Being in medicine, I heard about Elizabeth Blackwell years ago, but I'd not read much about her sister, Emily.

What a treat to read about two women who fought against the system that had everything stacked against them. Before women could vote, own land, sign a mortgage, and could be institutionalized for having a bad day, these two went into medicine and changed it.

Learning about what these women pushed through, created, and changed inspires me to do better. We often forget how hard those before us fought to get us where we are.

I had the great fortune to get an ARC from the publisher for an honest review.
I also covered the book on my monthly book picks segment. Link included.

I appreciate the publisher allowing me to read this book. A fascinating read very well written and researched. I highly recommend

Loved to learn about the diverse way that humans have operated around their bodies and the history of women's health for so long. I'll absolutely be using this in my work.

Elizabeth Blackwell is a historical figure that I've been fascinated with for decades. This book brought to light so much more information than I thought possible. Her work to become a doctor, against so many odds, is fascinating to read. Her experiences, the years of work she put in just to prove herself, and her relationship with her sister Emily all highlight a life of one of the more notable female figures in history.

Before reading Janice P. Nimura's book The Doctors Blackwell, I had no idea who the first female M.D. was. I had no idea what the history of women in medicine was.

But this non-fiction book takes us through the life of Elizabeth Blackwell, female doctor, and her younger sister Emily Blackwell, who followed her big sister into the world of medicine, as well. The two sisters eventually worked together in New York, opening up their own practice, starting a hospital, and running a women's medical college.

The book is interesting in that while it's telling the story of the Blackwells (and indeed, you do learn about the whole Blackwell family), it's also about how medicine evolved in America in the late 1800s. Imagine going to a hospital and getting worse because the doctor didn't wash his hands between helping someone else and helping you. In an age of COVID-19, it's unthinkable that people wouldn't practice basic hygiene, but they just didn't know it back then!

What I found most intriguing about Elizabeth Blackwell was that she seemed to only become a doctor because she knew she was smarter than men, and getting a degree would prove that in a very public way. I think Blackwell also thought that she would pave the way for other women to enter a male-dominated field, but instead, Blackwell and the women who came after her still experienced push-back for many years.

Yet, despite these setbacks, the Blackwells never gave up. Whatever their motivations were, they accomplished a lot in their lifetimes and might not actually be getting the credit they deserve.

The Doctors Blackwell is published by W.W. Norton & Company and is on the bookstore shelves today. I received a free e-ARC in exchange for this review.

The Doctors Blackwell:How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine by Janice P. Nimura is a Historical Biography and Memoirs. It is exciting to read about these women who were brave enough to become physicians at this time in history. I was amazed to read what the Doctors Blackwells accomplished in their lives. They provided services for others and society at great sacrifice in their own lives. I am sure the Blackwell sisters might have influenced my own 3rd Great Grandmother who became a Lady Doctor in 1861 and therefore many other family members who have followed in medicine.
An inspiring biography and history of the Faith and Spirit of two Women who made a difference in the world.
I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. I appreciate the opportunity and thank the author and publisher for allowing me to read, enjoy and review this book. 5 Stars

Thank you to W. W. Norton and Net Galley for the chance to read and review this book. I really like biographies about famous women and this one did not disappoint. This is the story of two of the first female doctors-Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell. Elizabeth was the first woman to receive a medical degree and her sister was right behind her. When I read books like this, it helps me realize how hard these women had to work. Most people thought they were crazy for wanting to be doctors, and they were never really accepted for all of their hard work. This is also a history of what is going on in the world during their lifetime. This book is very well-written, with a lot of actual quotes from the Blackwell sister's notes and lectures. It also includes a few photographs (it is my understanding that they did not leave many photographs). I highly recommend this book if you like historical biographies like I do. You will love it!

This was everything you want in a biography. Extensively researched and well-written, the history of the Blackwells, and 19th century medicine as whole, is presented in an extremely readable fashion. The narrative weaves together many big names of the times, deftly discusses the intersections of the women’s suffrage and abolitionist movements, and provides a compassionate, though unvarnished, history of these first woman MDs.

While the accomplishments of the Blackwells sisters are impressive, Nimura doesn’t whitewash or editorialize the ways in which they benefited from immense privilege, even by 19th century standards. The sisters were marketed as progressive intellectuals, but the historical record shows that they were happy to compromise their principles of abolition or women’s rights when it served their higher purpose. Working with Simms, training on slave owning estates, not supporting suffrage, intellectualism, classism, and not exactly lifting up other women behind them- the family isn’t the perfect paragons of progress and readers will appreciate that nuance.

For a thorough history of medicine, social movements, and the women who paved the way for future MDs, this is a great biography.

