This day in history, on January 23rd, 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell was awarded her MD by the Medical Institute of Geneva, New York, thus becoming America’s first woman doctor. She became a leading public health activist during her lifetime and opened a medical school for women in the late 1860s. She later returned to England and set up a private practice there. She retired in 1877 and moved to Hastings. Elizabeth Blackwell died at her home there on May 31, 1910.
