Posted Monday morning, February 1, 2021.
Portrait of Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910), the first woman doctor in the United States, uncredited and undated but likely depicting Blackwell as she'd have appeared in the late 19th Century. Courtesy of Hobart and William Smith Colleges via the Finger Lakes Times.
Wednesday is the 200th birthday of Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman doctor in the United States. Blackwell studied medicine at Geneva Medical College, a department of Geneva College in Geneva, New York, starting in 1847 and graduating in 1849. Geneva College renamed itself Hobart College in 1852. In 1908, William Smith College for Women opened on the Hobart campus. For administrative and business reasons, William Smith was treated as a department of Hobart, but in 1943 it was formally recognized as an independent school, although it still shared facilities and faculty with Hobart. Technically, that’s still the case, but they call themselves by the collective name of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, the plural deliberate but quietly elided, which is how they were known when I arrived there to teach in the mid-1990s. Blackwell was then and I think still is Hobart’s most famous and distinguished alum. William Smith claims her too. When I was there her memory was well-honored by both colleges, separately and together. Her name was invoked with reverence and pride. Her story featured prominently in the lore of both schools. In 1994, a statue of her as a student was installed on campus. But I don’t recall hearing this part of the story, although it probably circulated. I wish it had circulated around to me. I’d have enjoyed sharing it with my students. They’d have gotten a kick out of it. Especially the William Smith students, and especially the science majors and pre-meds among them:
Elizabeth Blackwell was admitted to Geneva Medical College as a joke. She was twenty-six years old and had already apprenticed herself to two physicians, but she was rejected by more than a dozen schools. The only acceptance letter came from the students of Geneva Medical College, an Episcopal school in upstate New York. Dated October 20, 1847, it contained the following resolutions: “That one of the radical principles of a Republican Government is the universal education of both sexes; that to every branch of scientific education the door should be open equally to all; that the application of Elizabeth Blackwell to become a member of our class, meets our entire approbation; and in extending our unanimous invitation, we pledge ourselves that no conduct of ours shall cause her to regret her attendance at this institution.”
Although this promising letter purported to reflect the deliberations “of the entire Medical Class of Geneva Medical College,” it failed to explain why Blackwell’s admission had been relegated to the student body. The answer was that the faculty had opposed it but did not wish to offend one of her recommenders, and so punted the issue to the students. Nor did the letter explain how those students had come to unanimously support her application: aware of the faculty’s opposition, delighted by the prospect of pranking them, and knowing that their decision had to be unanimous, they menaced the only dissenter until he relented. In the end, the motives of Blackwell’s fellow-students did not matter; she set off right away, starting the fall term a few weeks behind the men in her class.
---Casey Cep, “The Blackwell Sisters and the Harrowing History of Modern Medicine”, in the February 1, 2021 issue of the New Yorker.
Like I said, I think all my students, Hobart and William Smith alike, would have enjoyed the idea of their predecessors of a hundred and fifty years back putting one over on the faculty. But I think the William Smith students’ laughter would have been slyer, more knowing, and more tinged with irony. At the time, William Smith was the tougher school. It had higher admission standards and more rigorous degree requirements. William Smith students as a whole had a higher GPA. You went to Hobart because you didn’t get into Colgate. You went to William Smith because who needs Colgate? But you wouldn’t find many Hobart students who’d admit this out loud.
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One day after class, I was walking out the door with a William Smith student. She was a science major, biology, I think. Very good student, one of the smartest in the class, and one of the best writers. She had something weighing on her mind and had stuck around to ask me a question: Who did I think were smarter, science majors or humanity majors. Being the son of a physicist and the smartest human being I knew, I was quick with my answer, but I was also talking from experience as a teacher: “Science majors, no question.”
I assumed she was bothered by the attitudes of some Hobart students, who as a group had a problem facing the fact that any woman with any major could be smarter than they were. It turned out that her argument was with other William Smith students whom she felt looked down on science majors as mere technicians, laboratory drudges who might know how to light a bunsen burner or prepare a microscope slide weren’t intellectually up to a real liberal arts education. I'd like to imagine things have changed a lot by now. Among women, at any rate.
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