igns of prejudice she faced:I had not the slightest idea of the commotion created by my appearance as a medical student of the little town. Very slowly, I perceived that a doctor's wife at the table avoided any communication with me, and that as I walked backwards and forwards to college, the ladies stopped to stare at me, as at a curious animal. I afterwards found that I had so shocked Geneva propriety that the theory was fully established either that I was a bad woman, whose designs would gradually become evident, or that, being insane, an outbreak of insanity would soon be apparent…During her last month at the college, she worked in Philadelphia's Blockley Almhouse, where she discovered "the hideousness of modern fornication," which was another topic kept from well-bred ladies of her time. On January 23, 1849, she graduated from Geneva Medical College as the first in her class wearing a black silk dress so she would be "a credit to my college and my sex."After graduating, Elizabeth Blackwell found herself welcomed at lectures by the same people who had kept her out of their colleges. However, they still would not accept her as a qualified doctor. She went to La Maternity in France for practical experience, and became a midwife at the same level as a lowly, illiterate peasant girl. She discovered that sexual prejudice was not limited to America, but its "plague was spread all over Europe, too." While she was working this degrading position, a disaster occurred that ruined her possibilities of becoming an accepted surgeon. In her journal, she recorded the following in relation to the events of November 4, 1849:In the dark early morning, whilst syringing the eye of one of my tiny patients for perulent opthalmia, some of the water had spurted into my own eye.They removed her left eye and replaced it with a glass one, and then she went to England to visit friends and recuperate. While in England, her sister, Emily, wrote th...
