Elizabeth blackwell thesis

Fellow physicians quickly treated Blackwell’s infection with hourly saline cleanses, cauterizing her eyelashes, applying leeches to her temples, and administering opium and purgatives to cleanse her body. However, she lost sight in her left eye and was forced to have her eye surgically removed.

In 1851, Blackwell returned to New York City, New York, where she began to focus on making healthcare more accessible for women. In 1852, she taught classes in a church basement on sexual physiology and reproduction for young women. She later published the lectures as “The Laws of Life in Reference to the Physical Education of Girls.”

In 1854, Blackwell treated a young orphan girl named Katherine Barry and decided to adopt her. Blackwell acknowledged in her autobiography that her daughter found it strange to ever refer to a man as a doctor, because she spent her childhood calling Blackwell doctor rather than mother. In 1857]

After losing the financial income of their father, the three eldest sisters, including seventeen-year-old Blackwell, founded the Cincinnati English and French Academy for Young Ladies in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Academy was both a daytime school and a boarding school for women only.