A history of pioneering women doctors descends into Mills & Boon trivia

The first three women doctors on the medical register in the UK had not only to study harder than their male counterparts but also to contort themselves in almost impossible ways, jumping from city to city and country to country in order to gain the scientific knowledge and clinical skills that would allow them to progress. In fact, even after reaching standards where men could easily have graduated, they had to plead to be allowed to sit the exams.

Of course, misogyny was not the only bigotry in the 19th century. To black slave-workers, these wealthy white women, who were encouraged to lead pampered lives rather than work in such a ‘male’ field, were lucky. So although the history of discrimination in medicine is fascinating and important, much of it is simply a reflection of the injustices of the time.

Olivia Campbell begins her book by discussing women who worked in healing for thousands of years without receiving recognition. She goes on to list shamans, wise women and witch doctors, although not all of these were equally evidence based; nor, in fact, was much of medicine in the 19th century. But her point is that when thousands of men could enter medical schools to study the emerging sciences, work in hospitals and graduate as doctors, the trials these first three women underwent were shocking. They paid far more than male students to attend lectures, where they were jeered at; their registration at medical school was reneged on; they were refused admission to clinical wards, and had to put up with tantrums from the medical establishment. Joseph Lister and the medical press do not come across well.

The three women were Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (called ‘Lizzie’ throughout), Elizabeth Blackwell (‘Elizabeth’) and Sophia Jex-Blake (‘Sophia’).