名人轶事:Elzabeth Blackwell

（单词翻译）

By Nancy Steinbach

Broadcast: October 10, 2004

(THEME)

ANNCR:

Every week we tell about someone important in the history of the United

States. Today, Shirley Griffith and Ray Freeman tell about the first western

woman in modern times to become a doctor. Now, the story of Elizabeth

Blackwell on the VOA Special English program People in America.

(THEME)

VOICE ONE:

Elizabeth Blackwell was born in Bristol, England in eighteen twenty-one. Her

parents, Hannah and Samuel Blackwell, believed strongly that all human beings

are equal. Elizabeth's father owned a successful sugar company. He worked

hard at his job. He also worked to support reforms in England. He opposed the

slave trade. He tried to help improve low pay and poor living conditions of

workers. And he wanted women to have the same chance for education as men.

He carried this out in his own home. Elizabeth had three brothers and four

sisters. All followed the same plan of education. They all studied history,

mathematics, Latin¹ and Greek. These subjects were normally² taught only to

boys. Friends asked Samuel Blackwell what he expected the girls to do with

all that education. He answered, "They shall do what they please".

VOICE TWO:

In eighteen thirty-two, Samuel Blackwell's sugar factory was destroyed by

fire. He and his wife decided³ to move the family to the United States.

Elizabeth was eleven years old.

The Blackwells settled in New York City. But Mister⁴ Blackwell's business

there failed. The family moved west, to the city of Cincinnati, on the Ohio

river.

Samuel Blackwell was sick for much of the trip. He died soon after arriving

in Ohio. To help support the family, Elizabeth and her two older sisters

started a school for girls in their home. Two younger brothers found jobs.

In the next few years, Elizabeth's brothers became successful in business.

The girls continued operating their school. But Elizabeth was not happy. She

did not like teaching⁵.

Elizabeth began to visit a family friend who was suffering from cancer. The

woman knew she was dying⁶. She said women should be permitted to become

doctors because they are good at helping⁷ sick people. The dying friend said

that perhaps her sickness would have been better understood if she had been

treated by a woman. And she suggested that Elizabeth study medicine.

VOICE ONE:

Elizabeth knew that no woman had ever been permitted to study in a medical

school. But she began to think about the idea seriously after the woman who

had suggested it died.

Elizabeth discussed it with the family doctor. He was opposed. But her family

supported the idea. So Elizabeth took a teaching job in the southern state of

North Carolina to earn money for medical school.

Another teacher there agreed to help her study the sciences she would need.

The next year, she studied medicine privately⁸ with a doctor. He was also a

medical school professor. He told Elizabeth that the best medical schools

were in Philadelphia.

VOICE TWO:

No medical school in Philadelphia would accept her. College officials told

her she must go to Paris and pretend to be a man if she wanted to become a

doctor. Elizabeth refused. She wrote to other medical colleges -- Harvard,

Yale, and other, less well-known ones. All rejected her, except Geneva

Medical College in the state of New York.

She went there immediately, but did not feel welcome. It was not until much

later that she learned⁹ the reason: her acceptance¹⁰ was a joke. The teachers at

the college decided not to admit a woman. But they did not want to insult¹¹ the

doctor who had written to support Elizabeth's desire to study medicine. So

they let the medical students decide.

The male students thought it funny that a woman wanted to attend medical

school. So, as a joke, they voted to accept her. They regretted their

decision by the time Elizabeth arrived, but there was nothing they could do.

She was there. She paid her money. She wanted to study.

VOICE ONE:

Elizabeth Blackwell faced many problems in medical school. Some professors

refused to teach her. Some students threatened her. But finally they accepted

her. Elizabeth graduated with high honors¹² from Geneva Medical School in

eighteen forty-nine. She was the only woman in the western world to have

completed medical school training.

Three months later, Doctor Elizabeth Blackwell went to Paris to learn to be a

surgeon. She wanted to work in a hospital there to learn how to operate on

patients. But no hospital wanted her. No one would recognize that she was a

doctor.

A hospital for women and babies agreed to let her study there. But she had to

do the tasks of a nursing student. At the hospital, Doctor Blackwell

accidentally¹³ got a chemical liquid in her eye. It became infected. She became

blind in that eye. So she was forced to give up her dreams of becoming a

surgeon.

Instead, she went to London to study at Saint¹⁴ Bartholomew's Hospital. There,

she met the famous nurse Florence Nightingale.

Elizabeth returned to the United States in eighteen fifty-one. She opened a

medical office in New York City. But no patients came. So doctor Blackwell

opened an office in a poor part of the city to help people who lived under

difficult conditions. And she decided to raise a young girl who had lost her

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VOICE TWO:

Elizabeth Blackwell had many dreams. One was to start a hospital for women

and children. Another was to build a medical school to train women doctors.

She was helped in these efforts by her younger sister Emily. Emily also had

become a doctor, after a long struggle to be accepted in a medical school.

With the help of many people, the Blackwell sisters raised the money to open

a hospital in a re-built house. The work of the two women doctors was

accepted slowly in New York. They treated only three hundred people in their

hospital in its first year. Ten times as many people were treated the second

year.

VOICE ONE:

Elizabeth Blackwell's work with the poor led her to believe that doctors

could help people more effectively by preventing sickness. She started a

program in which doctors visited patients in their homes. The doctors taught

patients how to clean the houses and how to prepare food so sickness could be

prevented.

News of Elizabeth's theories spread. Soon, she was asked to start a hospital

in London. She spoke¹⁵ to groups in London about disease¹⁶ prevention. And she

worked with her friend Florence Nightingale.

Elizabeth returned to the United States to start America's first training

school for nurses. And in eighteen sixty-eight, she opened her medical

college for women. She taught the women students about disease prevention. It

was the first time the idea of preventing disease was taught in a medical

school. Soon other medical schools for women opened in Boston and

Philadelphia.

VOICE TWO:

Elizabeth Blackwell felt her work in America was done. She returned to

England. She started a medical school for women in London. She wrote books,

and made speeches about preventing disease.

Doctor Blackwell talked of deaths that should never have happened, of

sickness that should never have been suffered. She spoke about the dangers of

working too hard, of eating poor food, of houses without light, of dirt and

other causes of disease. And she told doctors that their true responsibility

was to prevent pain and suffering from ever happening.

In eighteen seventy-one, she started the British National Health Society. It

helped people learn how to stay healthy.

VOICE ONE:

Elizabeth Blackwell never married. Neither did her sisters. They believed in

treating men like equals. And they expected to be treated like equals

themselves. Most men of that time did not accept such treatment. This belief

caused problems for their brothers too. They had trouble finding¹⁷ wives who

wanted to be considered as equals.

Two of Elizabeth's brothers did marry, however. Both their wives were famous

workers for the cause of women's rights.

VOICE TWO:

Elizabeth Blackwell died in England in nineteen ten. She was eighty-nine

years old.

She was a very strong woman. She once wrote that she understood why no woman

before her had done what she did. She said it was hard to continue against

every kind of opposition¹⁸. Yet she kept on because she felt the goal was very

important. Toward¹⁹ the end of her life, she received many letters of thanks

from young women. One wrote that doctor Blackwell had shown the way for women

to move on.

(Theme)

VOICE ONE:

This Special English program was written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Shirley

Griffith.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Ray Freeman. Join us again next week for another People in America

program on the Voice of America.