[Dr. Blackwell, in her autobiography, tells of writing to her sister, Dr. Emily, giving her impression of this interview: “I have at last found a student in whom I can take a great deal of interest, Marie Zakrzewska, a German about twenty-six.... There is true stuff in her, and I shall do my best to bring it out.... She must obtain a medical degree.”]
I found Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell a rather short but stately lady, blonde with wavy hair, very dignified, kindly in speech, and very deliberate and wise in her remarks.
The cordiality with which she welcomed me as a co-worker, I can never describe nor forget. It aroused all my sunken hopes and energies and directed them again to the field of work which I had cultivated and which I had almost given up in despair. Now, I was finding the welcome and the beginning of which I had dreamed, and all the many days of disappointment were instantly forgotten.
I met in Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell no eccentric person who wanted to bring about the millennium for women, for I soon learned from her of the great obstacles which were to be overcome in the social stratum. Soon, indeed, I learned that social prejudices, habits and customs can be as strong barriers to intellectual development as those placed in the way of reform by a despotic German government.
However, behind this social barrier, a number of high-minded and intellectually advanced women were ready to enter upon a struggle for greater freedom of action. They were especially inspired by the Anti-Slavery movement, which was then fully established and which appealed so strongly to the emotional nature of women. The paths these women trod were full of thorns and thistles yet they bore everything patiently, for, knowing their country and its people, they foresaw all the possibilities for good which could be achieved.
Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, while not the first woman practitioner of medicine even in America, was yet the pioneer in the movement which insisted that medical women should be educated so as to stand equal with men physicians in medical knowledge and in legalized position. Hence, she began her medical life not by practicing her art but by working for the degree of “M.D.” from one of the regularly constituted medical colleges, this meaning at that time a medical college established exclusively for men.
In this course, she followed the example of at least three Italian women who had, near the end of the eighteenth century and in the beginning of the nineteenth, taken the medical degree at the Universities of Florence and Bologna. But her autobiography is well entitled, Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women, because nothing of this kind had been undertaken by an English-speaking woman. Exceptionally, women have, here and there, received the same training as men, as evidenced by ancient histories. And early in this nineteenth century, two German women had received the medical degree at the University of Giessen. And the French obstetrician, Madame Boivin, had the medical degree conferred on her by the University of Marburg before she died in 1841.
From the earliest history of the human race, women have been the practitioners of obstetrics, and thence, naturally, the practitioners in the diseases of women and children.
But even such women suffered from the subjection which was inflicted upon all their sex. Hence, as the science of medicine became organized, and as systematized instruction in both the science and the art became established, opportunities for study and advanced practice were more and more monopolized by men; and women were more and more hindered from exercising and developing their instinctive tendencies in these directions.
But the monopoly has never been secure. Always, large numbers of people, especially of women, have persisted in the desire to be advised medically by women; and always, a certain number of women have responded to their instincts and have prepared themselves as best they could to give medical advice and help, especially to women and children.