It has been a while so I’ve got to start this series of inspirational woman off with an absolute fucking banger! Hold on to your codpieces history fans and let me introduce you to Elizabeth Blackwell.
Elizabeth Blackwell, born 3 February 1821 in Bristol, just happens to be known as the first ever woman to receive a medical degree in the United States and the first woman on the UK medical register. She was such a good-hearted motherfucker she makes Mother Theresa look like Fagan from Oliver Twist. Blackwell was a bit like Nicholas Tesla in the sense that she thought finding a romantic partner was a waste of her massive brain. So she fobbed that off and hit the books pretty fucking hard. A reverend in the town she was living in used to be a physician and liked the way she was thinking so let her borrow his books while she saved for her medical course. She had to save $3,000, which was a fucking toe-curling amount of money at the time. Roughly speaking (and according to an online value of currency convertor) it amounts to about $97,000… Fuck that.
While working as a teacher to save enough cash money dollar dollar bills, she started a Sunday school for slaves as she thought the whole slavery thing was bullshit, fair play. She started sending letters to get her feelers out there for where she could study and everyone were being assholes and palming her off. She was quoted in her autobiography as saying, “As to the opinions of people, I don’t care one straw personally”, which roughly translates today as “Fuck you”. She then just moved up to Philadelphia to hassle these cunts in person. They kept nay-saying her and even admitted that she may be equally as good and then become competition so they’re not going to help her fuck them over.
She finally had her persistence pay off in 1847 when she was accepted to Geneva Medical College. It was pretty lucky as well. The big-wigs of the college were all like “oh fuck, I don’t know what to do”, so they let the class of 150 students vote if she could join on the condition that if even one student said no then she was out on her arse. Everyone was cool though and said yeah fuck it.
So she got her degree and everyone actually thought it was pretty cool. She started working as a physician in a maternity hospital and all was going well. Then, as fate is a cruel cunt, while treating a kid with opthalmia neonatorum (gross scabby eyes) a heaving dollop of eye slop hit her right in the face and completely fucked her left eye. They had to surgically gouge out her eye and shat on her chances of being a surgeon.
However we can end on a happy note as she didn’t let that shit stop her. She went on to open her own infirmary (hospital of sorts), adopt an Irish orphan called Kitty and started a medical school for woman so they didn’t have to deal with all the shit that she did.
All in all I say well fucking done Elizabeth, 10/10.
Leonardo Gavinci 