While the focus of this book is on the two Blackwell sisters who became the first women to receive medical degrees in the United States, it also touches on a lot of what was going on in their world, nineteenth-century United States and Europe. The reader will meet many of the movers and shakers of that era and come away with a real feel for the challenges an intellectual woman faced in that time. The Blackwell family moved from Bristol in England to New York in the early nineteenth century. The family, I gather, was upper middle class because the father owned a sugar refining plant in England which burned down. He began anew there, but as an abolitionist, felt ambivalent about this profession, knowing that Caribbean sugar plantations used slave labor. He brought his large family to the U.S. for new opportunity. He moved the family from New York to Cincinnati, then considered the "West", and soon thereafter died. This left the family in something of a financial bind so that all the siblings old enough to, needed to seek work. For the girls, teaching was the best option. Early in the Blackwell sisters' lives, one of their grandmothers had openly revealed her regret at being married and said if she had it to do over, she would not have married "Grandpapa". Interestingly, none of the five girls in the family ever married. Two of the three boys did, but they married strong, intellectual women. By not being married and needing to care for a family, the girls were more free to follow their intellectual pursuits. Elizabeth comes across as brilliant, but very prickly. She apparently sought to become a degreed physician more for the challenge and acclaim than from a desire to practice medicine. Emily, who was six years younger, was actually interested in science and received encouragement from Elizabeth to repeat her feat. Thereafter, Elizabeth seemed to have the ideas and start projects only to let Emily follow through and do the hard work. After receiving their degrees, both women went to Europe for further training. While working in a maternity hospital for indigent women in Paris (as a sort of intern), Elizabeth contracted an infection in one eye and lost that eye. I was really struck at how much traveling the Blackwell siblings were able to do. (For example, Elizabeth went to a sort of spa near the Polish border to try to heal her diseased eye, but without antibiotics, the "water therapy" there did no good. ) It was also interesting that they could choose to just go to and live in European countries. Imagine the paperwork that would entail these days. Some of the Blackwell siblings ended up returning to England, making their lives there. In the end, Elizabeth was one of them. She and Emily had started a women and children's hospital and a medical school for women, but Emily was left to run them in the end. Another interesting thing was the ease with which Elizabeth was able to go to an orphanage and come home with a young girl whom she raised as a sort of helpmeet/servant. I was also interested to read of how women were perceived in the nineteenth century and how limited their options were. It makes you realize how extraordinary the Blackwell sisters' achievements were. You can also see clearly that they were able to achieve all they did because they didn't marry. Marriage was no great deal for women then. I was sometimes annoyed with Elizabeth's condescending and opinionated tone. She heartily disapproved of birth control (an attitude common then), but she had never had to bear child after child, at risk to her life and health. I was surprised she could have worked with women and not intuited that. Emily came across as a more sympathetic character. She seemed more down to earth and perhaps dogged in her approach to life. All of the Blackwells were obviously well educated and quite intelligent. They met so many of the notable people of their time. (Elizabeth even met Abraham Lincoln.) I found this book to be fascinating and well-written. The author included a nice bibliography and notes, so the interested reader can explore further. I was struck by the extensive letters and journals the Blackwells left behind, certainly a boon to the author. (This is something that actually concerns me about modern times. I really doubt emails and tweets will survive the years. How will historians in the future 'hear' the voices and learn of the lives of everyday people? In fact, I was interested in reading this book after I heard the author on the PBS Newshour talking about journaling:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-value-of-writing-our-way-through-a-tumultuous-2020 )
I am grateful to the publisher and Netgalley for being able to read an advance review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

What distinguishes this book from other non-fiction historical accounts is the marriage of readability and meticulous documentation. The author manages deft storytelling to make the reader wonder, "how will this ever work out," a neat trick when the outline of the sisters' achievements is well known. Bonus: the Blackwell family and acquaintances feel like an intellectual movers and shakers list from the antebellum American north and Europe...names are dropped! We see you Florence Nightingale!

I received an advance copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest opinion. I really enjoyed reading this biography. It is readable and interesting. Quotes from journals and letters are woven into the story and really give a sense of the personalities and thinking of both of the Blackwell doctors. In some ways these sisters were inspiring pioneers, but in others ways they really were a product of the times they were living in. If you are interested in the history of medicine, or in biographies of women who broke the mold, I think you will really this book!

Two sister in 1849,become doctors and never marry! The Doctors Blackwell is a very amazing and well researched story of the Blackwell family,all of them,lost count how many brothers and sisters,but they believed in 1849 that women could be excellent doctors just as well as men! Follow these two women's lives,as they fight for every thing they want,to become one of the first women doctors,the very few there was. The laughter,the sorrow the sacrifice they went through in a dream they believed in and the support of their family. This was a really great story of this family and the way people back then thought of women and look at today 2020,and women are still fighting for the right to be equals. Wonder what they would have thought if they could see woman in 2020! Very informative but also a beat warming story. I really think you will like the story.Have not read anything from this author,Janice P. Nimaura and will look for more! Thanks to Net Gallery for letting me read this spectular exciting story!

