Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women

by Elizabeth Blackwell

The meeting at the Cooper Institute was crowded to overflowing. The National Sanitary Aid Association was then formed, in order to organise the energetic efforts to help that were being made all over the country.

The Ladies’ Sanitary Aid Association, of which we were active members, was also formed. This branch worked daily at the Cooper Institute during the whole of the war. It received and forwarded contributions of comforts for the soldiers, zealously sent from the country; but its special work was the forwarding of nurses to the seat of war. All that could be done in the extreme urgency of the need was to sift out the most promising women from the multitudes that applied to be sent on as nurses, put them for a month in training at the great Bellevue Hospital of New York, which consented to receive relays of volunteers, provide them with a small outfit, and send them on for distribution to Miss Dix, who was appointed superintendent of nurses at Washington.

The career of one of these nurses, a German, deserves recording. We hesitated about receiving her, on account of her excitable disposition, but she insisted on going. This feeble-looking woman soon drifted away from the Washington Depôt to the active service of the front. After the battle of Gettysburg she spent two days and nights on the field of slaughter, wading with men’s boots in the blood and mud, pulling out the still living bodies from the heaps of slain, binding up hideous wounds, giving a draught of water to one, placing a rough pillow under the head of another, in an enthusiasm of beneficence which triumphed equally over thought of self and horror of the hideous slaughter.

A welcome relief to the great tension of life during those years was the visit of Mr. Herman Bicknell, F.R.C.S., who was travelling in America after the death of his wife. I remembered him as a fellow-student of the St. Bartholomew’s days, who sat by me in the lecture-room; and he recalled many interesting reminiscences of that eventful time. He was a man of great though eccentric talent, and a clever Persian scholar, having resided long in the East. His cordial friendship during many later years was much prized, and continued until his premature death.

It was not until this great national rebellion was ended that the next step in the growth of the infirmary could be taken.

The infirmary service of young assistant physicians, which had been hitherto supplied by students whose theoretical training had been obtained elsewhere, no longer met the New York needs.

In 1865 the trustees of the infirmary, finding that the institution was established in public favour, applied to the Legislature for a charter conferring college powers upon it.

They took this step by the strong advice of some of the leading physicians of New York interested in the infirmary, who urged that the medical education of women should not be allowed to pass into the hands of the irresponsible persons who were at that time seeking to establish a women’s college in New York. We took this step, however, with hesitation, for our own feeling was adverse to the formation of an entirely separate school for women. The first women physicians connected with the infirmary, having all been educated in the ordinary medical schools, felt very strongly the advantage of admission to the large organised system of public instruction already existing for men; and also the benefits arising from association with men as instructors and companions in the early years of medical study. They renewed their efforts, therefore, to induce some good recognised New York school to admit, under suitable arrangements, a class of students guaranteed by the infirmary, rather than add another to the list of female colleges already existing. Finding, however, after consultation with the different New York schools, that such arrangements could not at present be made, the trustees followed the advice of their consulting staff, obtained a college charter, and opened a subscription for a college fund.

The use of a spacious lecture-room in the New York University, on Washington Square, was temporarily obtained, until the house adjoining the infirmary could be leased and fitted for college purposes.[7]

A full course of college instruction was gradually organised, with the important improvement of establishing the subject of hygiene as one of the principal professorial chairs, thus making it an equal as well as obligatory study. Another important improvement adopted was the establishment of an Examination Board, independent of the teaching staff, a plan not then customary in the United States. This Board was composed of some of the best known members of the profession, and at the same time we changed the ordinary term of medical study from three years to four.