the doctors blackwell by janice p nimura

While one might assume that Elizabeth's trailblazing made Emily's path easier, she seems to have faced the same obstacles in her search for professional training. Less well-defined is Emily, who also bucked societal norms to follow her elder sister into the medical field.

These details only make her success seem all the more extraordinary. In Nimura's hands, Elizabeth's personality leaps off the page, letting readers feel her joys, sorrows and frustrations even as they come to understand that she wasn't necessarily a likable or empathetic person. The author deftly captures the people and events in the young Elizabeth's life that led her to confidently undertake such an intrepid professional journey, as well as how this bold woman was viewed by those she encountered. Elizabeth, born in 1821, was the third of nine children, and Nimura's account primarily follows this remarkable woman as she embarks on the career for which she feels eminently suited – that of a medical doctor – in spite of the fact that in the mid-19th century no female had obtained a medical degree in the United States. The Blackwells immigrated to the United States from England in 1832, settling in Cincinnati, Ohio. The author follows the globetrotting pair as they train in England, Scotland and France, and then go on to improve medical training for women by founding an infirmary and a women's medical college in New York, overcoming all obstacles placed in their paths.

Nimura paints a vivid picture of sisters Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell as they navigate uncharted territory to become the first women in the United States to obtain medical degrees. A stirring dual biography reveals the lives of two influential sisters at the dawn of modern medical science.

The doctors blackwell by janice p nimura