Laws of Life, The, with special reference to the physical education of girls.

By America’s First Woman Doctor

Blackwell, Elizabeth. The Laws of Life, With Special Reference to the Physical Education of Girls. New York: George P. Putnam, 1852.

8vo.; preliminaries lightly faded; green-gray cloth, stamped in blind; red edges; hinges tender; tips bumped; spine sunned, frayed. In a specially made quarter-morocco slipcase.

First edition of the exceptionally scarce landmark first book by Elizabeth Blackwell, America’s first woman doctor, published three years after Blackwell earned her medical degree; it consists of six chapters—“Introduction,” “General Laws,” “The Organic Life,” “The Related Life,” “Criticism,” and “Reform”—based on lectures Blackwell delivered in 1851 about their women’s health care needs.

In The Laws of Life, Blackwell repeatedly sounds the themes which would concern her throughout her career: she laments women’s social and professional isolation, urges women to take responsibility for their own health and hygiene, and calls on women, young and old, to include regular physical exercise as part of their health routines. On this last point Blackwell departed radically from traditional Victorian health authorities, who promoted a sedentary lifestyle for all women, particularly those of the upper class. Blackwell stressed physical fitness as a universal goal; and she saw it as a value especially important to teach younger female generations:

...Think of this, oh mothers! When you see your young daughters growing up around you, remember that it is in your power to render them healthy and strong in body, and the mothers, in their turn, of a stronger race than ours....Do not continue in the fatal error of our age—forcing the intellect, and neglecting the development of the body....Mothers should realize the immense mischief that is done to their daughters by neglecting the body and overtaking the mind and they should resolve as a duty of primary importance to give them a strong physical organization... (pp. 33,179)

Elizabeth Blackwell was born in England in 1821. Her father, a prominent businessman and abolitionist, moved the family to New York in 1832. A strong believer in female education, he tutored his daughters at home. After her father’s death in 1838, Blackwell began to earn a living teaching at a local school for girls. She became interested in health care when a close friend was diagnosed with a terminal gynecological illness; in a deathbed wish, her friend said that she could have been spared the worst sufferings and indignities if only she “could have been treated by a lady doctor,” and urged Blackwell to study medicine as a profession (AR, pp. 83-87).

Blackwell was rejected as a matter of course from all the medical schools to which she applied—except one, New York’s Geneva Medical College, which in 1847 voted to accept her as a novelty. Blackwell received her medical degree on January 23, 1849, thereby becoming the first woman to graduate from a regular American medical school. She devoted the rest of her life to her work as a physician and women’s health advocate, specializing in the treatment of female ailments of the impoverished underclass. For several years, unable to establish a proper institutional connection, Blackwell practiced medicine and lectured independently—this 1852 book was the result of these labors. In 1857, Elizabeth and her younger sister Emily (who also became a doctor) established the New York Infirmary for Women and Children, which provided female doctors with a place to practice, offered medical services to women at affordable rates, and gave women patients the opportunity to be examined by physicians of their own sex. In 1860, Elizabeth and her sister founded an outpatient clinic at 8th Street and 2nd Avenue in Manhattan; the site, now known as the St. Marks Clinic, is still standing and serving those in need.

In 1869 Blackwell returned to England, where she continued to lecture and advocate on behalf of women’s medical issues

Item ID#: 4618

Print   Inquire

Copyright © 2024 Dobkin Feminism