M.D.= Male Doctor
Growing up, I have always wanted to go to medical school and become a pediatrician. My family has always been supportive of that, so I have been able to continue on the path I want to be on. My sister-in-law, however, did not have the same experience. Her father has been working at a hospital for years now, and my sister-in-law wanted to become a doctor. At the mentions of wanting to go to medical school, her father just laughed and said she could not do it, which discouraged her from pursuing the degree. Instead, she got her CNA license and has worked at the hospital, but now she realizes her father’s words cannot affect her – she now plans on going back to school to go further into the medical field than what she was led to believe growing up. Though we as women have advanced in the medical field over the years, it was only within the past century that women were given the opportunity to be physicians rather than the traditional nurse – it was not a common concept that women should be allowed to have the same careers as men, much less that we were even capable of doing so. Some women, however, decided to oppose the common beliefs and practices of their time, and pushed for opportunities in higher levels of education in the field of medicine.
In the late eighteenth century, it was rare for women to be granted the opportunity of being part of the work force. The standard belief of the time that continued even through the nineteenth century, and the first part of the twentieth was the idea of “separate spheres”. This ideology established gender roles: men were to be the bread-winners of the household while women’s sole purpose was to birth and nurture their children and take care around the house. It was in this period that women were eventually granted a place in the medical field, but only as nurses – which were then deemed as the inferior group of the field. They began their “work” at the time of the American Revolution, primarily tending to injured soldiers. Though it may seem like women were given this opportunity for good reason, it was actually so more men would be available out on the field. This, along with receiving only 10% of what male apothecaries are paid, is a reason women did not often sign themselves up for this kind of “job”, and from here on after we still see unfair wage differences by gender.
Prior to Elizabeth Blackwell, there was a woman by the name of Harriot Hunt who challenged the at-the-time beliefs and educational structure. According to Harvard’s Center for the History of Medicine, Hunt (born in 1805) was trained as a medical practitioner under a doctor. In 1835, Harriet Hunt opened up her own consulting room at a practice, though she did not have a diploma at the time since women were not allowed into medical schools. This, however, does not mean that she did not try. Hunt first applied to Harvard Medical School in the year 1847, and when she was declined she applied a second time. Finally, the school itself allowed Harriet to attend the lectures, but other students would prevent her from attending them.
According to the National Institutes of Health, Elizabeth Blackwell was born in 1812 in England, and at age 11 moved to the United States with her family. Blackwell is recognized for her participation and activity for women’s rights, as well as anti-slavery movements. Prior to the year 1847, Blackwell began applying to dozens of medical schools, until finally in 1847 Geneva Medical School accepted her – much to her dismay was done as a “joke”. Although she worked towards this achievement, she had much prejudice against her for, as they say “defying her gender role”, and was often told to sit apart from the others in lectures or not allowed to go into labs as this was deemed an all-male school. In 1849, she made history: Blackwell was the first woman, not only at Geneva Medical School, but in America as a whole to graduate with an M.D. and top of her class, which gained her the respect of her peers and professors alike. The years following, she worked on building her skills, and beginning in 1851 she started opening her own small practice in America to treat women and children, which in 1857 grew into New York Infirmary for Women and Children. Nearly a decade later in 1868, Blackwell established a medical school for women to attend at her hospital. Although Blackwell died in 1810, she is still recognized for being the first female physician in American history, which sparked the flame in women to follow in similar footsteps and alter our society’s mindset over the years about women and the medical field.
Rebecca Lee Crumpler is a name not heard often regarding medical achievements, but she made history for being the first African-American woman to become a physician. In 1852, twenty-one-year-old Crumpler worked as a nurse in Charlestown, Massachusetts and applied to the New England Female Medical College in 1860 under Dr. Samuel Gregory and Dr. Israel Talbot who believed those attending were capable of applying their education into the workplace regardless of gender, which many men still felt was unfit for women at the time. In 1964, Crumpler was the first, and only, African-American woman to graduate from this medical school prior to it closing down in 1873. A couple years later, she moved to Virginia at the end of the Civil War to work under the Freedman’s Bureau, however her medical colleagues treated her with racism, sexism, and overall prejudiced remarks, so Crumpler moved back to Boston in the 1870s and she began her medical practice here.
