Elizabeth Blackwell

 Elizabeth Blackwell was born (1821- 1910) in Bristol, England, and came to this country as a child when her father set up a sugar refinery in New York. She had a woman friend who was dying a painful death from uterine cancer and that convinced Elizabeth to go to medical school, the only woman at Geneva Medical College in upstate New York. When her anatomy professor came to the section on reproductive organs, he asked her not to attend, and she argued to be admitted, and she was. She became the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States. Her sister Emily was the third.

In 1853, she opened a clinic that became known as the New York Dispensary for Poor Women and Children near Tompkins Square. She created a medical school for women in the late 1860s. She advocated for preventive medicine, women's rights, and Christian socialism — and helped form a couple of utopian communities — but she did not believe in germ theory. She believed that disease came from moral impurity, not from microbes, so she was opposed to inoculation and vaccines, and believed in spiritual healing.

She was a medical doctor but believed in spiritual healing. Interesting.