BLACKWELL, Elizabeth, M.D.

The Laws of Life, With Special Reference to the Physical Education of Girls

First edition of the first book by America's first female doctor. 180pp. Bound in original gray-green blind-stamped cloth, all edges stained red, spine sunned to green (as usual with this cloth), small professional repair at the bottom of spine resulting in loss of part of "P" and all of "U" and "T" in publisher's name, original owner's name in pencil on the front free endpaper, "Robert Porter" and dated 1852, name in pencil repeated on page 63, else fine, a lovely copy of a scarce book that rarely turns up on the open market. Elizabeth Blackwell's text is developed from a series of lectures she had given the previous spring and was published just three years after she earned her medical degree. These themes were to concern her throughout her life, which was spent trying to improve the lives of other women. In this radical (for the time) treatise, Blackwell goes against the conventional wisdom of her contemporaries and advocates physical fitness for girls and women. She points out that a healthy diet is crucial for young girls as that will enable mental as well as physical development. Her arguments for these healthy life changes range from common sense to a citing of ancient Greek and Roman traditions. Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910), born in England, became an American citizen and was the first modern female to practice medicine in this country. She was a member of an extraordinary family of reformers: her sister Emily also practiced medicine; her sister Anna was a newspaper correspondent, another sister, Ellen, was an author and artist. Her brother Henry married Lucy Stone and Samuel married Antoinette Brown Blackwell, first woman minister. Elizabeth opened the first U.S. hospital run by women doctors, and, during the Civil War, helped form the Woman's Central Relief Association, spurring the formation of the U.S. Sanitary Commission. "Going off at age twenty-one to a teaching position in Kentucky, she realized that the traditional job with its inevitable culmination in marriage and motherhood was not for her, and she began consciously thinking about a way to avoid marriage in an era with virtually no employment opportunities for women. She settled on the idea of becoming a doctor -- something that, for women, was wholly without precedent." (Weatherford). Her early medical career was a struggle against great opposition. After rejection by about ten medical schools she was accepted, as a joke (and startled the males by showing up), to Geneva College in western New York, where she graduated at the head of her class in 1849. In 1853 she opened a small clinic to treat mostly poor people and in 1857 Elizabeth's New York Infirmary for Women and Children was established, with her physician-sister Emily and Dr. Marie Zakrzewska. In 1868 an outstanding medical college for women was attached to the hospital -- a dream long planned by Blackwell. Although a U.S. citizen, Elizabeth Blackwell lived in England from 1869 onward, had a successful practice, became a professor of gynecology at the new London School of Medicine for Women, and wrote books. In England she embraced Christian Socialism and called for "a more just distribution of income, greater governmental efficiency, workers' insurance, and the establishment of agrarian communities by Christian joint-stock companies." NAW I, pp. 161-65; Hersh, The Slavery of Sex, p. 171; Read & Witlieb, The Book of Women's Firsts, pp. 54-55; Weatherford, American Women's History, pp. 39-40; Timelines, pp. 145, 221, 222, 258.

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