Little Money Left Elizabeth example essay topic

Do you know who the first woman doctor of the United States was Well if you don t I think you will enjoy the pleasure of learning about this energetic and hard working woman who made it possible for the world to look at women a different way. Elizabeth Blackwell made the goal that many women wanted comes true for the first time. Elizabeth Blackwell was born in Bristol, England on a brisk night, on February 3rd, 1821 to the proud parents of Hannah and Samuel Blackwell. Elizabeth was the third of nine children. When Elizabeth was around the age of 11 years old her family was kicked out of their home because her father was unable to pay the prices of taxes. After men started received less pay and were denied the rights to vote for their rights.

For more than 3 days the men set fires, looted and emphasized their desperation. When Elizabeth's fathers refinery was burned down. That is in which mainly made it impossible for Mr. Blackwell to keep up with the taxes and also made it very dangerous for the family. The Blackwell family immigrated and moved to the United States. In 1832 the family accompanied by Eliza Major went aboard the Cosmo. Her family made their destination to the astonishing state of New York in seven and a half weeks.

At the age of 11 Elizabeth was way too amused by the site and smells to worry bout any diseases she might catch. Her family moved into Greenwich Village in the lower half of Manhattan with six children one on the way, two parents and two servants. Elizabeth was barely depressed about the moving; in fact she was pretty relaxed and enjoyed seeing most of the sites. In 1838 when Elizabeth was at the age of 17 her father passed away.

Her father Samuel was diagnosed with Biliary Fever. He was given all sorts of medicine but never recovered. Elizabeth had a feeling her father would never get better but her problems increased more after her father passed away. Elizabeth was feeling dazed and hardly gather herself to help with any work around the house.

Elizabeth worried herself more about what should be done about the family's acute financial conditions. There being very little money left Elizabeth structured a family meeting. Elizabeth and her two sisters Anna (23) and Marion (21) came to an agreement that they were to start a school for girls and go into teaching. Neither one of the sisters liked the idea but it was the only thing left to do that would raise some money for the household expenses. Shortly after Elizabeth's close friend Mary Donaldson died.

Before Mary passed away she stated that Elizabeth had good leisure and health and that Elizabeth should become a doctor because of her good will in liking to study and help people... Elizabeth was startled at her friend's opinion. But then Elizabeth started to think about if what her dear friend suggesting could really help. Was it that there were actually women out there that would feel more comfortable having a female doctor instead of a male doctor Elizabeth thought and thought, maybe she should do it. And she decided to do it with her family 100% percent behind her and of courses her brother Henry adding on extra support. So she had made her final decision and Elizabeth wasn t going to let anyone!

Stop her. Elizabeth moved to Asheville, North Carolina to stay with a good friend John Dickson to start studying medical terminology. Dickson got Elizabeth a job teaching music so that she could earn and save up for her college tuition. It wasn t until John Dickson suggested that Elizabeth should move to Charleston South Carolina to stay his brother Dr. Samuel H. Dickson. Moving to South Carolina helped Elizabeth a great deal. Samuel had a Medical Library that Elizabeth was welcome to whenever needed and was again set up with a job in a nice school teaching music.

With her busy schedule you would think she didn t have time to do any thing. However every morning before breakfast Elizabeth would receive Greek lessons before breakfast from Dr. Dickson. Elizabeth applied to 29 different colleges and received a rejection letter from most of them. It wasn t until 1947 that she received the first acceptance letter to Geneva Medical College. Even though it became acceptable for the United States for women to attend college, it was still a major struggle for Elizabeth to get into a Medical college. And this made Elizabeth very happy seeing that women in the 1800's didn t have many rights at all.

They were pretty much just like slaves. A husband had the right to beat his wife every few weeks or whenever he felt like it to stop his wife from nagging. Divorces were extremely difficult for a woman if she wanted the divorce. Women had no rights to sue a man for property because it was against the law for a woman to own any land, even if her husband or father dies. Pretty much all a woman was granted was Alimony, if that. When it came down to children, they were normally sent to with the father.

