Ĭrumpler gained entrance to the New England Female Medical College in Boston, Massachusetts, after working for eight years as a nurse in nearby Charlestown and receiving letters from doctors commending her. “I early conceived a liking for, and sought every opportunity to relieve the suffering of others,” wrote Crumpler in her groundbreaking 1883 publication, A Book of Medical Discourses: In Two Parts. The first African American woman in the United States to earn an MD degree, Rebecca Lee Crumpler was inspired by an aunt who took care of many ill neighbors. Rebecca Lee Crumpler, MD (1831-1895): An African American pioneer The hospital, like the Woman’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary she created in 1867 and many other efforts, was also intended to support and encourage women hoping to pursue careers in medicine. In the years following graduation, Blackwell struggled to find work, but in 1857, she co-founded the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children to serve the poor.

“It must be pursued in the light of day, and with public sanction, in order to accomplish its end.”īlackwell ultimately attended Geneva Medical College in western New York: Male students there asked their opinion agreed to admit her, thinking the matter a mere prank. “It was to my mind a moral crusade,” she wrote at the time.

Turned away by more than 10 medical schools, Blackwell refused a professor’s suggestion that she disguise herself as a male to gain admission. Blackwell began her pioneering journey after a deathly ill friend insisted she would have received better care from a female doctor.

In 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman in the United States to be granted an MD degree. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health

Women Who Become Men by Antonia Young