On September 6

On this day in ...
... 1829 (180 years ago today), Dr. Marie Zakrzewska (left) was born in Berlin, Germany, into a family that once had held wealth and title in Poland. Her grandmother a veterinary surgeon and her a midwife, Zakrzewska studied and taught midwifery in Germany before emigrating in 1853 for the United States. After graduating from medical school in Cleveland, Ohio, she cofounded New York Infirmary for Women and Children with 2 other pathbreaking physicians, Elizabeth Blackwell and Emily Blackwell. (credit for circa 1860 portrait of Zakrewska) Zakrzewska taught obstetrics at the New England Female Medical College and then, in 1862, founded the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston (now the Dimmock Community Health Center), the 1st hospital that included a nursing school and the 2d U.S. hospital managed run by women physicians and surgeons. An abolitionist as well as a feminist, Zakrzewska, recently featured at ImmigrationProf Blog, also "pioneered the movement that opened the nursing profession to black women." She died in 1892.

(Prior September 6 posts are here and here.)

On January 23

On this day in ...

... 1849 (160 years ago today), as described on the website of the U.S. National Library of Medicine:

On the morning of Tuesday, January 23, 1849, a young woman ascended the platform of the Presbyterian church in Geneva, N.Y., and received from the hands of the President of Geneva Medical College a diploma conferring upon her the degree of Doctor of Medicine. Thus, after many years of determined effort, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to complete a course of study at a medical college and receive the M.D. degree.

Blackwell, who'd been born February 3, 1821, in England, was featured as Immigrant of the Day in this ImmigrationProf Blog post. (credit for circa 1850 photo of Blackwell)

... 1835, the 1st volume of 1 of the great political travelogues of all times, De la démocratie en Amérique, was published in Paris. The author, of course, was the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville (right), who'd go on to publish a 2d volume in 1840. Known to English speakers as Democracy in America, it is a chief component of a lifework "largely devoted to reconciling the principles of equality and freedom."