Medical alert

Discover the heroic battle for women’s right to become doctors

When do you think women started earning M.D. degrees to practice medicine? At the beginning of the 20th century, perhaps? “That’s what most people think,” says author and medical journalist Olivia Campbell, who sets the record straight in her new book, Women in White Coats: How the First Women Doctors Changed the World of Medicine.

“The fact is that the start of women practicing medicine in the U.S. began in the Victorian era, and it was a painful, exhausting and hard-fought battle to make it happen,” explains the reporter, who tells the heroic tale of three women who broke down barriers: Elizabeth Blackwell, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Sophia Jex-Blake.

“In the early 1800s, women were dying in large numbers from treatable diseases because they avoided receiving medical care,” Campbell tells the Connection, noting that examinations performed by male doctors were often demeaning and even painful. Women who were ill often faced a stigma that limited their ability to find a husband, find a job or be received in polite society.

“They were motivated by personal loss and inadequate medical care and fought for their place in the male-dominated field,” says Campbell, whose own path to becoming a medical writer had its challenges. As a young girl she crafted mysteries fashioned after her beloved Nancy Drew. A passion for ballet led her to train to become a professional dancer, but a broken foot prompted a pivot to journalism. Then, an unplanned pregnancy as a junior in college—including a complicated birth and post-partum depression—sparked her desire to write about the intersection of women and medicine.

Campbell first saw a mention of these early women physicians after reading about a riot that occurred at Pennsylvania Hospital, near where she lives in Philadelphia.

She explains that the administrators of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania had spent years petitioning for their students to attend clinical lectures. “When [the administration] relented, 300 male medical students and doctors were awaiting those women in the surgical amphitheater,” says Campbell. “They hurled spitballs and epithets, tobacco spit and insults. But the women remained steadfast.”

Amazed by their fortitude, Campbell began digging into the reasons the three women persevered, despite family members flying into rages or depressive episodes, or even disowning them. She says, “They spoke of their own complicated pregnancies, difficult births, loss of a child at birth or in infancy, loss of a relative or friend in childbirth, or a loved one who was left frail or ill from too frequent childbirths.”

The determination of these women, and the others who followed, saved millions of lives through the healthy practice of midwifery and by treating various illnesses, disorders and injuries.

Campbell hopes that hearing the history of what these women had to endure to become doctors will help everyone realize the importance of advocating for more opportunities for women. And she reminds us: “Medicine has come so far in a short period of time. Be thankful you don’t live in a time when a fever or paper cut might spell the end of your life.”

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