And a woman couldn t fight or say anything protecting her or children that would therefore make her improper. So Elizabeth faced many pressures towards deciding to become a Doctoress. During Elizabeth's start of education at Geneva Medical College, she received great amounts of criticism from the male students and females on campus. Everytime Elizabeth walked down the street she would hear things such as; What kind of female would openly defy tradition how could a woman let herself share a classroom with men Elizabeth never let the comments bother her.

She knew what her purposes at Geneva were for. On January 23rd, 1849 Elizabeth Blackwell accepted her diploma, being top of her class, wearing a black silk dress, trimmed at the cuffs and a collar with white lace. Not the traditional red gown, giving a short speech of appreciation and bowing before College president Benjamin Hale. Henry Blackwell, Elizabeth's younger brother who attended the graduation wrote a letter to the family saying, Our sis came off with flying colors.

After graduating Elizabeth packed her bags and went back to Philadelphia, Elizabeth wasn t impressed with her sudden popularity from a group of females at Geneva College. All of a sudden the very females that were once criticizing Elizabeth were now waiting her outside of her Boarding house and calling upon Elizabeth to congratulate her on her great achievement. Elizabeth continued to be polite. However found it best to go back to Philadelphia. Thoughts of going back home to Cincinnati crossed Elizabeth's mind but she couldn t stand the thought of them having another mouth to feed since her funds were very low.

Elizabeth went back to the Elders in Philadelphia. Searching for work that involved Medicine, she wrote music for a Christmas Annual. Writing music isn t what young Elizabeth wanted to do though. After lots of thought of where she could get some hospital experience, Elizabeth finally came to a good conclusion. Elizabeth went to Alms Hospital to apply for work.

She spoke to Mr. Gilpin, one of the hospital directors. Mr. Gilpin explained to Elizabeth that it wasn t so easy him to hire her. She would have to go through Political Leaders to get accepted. Elizabeth did just that and at last got a contract stating that she ll be granted to enter the institution and that she would be assigned a position by the chief resident physician. The position given was for Elizabeth to work on the third floor in the Syphilitic ward. Many of the patients would wander about and at times tried to rid of their curiosity and peep through the key hole of Elizabeth's door but she kept a table in front of the door so that they couldn t see anything.

The experience in Alms Hospital gave Elizabeth many Firsts. Before arriving at Alms, Elizabeth had never seen a person bleed before. But when the time came she had remembered what her professors at Geneva College had taught her. On one Occasion a woman tied the hospital sheets together and tried to escape.

The young lady fell three stories. Found with some broken bones. Come to find out she was inpatient and was in labor. Doctors tried to save the African American infant. Elizabeth couldn t stand the sites she was seeing. Children and women were being treated differently than other patients.

In 1853 Elizabeth decided to open a small clinic for poor women and children. She received help setting up the clinic in Manhattan and was given furniture. When the clinic opened there was very little clientele. Until one day Elizabeth open the front door wide open and stood in front of the entrance.

Crowds of women and children passed the front door, glancing up, into the clinic and looking at Elizabeth. But they never came in. On day, an aged woman walked by, looked then kept walking, and then came back. She was shocked to hear that Elizabeth was the doctor of the clinic.

However she was convinced enough. She let Elizabeth work on her pained arm. The next day Elizabeth came to see crowds of people waiting for her to open her clinic. Elizabeth helped all that came to her for help. Elizabeth also made house calls. It wasn t very safe, because the neighborhood that her clinic was in, wasn t a safe neighborhood after certain hours.

Men would follow her. But Elizabeth kept walking at a fast pace and never turned around. Her strength and beliefs conquered her fear. Month's later Elizabeth came to find she would have to close the clinic or start charging for her services. But most of her patients were poor; all she could do was close the clinic. In 1854, Elizabeth's sister Emily came for a visit.

Emily had just graduated from Western Reserve College and would soon be traveling to England such as Elizabeth to further her education in medicine. Emily figured that her stay in New York would prepare her for her journey to England. During Emily's stay, Elizabeth stated to her sister that she was tired of being alone. Emily's first thought was that her sister was going to plan to get married. However Elizabeth gave up on getting married years before.

No man could understand her goals and some didn t or wouldn t approve of it. Elizabeth fastly corrected her sister. She told Emily that she was going to adopt a child, a little girl from the orphanage. The very next day, Elizabeth went to get the little girl. Kitty Barry was her name. She was bright eyed and had long dark hair.

