed to claim their ideological independence first – otherwise they would simply vote as their fathers and husbands did.
The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine
is published by W.W. Norton & Company and should be available from online outlets now.
For more, see Janice Nimura’s website at www.janicenimura. com. There are also a number of online interviews with her about the Blackwells. See for example this one on US National Public Radio at: tinyurl. com/wzxhyt2o Bristol University’s Blackwell Institute for Health Research is marking the bicentenary of Elizabeth’s birth here: www. bristol.ac.uk/blackwell/ blackwells-bicentenary