Excerpt from The Doctors Blackwell by Janice P. Nimura , plus links to reviews, author biography & more

There remained only the daunting fact that no woman had ever gained admittance. As someone who scorned the easy path, however, this apparently insurmountable obstacle only hardened Elizabeth's resolve. "The idea of winning a doctor's degree gradually assumed the aspect of a great moral struggle," she wrote, "and the moral fight possessed immense attraction for me."

The reactions of the medical establishment ranged from hilarity to horror. What if female doctors were a resounding success, and female patients preferred them? Even those rare men who approved of Elizabeth's goal balked at the notion of a woman studying anatomy alongside them. Her only way forward, they told her, was to pose as a man—perhaps in Paris, where the excellent medical instruction was free, and attitudes less puritanical.

But to Elizabeth, achieving a diploma in disguise missed the point. Her crusade, she wrote, "must be pursued in the light of day, and with public sanction, in order to accomplish its end." If she was to be a beacon, she could not hide herself. She had never wanted to be a man—she wanted, as a woman, to enjoy the same level of respect and freedom men took for granted.

Margaret Fuller would have approved. When Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell died within months of each other in 1910, there were more than nine thousand women doctors in America. Today, 35 percent of all physicians—and slightly more than half of all medical students—are female.

Excerpted from The Doctors Blackwell by Janice P Nimura . Copyright © 2021 by Janice P Nimura . Excerpted by permission of W.W. Norton & Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.