Life after graduation
Careers in and out of medicine
Dr. Nancy E.
Talbot Clark
Though their numbers were small, the six women who graduated from the medical department of Western Reserve College between 1852 and 1856 provided a broad range of examples of professional career choices women were apt to make in that era.
Nancy E. Talbot Clark M.D., class of 1852, established a successful private practice in Boston. However, her petition to be accepted into the Massachusetts Medical Society, the first such request anywhere by a woman, was denied on the basis of her gender alone. Following the path of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, Dr. Clark traveled to Europe to obtain clinical experience in hospitals there. On her return voyage in 1855, she met Amos Binney, a young widower. They were married the next year and she immediately settled into domestic life. The Binneys had six children and Dr. Clark-Binney never returned of professional medicine.
Following her graduation in 1854, Emily Blackwell, M.D., spent two years in Europe obtaining clinical experience. Studying with several prominent physicians, she gained respect as a skillful surgeon. She returned to America and joined her sister, Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D., and Marie Zakrzewska, M.D., newly graduated from the CMC in 1856. These three women physicians, with credentials equal to any other doctor in America, established the New York Infirmary for Women and Children on Bleeker Street in New York City.
After hard-fought battles for recognition, the Infirmary won the respect of many of the prominent citizens of New York. Medical students from the Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia came to the Infirmary to gain clinical experience with the fully-qualified women medical preceptors. Dr. Zakrzewska moved on to Boston where she established the New England Hospital for Women and Children. This facility also provided a place for women medical and nursing students to gain experience with patients without having to travel to Europe. The New England Hospital remained open until 1969.
The only early woman graduate to remain in Ohio was Elizabeth Griselle, M.D., class of 1856. After practicing for six years in downtown Cleveland, she returned to her home region in Columbiana County, Ohio. She established a private practice there for the treatment of women and children in Salem, Ohio. In 1864, she became a founding member of the Union Medical Society, one of the first women to gain access to a local medical society. She retired in 1906 after fifty years of successful medical practice.
Dr.
Cordelia Greene
Cordelia Greene M.D., CMC class of 1856, had learned hydropathic therapy from her father. While attending the regular medical school, she worked as the medical attendant at the Cleveland Water Cure on Kinsman Road, earning money for her tuition and expenses. Following the death of her father in 1864, Dr. Greene bought full rights to her family’s spa in Castile, New York. In this bucolic setting in western New York State, which was typical of water cure establishments, Dr. Green maintained a highly profitable and successful practice until her death in 1905. Dr. Greene utilized hydropathic methods, regular medicine, common sense, and great personal warmth to provide comfort and results to an extensive clientele, including Susan B. Anthony and Francis Willard. Remarkably, Dr. Greene adopted and raised six children. Her institution continued operation as a sanitarium under the direction of her nice, Mary Greene, M.D., until 1954.
After several years, Blackwell was joined by two women medical graduates of the CMC who helped her establish a women’s hospital and a fully-accredited medical school for women. This was the first medical school whose faculty were also women who held the recognized credentials of the medical profession.
Following Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell’s departure for England in 1869, Dr. Emily Blackwell presided over the school until it merged with Cornell Medical College in 1899. Thousands of patients were treated every year in the Infirmary and 364 women physicians were graduated from the Woman’s College of the Infirmary over the thirty-one years of its existence.
Drs. Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell were dissatisfied with the lack of opportunity for women to gain access to equal medical education with men. In 1868 they obtained a charter and established the Women’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary. The curriculum, taught by fully-trained and qualified women physicians, was considered equal to that taught at the best medical schools in the country.
