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Lone Woman: The Story of Elizabeth Blackwell, the First Woman Doctor.

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The definitive well-researched biography focusing on the first woman doctor in America. The many changes of scene and of fortune in Blackwell's life, combined with her penchant for seeking new challenges, make her a lively biography subject.

Up against the limitations of American medicine in the early 1800s & how women suffered at the hands of male physicians, came, from a close-knit family of Dissenters who emigrated from England, a single-minded young woman determined to become a surgeon. A few physicians rallied to her cause, becoming sponsors, but no medical schools would admit her except, eventually, Geneva Medical College of Western New York, and that was actually the result of a joke. The many personal and professional hurdles that Blackwell had to overcome in order to succeed are detailed in this well-documented narrative, preesented within the context of her social and intellectual milieu, her teaching career, and the community of medicine during her lifetime.