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Despite medicine being a White male-dominated profession, women have always practiced medicine. Women were the primary decision makers when it came to the health care of their families. Women used their knowledge of herbs and home remedies to treat their family members. Many women experienced on the job training assisting their fathers or husbands with treating patients. They also served as midwives to the sick in their community. It was through these experiences that women acquired the medical knowledge needed to pursue medical education.

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Medical education of women was not formally established until the opening in 1848 of the New England Female Medical College and in1850 the opening of the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. They were the first such school for women in the world. Before this, with few exceptions, any woman seeking medical training was forced to go abroad to the University of Zurich and the University of Berlin, although they were not granted a degree. 

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Not all women were educated in sex-segregated schools. Several leaders in founding the women’s medical schools, including Elizabeth Blackwell (the first female medical college graduate in 1849) received their training at male medical colleges. Women were admitted to these schools as exceptions for several years.

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Again, most of the women receiving degrees and attending the women’s medical colleges were White. Black women, however, did begin to apply to women’s colleges and graduate. Rebecca Crumpler, the first Black woman to receive a medical degree, graduated from the New England Female Medical College in 1864 and Rebecca J. Cole, the second Black woman, received a medical degree from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1867—the same year of the college’s name change from Female Medical College of Pennsylvania.

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Elizabeth Blackwell began to consider medicine as a career because of Dr. Samuel Henry Dickson, a Charleston physician and Medical College faculty member. He encouraged her to study using the books in his collection and when the Medical College indicated they would reject her application to attend as a student, she applied to other institutions, eventually graduating from the Geneva Medical College in Geneva, New York.

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