The little girl ran to Elizabeth and greeted her. Elizabeth asked the young girl if she wanted to come home with her. Kitty was happy as could be. She wanted nothing more than to go home with Elizabeth and that is what she did. More thoughts of opening another clinic crossed Elizabeth's mind. She spoke with her sister about opening a clinic in New York.

They spoke on it for a while and decided that they would do it. Soon after a German woman by the name of Marie Zakrzewska came to Elizabeth. Marie was a female wanting to become a doctor from Germany coming to the United States to find work. She had heard about Elizabeth and found it necessary to meet her. Fastly Marie was built into the plan of working with Elizabeth and Emily. They had meetings about how to start the upcoming women's clinic.

Elizabeth once stated that they would need ten thousand dollars to open the clinic. However Emily and Marie found it impossible to raise so much money in so little time. How would they do it With Elizabeth coming straight home from calls to spend time with Kitty then to Teach Marie, there wasn t much time left. But as soon as Marie finally became a legal doctor they were to start working towards the clinic. And that is just what they did. The three ladies had so much planned.

Their only problem was getting approved to open a Hospital for women and children and raising enough money. Elizabeth suggested that they buy a house then work to pay it off. A couple of day's later Elizabeth had found a fine old house. The plan was to pay off the first years lease then open the hospital.

They kept the clinic open to earn money for the hospital. In a years time they had managed to raise $750.00 from the women's group they had accomplished to keep going. The trio had also made a fine amount of money when Elizabeth found it time to help England's women out educationally. Elizabeth's British friends urged her to come and visit. In August of 1858 Elizabeth, along with her daughter Kitty boarded the Persia.

Both ladies suffered of the same illness... Seasickness. But at age 11, young kitty found it so amazing. After arriving to England, Elizabeth went to many of the meetings held by the women in England and also wrote a book for British publication called the Laws of life.

Elizabeth soon reunited with her great friend Florence Nightingale, who was a wealthy woman of her own achievement. Florence urged Elizabeth to stay in England and work with her to start a Nursing school for women. But Elizabeth had to return to New York make money to build the Infirmary up to higher standard. However the only thing that made up Elizabeth's mind on leaving was receiving a letter From Marie Zakrzewska. Marie had received a letter from Boston College stating to her that they wanted her as a professor. Marie accepted their offer.

Elizabeth expected that Marie would leave after the two years at the Infirmary. Elizabeth approved of Marie's decision. In 1868 Elizabeth Blackwell was granted the title of Doctor of Medicine. But it was useless; she had neither the appropriate amount of funds nor enough supporters. Until Elizabeth shared this matter with the towns people is when they donated most of the funds.

But the college would be much more difficult than regular medical colleges. Instead of being accepted with 10 months of medical experience, one would need 3 years. The Medical College started with seventeen students and eleven professors. Elizabeth taught Hygiene and her sister Emily a professor in Obstetrics. Elizabeth made another trip to England in 1969, trying to rebuild her energy and enlarge her experience of life. But in 1876 Elizabeth suffered from a condition called biliary colic, a liver ailment.

Elizabeth had 13 attacks from this condition. It caused her to vomit and be left with harsh pain for a month. Suddenly Elizabeth found it best to take some time of from her lecturing at London School of Medicine. Hoping to cure her illness she and daughter Kitty took a trip to Italy. The warm sun helped some, but no major improvements.

In the winter of 1876 Elizabeth wrote another book Under the olive trees a brief autobiography. Elizabeth and Kitty moved into a rock house in 1879. They had lived there for 30 years. In 1906 Kitty and Elizabeth made a summer trip to the United States.

They stayed in a hotel in Scottish Mountain village in Kilmun. During their stay, Elizabeth fell headfirst down a flight of stairs leaving her scared for the rest of her life. Elizabeth was left in a dreamlike state of mind, she never talked much nor did half the things she had used to. On May 31st, 1910 Elizabeth Blackwell died of a stroke with her daughter Kitty by her side.

She had mentioned wanting to be buried at Kilmun and she was. Her daughter Kitty made sure that she was left to rest at Kilmun. Elizabeth spent all her adult life striving toward a goal that never left her heart. She made it possible for other women in the world to work toward having a career.