Elizabeth Blackwell Research Paper

Marissa King

Dr. Willis

Women’s and Gender Studies

06 June 2018

Final Paper I will be doing my final paper on Alice Paul, Elizabeth Blackwell, and Fannie Lou Hamer. Alice Paul was an amazing woman that made a huge difference for women in our society. Alice Paul was a leader in the Women’s Suffrage Movement, she helped with the passing of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, giving women the right to vote. Alice Paul was born on January 11, 1885 in Mount Laurel, New Jersey. She was the oldest of four kids. Her parents supported gender equality, education for women, and working to help improve society. Alice’s mother was a suffragist and introduced her to gender equality by bringing her to women’s suffrage meetings. Alice Paul

Elizabeth Blackwell was born in Bristol, England on February 3, 1821. She was the first woman in America to receive a medical degree. She opened her own medical college for women. Elizabeth was inspired to pursue medicine by a dying friend who said it would have been better if she had a female physician. There were very little medical colleges that none of them would accept women. Elizabeth was rejected everywhere that she applied for. She faced discrimination in college. Professors forced her to sit separately during class and didn’t include her in labs. People in town saw her as a bad woman for ignoring her gender role. She eventually earned the respect from professors and classmates, graduating first in her class in 1849. She kept doing her training at London and Paris hospitals, even though doctors there kept putting her into midwifery or nursing. She returned to New York City, where discrimination against women physicians meant that it was difficult practicing in hospitals and clinics. Elizabeth ended up opening her own clinic to treat poor women. She gained a lot of clinical expertise, especially in the treatment of one of the most well known infectious diseases of the poor which was typhus fever that became the subject of her doctoral thesis. On November 4, 1849, while treating a baby with a bacterial infection of the eyes, gonorrhea contracted from the baby’s mother while passing through the birth canal, Elizabeth contaminated her left eye and lost sight in it. Since she lost sight in her left eye it prevented her from becoming a surgeon. During the Civil War, Elizabeth and her sisters trained nurses for Union hospitals. If it wasn’t for Elizabeth, then women today wouldn’t have been able to get an education or go to college. My education is very important to me and I would have no idea on how I would handle not being able to go to school and get a career.