Join the Waring Historical Library for the 2023 Joseph I. Waring Lecture featuring Janice P. Nimura’s presentation on the Doctors Blackwell.

The world recoiled at the notion of a woman doctor, yet Elizabeth Blackwell persisted―in 1849, she became the first woman in America to receive an MD. Her achievement made her an icon―“I am convinced that a new & nobler era is dawning, for Medicine,” she wrote―but her sister Emily, eternally eclipsed, was the more brilliant physician. Together they founded the first hospital staffed entirely by women, in New York City.

Both sisters were tenacious and visionary, but their convictions did not always align with the emergence of women’s rights―or with each other. “Doubt is disease,” Elizabeth insisted. They prevailed against fierce resistance from the male establishment, moving among Britain, France, and America during a tumultuous time of scientific discovery and civil war. Join us for the Waring Lecture to celebrate two complicated pioneers who exploded the limits of possibility. As Elizabeth predicted, “a hundred years hence, women will not be what they are now.”

Janice P. Nimura received a Public Scholar Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities in support of her work on The Doctors Blackwell, a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in biography. Her previous book, Daughters of the Samurai: A Journey from East to West and Back, was a New York Times Notable book in 2015. Her essays and book reviews have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian, and LitHub, among other publications.

The lecture will take place Tuesday, March 7, 2023, at 6 PM EST. This event is open to the public. This event will be a hybrid event with in-person and virtual components. Seating is limited and registration is required by Monday, March 6, 2022, at 6 PM to reserve your seat and receive login information. 

The in-person event will be held at MUSC's Drug Discovery Auditorium. Light refreshments will be served.

The virtual event will take place on Zoom.

The Joseph I. Waring Lecture is named in memory of Dr. Joseph I. Waring, a local pediatrician and medical historian, who became the first director of the medical history collections of the University. This lecture takes place annually in the Spring semester. To learn more information about the Waring Library Society Lecture Series, please visit waring.library.musc.edu, email waringhl@musc.edu, or call (843)792-2288.