Elizabeth Blackwell becomes the first U.S. woman to earn a medical degree
On this day · 23 January 1849
Admitted as a joke and graduated at the top of her class, she opened American medicine to women.
On January 23, 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell received her M.D. from Geneva Medical College in upstate New York, becoming the first woman in the United States, and the first woman anywhere, to earn a medical degree by modern credentialing standards.
Her path there was nearly farcical. Rejected by some two dozen schools, she was finally admitted to Geneva only because the all-male student body, asked to vote on her application, treated it as a prank and said yes. The joke curdled into respect as Blackwell graduated at the head of her class.
With American hospitals reluctant to employ her, she trained further in Europe, losing the sight in one eye to an infection that ended her hopes of becoming a surgeon. Undeterred, she returned to New York and in 1857 founded the New York Infirmary for Women and Children, staffed by women, and spent her life widening the door she had pushed open.
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