and was refused the post of physician to the women's department of a dispensary in New York. She spent her leisure in preparing some excellent lectures on the physical education of girls ('Laws of Life,' New York, 1852). In 1853 she opened a dispensary of her own, which was incorporated in 1854 as an institution of women physicians for the poor, and developed into the New York Infirmary and College for Women. Joined in 1856 by her sister Emily, who had now also qualified at Cleveland, and by Marie Zackrzewska (a Cleveland student in whose education she had taken much interest and the third woman to qualify), she opened in New York in May 1857 a hospital entirely conducted by women. Opposition was great, but the quakers of New York gave valuable support from the first. In 1858 Elizabeth revisited England and gave lectures at the Marylebone Literary Institution on the value of physiological and medical knowledge to women and on the medical work already done in America. Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham welcomed her, and she issued an English edition of 'Laws of Life' (1859; 3rd edit. 1871). A proposal was made to establish a hospital for women's diseases, to which the Comtesse de Noailles, the Hon. Russell Gurney, and others contributed handsomely. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell's name was placed upon the British medical register on 1 Jan. 1859, ten years after she had qualified.
Again in America, Elizabeth joined her sister in a rapidly growing hospital practice. Students came to them from Philadelphia. At the outbreak of the American civil war they established the Ladies Sanitary Aid Institute and the National Sanitary Aid Association, and organised a plan for selecting, and training for the field, nurses whose services did much to win sympathy for the entire movement. In 1865 the trustees of the infirmary obtained a charter. The Blackwells would have preferred to secure the benefits of joint medical instruction, but, failing this, they organised a full course of college instruction, with hygiene as one of the principal chairs, an independent examination board, and a four years course of study. Elizabeth delivered the opening address on 2 Nov. 1868, and held the first professorship of hygiene. Dr Sophia Jex-Blake (d. 1912) was among her first students. In twenty years free and equal entrance of women into the profession of medicine was secured in America.
Elizabeth returned to England with a view to the same end. She settled in Jurwood Place, Marylebone, where in 1871, a drawing-room meeting, the National Health Society was formed. She lectured the Working Women's College on 'How to keep a Household in Health' (published 1870), and on 'The Religion of Health' 3rd edit. 1889) to the Sunday Lecture Society, but in 1873 her health gave way and she travelled abroad. At the London School of Medicine for Women, opened in 1875, she accepted the chair of gynaecology, he took an active part in the agitation against the Contagious Diseases Act. During a winter at Bordighera she wrote 'The Moral Education of the Young considered under Medical and Social Aspects,' which under its original title, Counsel to Parents on the Moral Education of their Children,' was refused by twelve publishers, and at last appeared through the intervention of Jane Ellice Hopkins [q. v. Suppl. II] (2nd edit. 1879). She also contributed an article on 'Medicine and Morality' to the 'Modern Review' (1881). Miss Blackwell delivered the opening address at the London School of Medicine for Women in October 1889, and revisited America in 1906; but an accident in Scotland enfeebled her in 1907, and she died at her home, Rock House, Hastings, on 31 May 1910, in her ninetieth year. She was buried at Kilmun, Argyll. A portrait from a sketch by the Comtesse de Charnacee, Paris, 1859, hangs at the London School of Medicine for Women.
Her other writings are:
- 'The Human Element in Sex,' 1884; new edit. 1894.
- 'Purchase of Women; a Great Economic Blunder,' 1887.
- 'Decay of Municipal Representative Government,' 1888.
- 'Influence of Women in Medicine,' 1889.
- 'Erroneous Method in Medical Education,' 1891.
- 'Christian Duty in Regard to Vice,' 1891.
- 'Christianity in Medicine,' 1891.
- 'Why Hygienic Congresses Fail,' 1892.
- 'Pioneer Work. Auto-biographical Sketches,' 1895.
- 'Scientific Method in Biology,' 1898.
Many of these were republished with additions in 'Essays in Medical Sociology' (2 vols. 1902).
[The Times, 2 June 1910; Medical Times, May and June 1849, pp. 560, 613, 633 ('Domina Blackwell'); Mesnard, Miss E. Blackwell et les femmes medecins, 1889; Miss Blackwell's works; Hays, Women of the Day, 1885.]
BLACKWOOD, FREDERICK TEMPLE HAMILTON-TEMPLE, first Marquis of Dufferin and Ava (1826–1902), diplomatist
