"In a time when women were considered inferior, not only physically, but also mentally, simply the idea of a woman with her “delicate sensibilities” attempting to practice medicine was ludicrous enough to provoke comments ... This was popular sentiment, making it a truly amazing feat that Elizabeth Blackwell was able to endure these prejudices, to not only pursue an education in medicine, but also use it as a platform for social and moral reform." - UT Health San Antonio Libraries
Elizabeth Blackwell
"A woman applying to medical school was unheard of at the time, and medical school in itself was an expensive novelty. Tradition had been that budding physicians learned the practice of medicine by actually practicing under the apprenticeship of an already established physician. However, none of these barriers deterred Blackwell. If anything she saw it as a challenge, and a platform to advocate for reform in women’s education." - UT Health San Antonio Libraries
(The Woman’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary. [Announcement, 1868-69] New York, 1868 National Library of Medicine. 5 Mar 2015)
"In addition to helping establish these institutions, she wrote several books on household health, women in medicine, medical sociology and sexual physiology" - UT Health San Antonio Libraries
Blackwell established a sturdy foundation for women´s education. She fought for moral and social reform, and began women´s education as we know it. She also formed the foundation for medicine, as she established institutes that taught women.
"She served as a pioneer for women in the medical profession and promoted the education of women in the medical profession through lectures and by opening her own medical college for women." - Social Welfare Library, Social Welfare History
"I do not wish to give (women) a first place, still less a second one- but the complete freedom to take their true place, whatever it may be." - Elizabeth Blackwell
"Soon after her return to the U.S., Elizabeth opened a free dispensary to provide out-patient treatment to poor women and children, but it was open only a few hours a week and its services were limited. In 1857, she closed the dispensary and opened the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children, a full-scale hospital with beds for medical and surgical patients. It’s purpose was not only to serve the poor, but also to provide positions for women physicians and a training facility for female medical and nursing students. The medical staff at first consisted of Elizabeth and two of her protégés, her sister Emily and Marie Zakrzewska. This institution still exists as the New York University Downtown Hospital.
Elizabeth believed that women should receive their medical education alongside men in the established medical schools. She was not sympathetic to the women’s medical schools that had opened in Boston, Philadelphia and New York in the 1850s. However, since the women trained in her Infirmary were not able to gain admission to the male medical colleges, she was persuaded to establish her own women’s medical college.
The Woman’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary opened its doors in 1868, with fifteen students and a faculty of nine, including Elizabeth, as Professor of Hygiene, and her younger sister Emily as Professor of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women." - Social Welfare Library, Social Welfare History
Clara Barton
"Clara Barton was born in 1821 in North Oxford, Massachusetts. She is best known for being the founder of the American Red Cross and the National First Aid Society. Barton supported many of the nineteenth-century reform movements that affect our lives even today. In the 1840's and 50's, she supported the public school movement by teaching and establishing free schools. She was an avid supporter of the Black Civil Rights and Women's Rights Movement. Barton worked closely with Frederick Douglas and Susan B. Anthony on these issues." - Maryland Commission for Women, 1987
"People should not say that this or that is not worth learning, giving as their reason that it will not be put to use. They can no more know what information they will need in the future than they will know the weather two hundred years from today." - Clara Barton
Clara Barton supported the foundation of healthcare in the United States by founding the American Red Cross, a foundation that not only provided first aid and medical services, but provided emergency assistance, disaster relief, and preparedness education. She also was a proud women's rights activist, and contributed to changing women's access to an education.
"I believe I must have been born believing in the full right of women to all the privileges and positions which nature and justice accord to her in common with other human beings. Perfectly equal rights—human rights. There was never any question in my mind in regard to this. I did not purchase my freedom with a price; I was born free; and when, as a younger woman I heard the subject discussed, it seemed simply ridiculous that any sensible, sane person should question it. And when, later, the phase of woman’s right to suffrage came up it was to me only a part of the whole, just as natural, just as right, and just as certain to take place. And whenever I have been urged, as a petitioner, to ask for this privilege for woman, a kind of dazed, bewildered feeling has come over me." - Clara Barton, Women´s Suffrage Speech
(¨Still the Greatest Mother¨ By Alonzo Earl Foringer)
"“Still the Greatest Mother” was one of many posters issued during World War I to encourage support of the war. This poster was commissioned by the Red Cross from Alonzo Earl Foringer, or A. E. Foringer, in 1920. Foringer, an American painter, was a member of an important political family in Pennsylvania. The poster was a reiteration of an earlier work by Foringer titled “The Greatest Mother.” Before the war, the Red Cross was a small and insignificant organization based in the U.S. During the war, the organization saved money and provided help to the warring nations in Europe. Once the U.S. entered the war, the Red Cross exploded with volunteers and funding from the government. WWI made the Red Cross into a global organization that was capable of helping people around the world. This poster was inspired by a Red Cross slogan created by a Princeton graduate, Courtland Smith. It was printed many times and became one of the most popular pieces of American visual propaganda during the war years. This poster was created and reproduced as a colored print at the time of its distribution." - McKee Library
"Of whom should I ask this privilege? Who possessed the right to confer it? Who had greater right than woman herself? Was it man, and if so, where did he get it? Who conferred it upon him? He depended upon woman for his being, his very existence, nurture and rearing. More fitting that she should have conferred it upon him.
Was it governments? What were they but the voice of the people? What gave them that power? Was it divinely conferred? Alas! No; or they would have been better, purer, more just and stable.
Was it force of arms—war? Who furnished the warriors? Who but the mothers? Who reared their sons and taught them that liberty and their country were worth their blood? Who gave them up, wept their fall, nursed them in suffering and mourned them dead?" - Clara Barton, Women´s Suffrage Speech
