Will the Real Elizabeth Blackwell Please Stand Up?
Posted in Around the Garden, Exhibitions, From the Library, People on July 1 2013, by Joyce Newman
Who is Elizabeth Blackwell? If you Google the name, you’ll see that in 1849 she was the first woman to receive a U.S. medical degree, opening the profession to women. But look again. An Englishwoman with the same name was also the first woman to create the illustrated medical text, A Curious Herbal (at right), which was published in 1737, and she too had a huge impact on the practice of medicine.
The extraordinary story of this talented Englishwoman and botanical artist, Elizabeth Blackwell (c. 1700-1758), is part of the Herbals exhibit now on display in the Rondina and LoFaro Gallery of the NYBG’s Mertz Library.
Blackwell’s illustrations deeply impressed many English physicians, botanists, and apothecaries in mid-18th century London where the tradition of the herbal endured longer than it did on the continent. In England the herbals were a close second to the Bible in popularity. And Blackwell’s work was not only unprecedented for a woman of her time, but revealed the grim circumstances she faced as a wife and mother.
Her free-wheeling husband, Alexander, who practiced as a physician, was in debtor’s prison due to a failed, shady business operation. So Elizabeth was desperate to earn money to support her young child and to get him released.