(Clara Barton United States Postage, Bureau of Engraving and Printing) (Aug 28, 2013, By Elizabeth A. Mullen As crowds gather on the Mall in Washington, DC)
Clara Barton and Elizabeth Blackwell, as the most revolutionary advocates in women's healthcare, paved the way for the professional development of women in medicine, pioneered women's education, and therefore established a foundation for healthcare in America.Their work was inevitably controversial, as they desired to explore the medical field and push the boundaries of societal expectations of a 19th century woman. Blackwell and Bartons’ pioneering work remains a powerful model for women in medicine today.
"If society will not admit of a woman's free development, then society must be remodeled."
- Elizabeth Blackwell
“My whole life is devoted unreservedly to the service of my sex. The study and practice of medicine is in my thought but one means to a great end… the true ennoblement of a woman.”
- Elizabeth Blackwell
Elizabeth Blackwell First Woman to Receive Medical Degree in the U.S. (Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)
Clara Barton Founder of the American Red Cross (Women on 20's, 2015)
"I have an almost complete disregard of precedent, and a faith in the possibility of something better. It irritates me to be told how things have always been done. I defy the tyranny of precedent. I go for anything new that might improve the past."
- Clara Barton
"If woman alone had suffered under these mistaken traditions [of women's subordination], if she could have borne the evil by herself, it would have been less pitiful, but her brother man, in the laws he created and ignorantly worshipped, has suffered with her. He has lost her highest help; he has crippled the intelligence he needed; he has belittled the very source of his own being and dwarfed the image of his Maker."
- Clara Barton