Blackwell, Elizabeth, (1821–1910), a British-born American physician; the first woman to be awarded a medical degree in the United States. She established the New York Infirmary, a 40-bed hospital staffed entirely by women, in which she advanced the role of women in medicine and educated nurses in a 4-month course. She was an abolitionist and worked with Dorothea Dix during the U.S. Civil War.