The name Elizabeth Blackwell continues to be well-known long after her death. Her sister Emily was no less accomplished but far less well known, the third woman to earn a medical degree. This joint biography provides a very thorough account of the lives of two remarkable women. The stories of the Blackwell sisters provide an interesting contrast, Elizabeth the rigid visionary, and Emily the steady hard-worker. The Blackwell sisters’ story reads like a who’s who of the 19th century. The author provides an engaging story of the lives of these groundbreaking sisters and their families. I am glad to have had the opportunity to learn more about Emily Blackwell and her contribution to American medicine.

The Doctors Blackwell is an interesting and well written biography of the Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell, pioneering female physicians in the USA. Due out 19th Jan 2021 from W.W. Norton, it's 352 pages (ebook), and will be available in hardcover and ebook formats.

As a healthcare professional who works in a teaching hospital, I'm regularly involved in interacting with students in labwork exercises and orientation to labwork and histology coursework. I was interested to see a few years ago that the gender distribution of incoming students has continued to be weighted more and more toward women choosing to pursue medical degrees and today, the balance has shifted to about 80% female and 20% male for the upcoming class. It's because of pioneering women like the Blackwell sisters in STEM careers that young women today have the opportunity to pursue their educational goals.

At the time the Blackwell sisters were pursuing their educations, being a physician was an outlandish, almost shocking goal for females. Author Janice Nimura does a good job of conjuring the historical context and readers get a real feeling for what a monumental uphill climb they faced and how much strength, stubbornness, and grit they displayed.

The book is arranged roughly chronologically with their early childhood and upbringing through their educations, travels, setbacks and successes. The author has a rather unflinching style, not covering over their rougher edges to make for a more palatable story. They were both complex women and this biography reflects that.

The author has included a good bibliography (divided into primary and secondary source material), abbreviated chapter notes, and an index.

Four stars. Recommended for readers who enjoy biographies, history, women's health studies, medicine, gender studies, American history, etc.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

Thank you to W. W. Norton for giving me a free digital galley of this book in exchange for feedback.

Well, I’ve just spent several days intermittently telling my wife interesting facts about Elizabeth Blackwell that she did not ask me for.

Did you know that, although Elizabeth Blackwell is the one who is famously the first female doctor, her sister Emily was also an early doctor who worked with her? Did you know that they lived right in our hometown of Cincinnati, and although their house no longer exists, the site where it once was is a bakery where we could have lunch? Did you know about Eclectic medicine? Did you know that Dr. Blackwell was stricken with a horrible eye ailment that threatened to ruin her career and did make her life much harder? Did you know that she took in a little Irish orphan and raised her in ways that were simultaneously sweet, ruthlessly pragmatic, and deeply dubious? Did you know what a complex and fascinating person she was, and worthy of much more of our attention than a single-sentence biography?

This book is a fantastic biography of two fantastic women, and I couldn’t put it down.

I found this book quite fascinating and was interested to learn more of the Blackwell sisters. I knew of Elizabeth Blackwell, but not of her sister Emily. The story to us from their beginnings straight through their lives. The author told their history and did a wonderful job interspersing journal entries and pieces of letters into the manuscript. I am personally intrigued by the journey that women took in the early days of medicine.

This book is not for the faint of heart and some reader’s may need to keep a dictionary handy because the book is a lexicon of high level phraseology that could be oft-putting to some readers. I do not see this book as a memoir that will appeal to the average reader, but rather as a more scholarly tome. The book is extremely well written and shares with the reader an in-depth look at Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell’s contribution to medicine and society in general.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the book is seeing the divergent paths the sisters take to promote women in medicine. While Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell was the original pioneer I personally believe that Dr. Emily Blackwell’s contribution was more far reaching. I found Dr. Emily far more interesting and relatable than her sister Emily. I would recommend this book to people wishing to learn more about women in early medicine and specifically the Doctors Blackwell.

Nimura’s joint biography of Drs. Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell, the first and third women in the U.S. to earn medical degrees, seems to have two objectives: to argue that Emily Blackwell, five years younger than Elizabeth, was both the more accomplished of the two and essential to her sister’s success, and to show that the Blackwells were products of their time. Nimura achieves these objectives as she reminds the reader that stories of inspirational figures can have the power to disappoint if not approached carefully.

The Blackwells were progressive and well-connected, so it would be impossible to tell their stories without an understanding of the United States, Great Britain, and continental Europe of the latter half of the nineteenth century. Nimura (an independent scholar) skillfully weaves the people, forces, and events of that time into the Blackwells’ lives without bogging down the narrative. The reader learns, for instance, that Elizabeth was opposed to woman suffrage, and that she did not endorse germ theory.

Considering how little has been written about Emily Blackwell, one would have liked to see her as the focus of the book, rather than Elizabeth, who gets slightly more attention here. Nevertheless, <i>The Doctors Blackwell</i> is an important work, not only for the research into Emily’s career, but for its portrayal of Elizabeth as a complicated, not always likeable pioneer. It is recommended for public, high school, and academic libraries, and for anyone interested in women’s studies or nineteenth-century history.