Discipline Case

Assignment 3

Discipline - Natural Science/premed

Option 2 - Elizabeth Blackwell

A father and his son are in a car accident. The father dies at the scene and the son is rushed to the hospital. At the hospital the surgeon looks at the boy and says "I can't operate on this boy; he is my son".... How can this be??

For those of you who think this scenario is impossible because the father is dead, you are wrong. The surgeon is the mother. Women have always been underrepresented in the workplace of medicine but have made a huge increase over the past 40 years. In 1970 less than 8% of physicians were women but by 2009 it increased by more than 6 folds.

Women have been regarded as caretakers and healers for a long, long time, as far back as the ancient civilizations. In the middle ages women who often participated in medical activities were midwives, but there were also a handful of skilled females who practiced medicine secretly or openly, and many of them were wives or daughters of surgeons.

During most of world's history, practicing medicine did not require licensure which made it perfectly acceptable for people to perform medical procedures regularly. However, in the fourteenth century examinations became required to practice medicine, which really slowed the progression of women in medicine because by the end of the fourteenth century, there were only 15 licensed female practitioners.

At one point, in the United States, medical schools were closed to women. They were allowed to submit applications, however their admission was decided by the students and if the entire class agreed on her admission she was accepted. With such restrictions, growth for women in the medical industry was thinning, until an outstanding breakthrough was made by Elizabeth Blackwell, the first women to receive a medical degree in the United States.

With such patriarchal barriers to overcome, Blackwell's interest in pursuing the medical field was first planted by a friend on her deathbed. This friend expressed that her stay and treatment in the hospital could have been made more comfortable with a female physician. At first Elizabeth Blackwell was disgusted by the idea of working in the medical field, she hated everything connected with the body, and could not bear the sight of a medical book; she also felt that women had an advantage over men doctors, because of their motherly instincts. Another influence on her decision to pursue a medical degree was that the connotation of a women physician was an abortionist, which Blackwell found degrading of what a female physician can possibly be.

Blackwell knew that one day she would get her medical degree, but had no idea where she would get it or how she would finance it. Like today, back then medical school was still expensive and Blackwell's financial status was unfortunate. To overcome her deficit Elizabeth and her two sisters started a school for young ladies. The school was not the best around, but it was a mere source of income for the Blackwell family. However, short on funds still, Elizabeth took a job teaching at a music academy to achieve her goal of $3,000 for medical school.

While teaching, she lodged with a retired physician. He approved of Blackwell's ambition and inspiration to become a female doctor and allowed her to study his old medical text books. With the help of the physician, Elizabeth sent out letters to schools inquiring about the possibility of studying, unfortunately there were no responses.

With no favorable responses, Blackwell headed to Philadelphia and New York, to personally investigate opportunities of medical study. One of her greatest wishes was to be accepted into a medical school in Philadelphia. Once reaching Philadelphia, Elizabeth was anxious to learn; she began studying anatomy privately with a Doctor, as she tried to get her foot in the door of any medical school in Philadelphia. However, everywhere she went she was shunned for being a woman. She was advised to go study in Paris or perhaps disguise herself as a man. The main reasons for her rejections were that 1) she was a woman and therefore intellectually inferior and 2) she might actually be equal to the task and prove to be competition. Even with such setbacks, Blackwell summed up the courage and applied to twelve schools.

In October of 1847 history was made. Blackwell was accepted as a medical student in Geneva Medical College. Her acceptance was a total accident; the dean presented her application directly to the students, and asked: should a woman be allowed to enter the class? If one student voted against her then her acceptance was denied. Luckily for Blackwell, all the students thought that it was a joke and anonymously voted in favor for her.

When she arrived to college, Blackwell was quite shy; she didn't know