Role of Women in Medicine

Role of Women in Medicine

1. Nursing and Hospitals

   • Before 1850
     • Hospitals couldn't be afforded by the poor
     • Often very dirty
     • Most nurses were untrained
     • Nursing considered an unacceptable profession
     • Part of wages paid in gin
   • Florence Nightingale
     • From a rich background
       • Parents were unhappy with decision to be a nurse because it wasn't considered a respectable profession
     • Trained for 3 months in Germany
     • Came back to UK and ran hospital for rich women but wasn't happy
     • Crimean War (1854-56)
       • 100,000 British soldiers killed/injured but many more fell ill through typhus and other diseases
       • Florence was asked to take control of nursing in Scutari
       • Took 38 nurses with her
       • Horrified at conditions
         • No toilets
         • No cleaning basins, soaps, mops, towels or cleaning materials
       • Wrote to government describing conditions and requesting what she needed (i.e. cleaning materials)
       • Hired 200 builders to rebuild part of a ward
       • Some doctors objected to being ordered around by a nurse but Florence persevered
       • Reduced death rate from 40% to 2%
     • Back in Britain
       • Heralded as 'Lady with the Lamp'
         • National hero
       • Wrote a book called 'Notes on Nursing' to tell the government how to improve things
       • Raised £44,000 to set up Britain's first nurse training school
       • Also published 'Notes on Hospitals' which introduced new ideas about hospital design
         • Well-ventilated, open, spacious
         • Mistaken idea about miasma but right concept
     • Controversy
       • She refused to believe in the Germ Theory and taught her nurses about miasma
       • She may not have actually improved conditions in Scutari
         • However she began to change the image of nursing
         • She had the right idea about hospital improvements

2. Doctors

   • Sophia Jex-Blake
     • Life
       • Born to physician father with traditional views on women's education
       • Convinced to allow to go to university to become a maths tutor
       • 1869 - convinced Edinburgh University to allow her to learn to be a doctor
       • However they said that they couldn't provide a woman with a degree
     • Achievements
       • Took the university to court and lost
       • Took her case to parliament and in 1875, a law was passed that meant women could not be restricted from gaining medical qualifications on grounds of gender
         • Despite this, she qualified as a doctor in Ireland after gaining her degree in Switzerland
       • In 1874, she co-founded the London School of 'Medicine for Women'
         • Elizabeth Garret Anderson was also a co-founder
     • Limitations on her success
       • Father with traditional views
       • Sexism and attitude toward women
       • Men objecting to her presence at the university
   • Elizabeth Garrett Anderson
     • Couldn't get on any courses at university
     • Some men agreed to tutor her privately and she passed the Apothecaries exam in 1865
       • She was refused a license but won a court appeal and was given one
       • However, they refused to pass any other students who studied privately
     • 1869 - qualified abroad in Paris and achieved top grades
     • Got on the Medical Register on return to Britain
     • Showed how and inspired people to do the same
       • Elizabeth Hoggon (1870)
       • Elizabeth Walker (1872)
     • Continued limitations
       • Woman and would not have been very well respected
       • Very long, arduous process
       • Women still couldn't go to university in Britain
     • 1874 - co-founded London School of Medicine for Women
   • Attitudes in the 1850s
     • People didn't think that women had the ability
     • 1858 - General Medical Act, everyone had to put their names on General Medical Register in order to practise
       • Only one woman, Elizabeth Blackwell, in 1858
         • Qualified in USA
     • English universities wouldn't accept them so they couldn't qualify

3. World Wars

   • Some women had to take the places of male doctors
   • More wounded and so more medical staff needed