by: Lauren Jonik

Every week, we’ll be shining a light on women from history that you should know about. History is not just about the past—it is a lens through which we can examine and better understand the present day human experience. The struggles to have our basic needs met, to live meaningful lives, to be emotionally and spiritually fulfilled, to feel connected to others and to discover our own resilience and beauty are common to all people throughout all of time. If you hated history in school, don’t worry—there are no tests here, only stories– some you may know and some that may be new to you.  We invite you to become on a first name basis with the amazing women who have helped to shape our world.

Elizabeth Blackwell (February 3, 1821 – May 31, 1910)

While anyone with proper medical training, a strong desire to help others and a compassionate bedside manner can be a good doctor, sometimes gender informs who we choose to entrust with the most important details about our health. But, for those who lived over a hundred years ago, selecting a female physician was not easy. In most instances, it was impossible in the United States. While many women actively participated in the role of healer—soothing a child’s stomachache in the middle of the night or tending to a husband’s wound that he received while at work in the fields or holding the hand and mopping the brow of a female relative giving birth for the first time—they rarely held the title professionally. Women were considered too emotional, too illogical, too ignorant to become doctors despite a long lineage of female physicians  spanning generations and cultures. In ancient Egypt, Merit Ptah was the first female physician recorded in 2700 BC.  

In 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first female in the United States to earn a medical degree. She was accepted to Geneva Medical College—in part because the administration and students thought it would be a good joke to admit a woman. Blackwell not only graduated—she did so at the top of her class.

But, Elizabéth Blackwell’s path to practicing was filled with evermore obstacles. She was banned by the medical community. She fled to Europe, but was met with more resistance in English and French hospitals. Eventually returning to New York City, Blackwell set up shop in 1853 with her sister Emily who recently had earned her medical degree. The Blackwell sisters treated the medical needs of New York City’s poor women and children.

Along with another female physician, Dr. Marie Zakrzewska, the Blackwells opened The New York Infirmary for Women and Children in 1857.  When the Civil War broke out, the Blackwells trained women for how to care for the wounded soldiers. In 1868, Elizabeth Blackwell founded the Women’s Medical College, the first medical school for women in the United States. She published her autobiography, Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women, in 1895.  She died in the country of her birth, England, in 1910.

Rebecca Crumpler, MD (February 8, 1831 – March 9, 1895)

Rebecca Crumpler had a singular mission that manifested in multiple ways: “to relieve the suffering of others.” Crumpler was the first African-American woman in the US to earn a medical degree in 1864 at a time when both women and people of color generally were unwelcome in the profession. At the end of the Civil War, Crumpler moved to Virginia from the North to help provide medical care to freed slaves.

Crumpler later moved back to Boston where she had first begun practicing medicine. There her focus was on helping to tend to the medical needs of women and children in the Beacon Hill neighborhood.  She published A Book of Medical Discourses in 1883, based on her case notes from seeing patients over the years.

Her desire was to educate those who traditionally served as primary caregivers in the home: women. Crumpler writes, “Since I have, with no small degree of diffidence, consented to submit my long-kept journal to the public in the form of a book, I desire to present the different subjects by the use of as few technical terms as possible; and to make my statements brief, simple and comprehensive. Indeed I desire that my book shall be as a primary reader in the hands of every woman and yet, nonetheless suited to any who may be conversant with all branches of medical science.” Crumpler highlighted that with proper care, infant mortality rates could be lowered. Her book offers numerous remedies and suggestions for how to treat the ills of the day.

Crumpler died in Massachusetts in 1895. Unfortunately, no known, verifiable photos of Crumpler exist, but her powerful legacy lives on.

Dorothea Lynde Dix (April 4, 1802 – July 17, 1887)

Dorothea Dix was born in Maine when the United States was still a very young nation. After a difficult childhood and her own experiences with ill health, Dix found solace in learning. She became a schoolteacher and published several books. Bouts of illness throughout her life may have been one of the catalysts for why she turned her focus: to advocating for compassionate care for those in mental asylums and prisons.

Manon S. Parry explains, in the American Journal of Public Health, “Dorothea Dix played an instrumental role in the founding or expansion of more than 30 hospitals for the treatment of the mentally ill. She was a leading figure in those national and international movements that challenged the idea that people with mental disturbances could not be cured or helped. She also was a staunch critic of cruel and neglectful practices toward the mentally ill, such as caging, incarceration without clothing, and painful physical restraint.”

Indeed, abhorrent treatment of those suffering with mental illnesses can be traced all the way into the 1950s. But, Dix’s work helped to establish a pattern in which these issues were considered more carefully—and encouraged that people be treated humanely. She helped to found the first public mental hospital in Pennsylvania in the 1850s.

During the Civil War, she was appointed Superintendent of Army Nurses by the Union Army in 1861. She had volunteered to offer her services one week after the war broke out. Author Louisa May Alcott served as a nurse under Dorothea Dix. Dix had a reputation for being organized, and passionate about her work. At times, this caused her to clash with both those who served below her and those in positions of power. Women were not often seen in positions of great authority.

Dix went on to found 32 hospitals and in her elderly years, she continued to advocate for those suffering. Dix died in Trenton, NJ in 1887.

Lauren Jonik is a writer and photographer in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has appeared in 12th Street, The Manifest-Station, Two Cities Review, Amendo, The Establishment, Bustle, Calliope and Ravishly. When she is not co-editing TheRefresh.co, she is working towards her Master’s degree in Media Management at The New School. Follow her on Twitter: @laurenjonik.