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ELIZABETH BLACKWELL. 87
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
To The Editors Of The English Woman's Jo...
quietness of manner , she was peculiarly fitted to be the pioneer in the difficult enterprise she had determined to undertake .
It was not , however , until the following year that she announced to her familthe decision at which she had arrived . Compelled ,
necessary by-want of to y fortune the prosecution , to accumulate of her b contemp y her own lated labour medical the studies funds ,
she now accepted the situation of music-teacher , at a higher salary , in a large and fashionable boarding-school in Charleston ( South
Carolina ) conducted by the Rev . Dr . J . Dickson . Besides her attainments in music and drawing , she had already
acquired the French and German languages . She now commenced education the study of while Latin dili , gentl as an pursuin indispensabl g the e systematic preliminary medical to a medical reading
on which , she had entered y . Although it was only in the intervals of her avocations as a music-teacher that she could carry on these
preparatory studies , they advanced more rapidly and successfully than she had anticipated ; for one of the most eminent physicians
of that city , Dr . S » H . Dickson , brother of the principal of the school in which she was engaged , and subsequently Professor of
Medicine in the University of New York , took great interest in her lanssuperintended her medical readingadmitted her among his
p office- , studentsand afforded her valuable facilities , for the prosecu-, tion of her studies .
In May , 1847 , after three years of incessant application , during which the closest study had occupied every moment not engaged in
teaching , she left Charleston , and went to Philadelphia , where she endeavoured to obtain admittance to the medical schools , but
without success . The physicians at their head were either shocked or angry at her request , and the doors of all those schools were closed
against so unprecedented an application ; and finding it impossible to avail herself of the facilities provided for students of the other
sexshe now entered upon a course of private anatomical study and dissection , with Professor Allenand of midwifery with Dr .
Warrington of Philadelphia . But althoug , h she could undoubtedly learn much from the private lessons of competent instructors , she felt
that medical so fragmentary education resulting a mode from of study a regular could not colleg give iate her course the ; solid and
moreoveras it was her aim not to incite ignorant or half-educated , female pretenders to an unauthorized assumption of the physician ' s
officebuton the contrary , to procure the opening of the legitimate approaches , , of the medical career to women seriously desirous to
to throug qualif a regular y h themselves the course medical for of preparation college the worth , and y discharge prescribed the acquisition of to its men duties of , her the by admission medical passing
wo dip m loma en— — were as a sanction essential for to her the own carry course ing and out a of precedent her plans for . other She
therefore procured a list of all the medical colleges in existence in
Elizabeth Blackwell. 87
ELIZABETH BLACKWELL . 87
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), April 1, 1858, page 87, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01041858/page/15/
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