Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D.

"...said to be impossible. I will do it."

The first woman to receive her medical degree in the United States, Elizabeth Blackwell began her study of medicine in Asheville. She came to the city in the mid 1800’s as a governess for Dr. John Dixon, a local physician and while here took advantage of Dr. Dixon's extensive medical library. After one year she moved to Charleston where she worked for and was encouraged by Dr. S.H. Dixon, brother of John. At Asheville and Charlestons she began what was to become a life-long dedication to women's health issues. 

Her pursuit of a degree was fraught with discouraging responses

"Writing for advice to six different physicians in different parts of the country, the reply was, that the object, though desirable, was impractical; "utterly impossible for a woman to obtain a medical education. The idea eccentric and utopian." Her reasoning from such counsel was brief, and her conclusion peculiar,‘A desirable object, a good thing to be done, said to be impossible. I will do it.’"

Her application to some seventeen medical schools resulted in repeated denial. At one point she was told to disguise herself as a man to gain entry. She was finally admitted to Geneva Medical College, NY in 1846 and graduated from the program in 1848 at the top of her class. As she began her practice she repeatedly found herself excluded and discounted. She described the experience as

"…a blank wall of social and professional antagonism facing the woman physician which formed a situation of singular loneliness, ... without support, respect, or counsel."

Elizabeth Blackwell was a trailblazer. Her pioneering work and the New York Infirmary for Women and Children founded with her sister Emily, was a model for charitable medical care for women and provided both a clinic and a training facility for women physicians. She did it.