Mary O’ Sullivan, born in 1902 to an activist for women’s working rights, pushed for higher education in the medical field, which was still an uncommon feat during this time period, according to Cephalalgia. In 1915, more women were being accepted into medical associations – a little over half a century from when Blackwell pushed for her medical degree and in 1923, O’Sullivan was accepted as a premedical science student at Tufts College and applied to a medical school three years later. At this time, O’Sullivan had wanted to attend Harvard Medical School, but like Harriot Hunt in the 1840s, women were not allowed to attend there. Women had definitely had some advances in medical education, however there were still differences in treatment, such as not being admitted to certain schools because of their gender as well as not even being allowed to go for an M.D. Instead, women were told they could solely pursue a PhD in the biomedical sciences unlike their male counterparts. Aside from this, Mary O’Sullivan found another way to get into and attend Harvard Medical School, and this was by being admitted as a “special student” under a Radcliffe program, though she instead went to the Boston University Medical College in 1928 and graduated with a degree in 1931. In the four years following, O’Sullivan did her residency and internships for neurology, and also did research on the branch at Bellevue Hospital in New York. Five years later, in 1950, Mary O’Sullivan was able to work as a neurologist – specializing in headaches – at four different hospitals and clinics. During O’Sullivan’s time, only around 5% of women were physicians, and it is stated that by 1942, only twenty-five women were neurologists, one of being O’Sullivan herself.
According to a census done by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 34% of physicians in the United States are women as of October 2017 – or to put it into numbers: 326,902 of 951,061 practicing U.S. physicians are female. From the mid-nineteenth-century to the mid-twentieth-century, there was approximately a 5% increase in female physicians. From the mid-twentieth century to the first two decades of the twenty-first-century, there has been a 30% increase – about six times more female physicians than there were approximately 70 years ago. This shows the stark increase in how we as women have evolved in the medical field in just the past 150 years because of the few who decided to take the stand against the norms of the time. It is because of these women and those after that we have made advances, not only within the scientific community, but in society as a whole.
Works Cited
“Professionally Active Physicians by Gender.” The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, 26 Jan. 2018, www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/physicians-by-gender/?dataView=0¤tTimeframe=0&selectedRows=%7B%22states%22%3A%7B%22all%22%3A%7B%7D%7D%2C%22wrapups%22%3A%7B%22united-states%22%3A%7B%7D%7D%7D&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22%3A%22Location%22%2C%22sort%22%3A%22asc%22%7D.
Jerath, N U, et al. "The Biography of Mary E. O'Sullivan: An Early American Headache Specialist." Cephalalgia: An International Journal of Headache, vol. 29, no. 10, Oct. 2009, pp. 1028-1033. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1111/j.1468-2982.2009.01845.x.
“Changing the Face of Medicine | ElizabethBlackwell.” U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, 3 June 2015, cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov/physicians/biography_35.html.
"Doctress in Medicine." The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal (1828-1851), vol. 40, no. 1, Feb 07, 1849, pp. 25, American Periodicals, http://ezhost.utrgv.edu:2048/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/127953810?accountid=7119.
“Harriot Kezia Hunt,” Center for the History of Medicine: OnView, accessed February 26, 2018, https://collections.countway.harvard.edu/onview/items/show/17991.
Markel, Howard. Celebrating Rebecca Lee Crumpler, First African-American Woman Physician. PBS, 9 Mar. 2016, 11:07AM, www.pbs.org/newshour/health/celebrating-rebecca-lee-crumpler-first-african-american-physician.
