Elizabeth Blackwell had many dreams. One was to start a hospital for women and children. Another was to build a medical school to train women doctors. She was helped in these efforts by her younger sister Emily. Emily also had become a doctor, after a long struggle to be accepted in a medical school.
With the help of many people, the Blackwell sisters raised the money to open a hospital in a re-built house. The work of the two women doctors was accepted slowly in New York. They treated only three hundred people in their hospital in its first year. Ten times as many people were treated the second year.
VOICE ONE:
Elizabeth Blackwell's work with the poor led her to believe that doctors could help people more effectively by preventing sickness. She started a program in which doctors visited patients in their homes. The doctors taught patients how to clean the houses and how to prepare food so sickness could be prevented.
News of Elizabeth's theories spread. Soon, she was asked to start a hospital in London. She spoke to groups in London about disease prevention. And she worked with her friend Florence Nightingale.
Elizabeth returned to the United States to start America's first training school for nurses. And in eighteen sixty-eight, she opened her medical college for women. She taught the women students about disease prevention. It was the first time the idea of preventing disease was taught in a medical school. Soon other medical schools for women opened in Boston and Philadelphia.
VOICE TWO:
Elizabeth Blackwell felt her work in America was done. She returned to England. She started a medical school for women in London. She wrote books, and made speeches about preventing disease.
Doctor Blackwell talked of deaths that should never have happened, of sickness that should never have been suffered. She spoke about the dangers of working too hard, of eating poor food, of houses without light, of dirt and other causes of disease. And she told doctors that their true responsibility was to prevent pain and suffering from ever happening.
In eighteen seventy-one, she started the British National Health Society. It helped people learn how to stay healthy.
VOICE ONE:
Elizabeth Blackwell never married. Neither did her sisters. They believed in treating men like equals. And they expected to be treated like equals themselves. Most men of that time did not accept such treatment. This belief caused problems for their brothers too. They had trouble finding wives who wanted to be considered as equals.
Two of Elizabeth's brothers did marry, however. Both their wives were famous workers for the cause of women's rights.
VOICE TWO:
Elizabeth Blackwell died in England in nineteen ten. She was eighty-nine years old.
She was a very strong woman. She once wrote that she understood why no woman before her had done what she did. She said it was hard to continue against every kind of opposition. Yet she kept on because she felt the goal was very important. Toward the end of her life, she received many letters of thanks from young women. One wrote that doctor Blackwell had shown the way for women to move on.
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VOICE ONE:
This Special English program was written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Shirley Griffith.
VOICE TWO:
And I'm Ray Freeman. Join us again next week for another People in America program on the Voice of America.
