The Doctors BlackwellPreview
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2. Chapter one: Bristol-New York-Cincinnati page 5

Saturday, November 01, 2025 04:11PM

CHAPTER ONE: BRISTOL-NEW YORK-CINCINNATI

“Music, books, nature, and nice furniture: everything anyone could

want, in a safe, cozy space.”

“The nine Blackwell children thought of themselves in alternating

pairs of girls and boys, with Elizabeth the odd one out. Her

nickname was “Little Shy.”

father was a criminal “transported to Australia” and she never

saw him again.

parents were “idealists and capitalists.”

the sugar plantations of the Caribbean, the English still depended

on enslaved labor.”

“idealogical contrarianism”

Definitions:

Contrary, see contradictory (page 294): In logic, two statements are contradictory if they cannot both be true and cannot both be false, as I am an American and I am not an American. Contrary statements cannot both be true, but they can both be false as: I AM an American and I AM a Frenchman. The falsity of either contrary proves nothing about the other, but the truth of one establishes the falsity of the other.

“…they aspired to shine as beacons, guiding the unenlightened

toward a truer future.”

Elizabeth and Emily “grew strong on a diet of nature, literature,

and political consciousness.”

plants found nowhere else: whitebeam, speedwell, and rockcress”

“until 1828, dissenters were barred from public office; their

sons, however brilliant, were not permitted to take degrees at

Oxford or Cambridge until the 1850s.”

“…their access to Caribbean cane sugar, blocked by the embargoes

of the Napoleonic Wars.

Definitions:

Embargo (page 430): 1) an order by a government restraining merchant vessels from leaving or entering its ports. 2) authorative stoppage of foreing commerce or of any special trade. 3) a restraint or prohibition ie shortened form = bar from Latin.

Elizabeth’s father “could bring his anti-slavery energy to a

nation soaked in the blood of slaves – and in the vastness of

American agricultural possibility.”

When Elizabeth and her family arrived in New York, “the

understanding of the mechanisms by which epidemics spread was still

decades away.”

“was stricken with malaria. The blame was placed correctly on

their proximity to marshland, thou it would more than half a century

before the mosquito was identified as the true culprit; as its name

proclaimed, malaria = bad air = was thought to be caused by the

noxious exhalations of stagnant bogs. Malaria was so common in the

United States, that illness and recovery were known as “seasoning,”

a normal part of settling in.”

“E. preferred solitude to socializing anyway.”

“…Oberlin Collegiate Institute in Ohio had admitted the first

female student to its bachelor’s degree course in 1833, it was a

startling exception.”

“and so it would be with the Blackwells, the liked each other

better than anyone else, and they like each other best with a little

distance. Anna’s departure marked the beginning of the family

diaspora-rarely would the Blackwell siblings all be together

again-but until their deaths, they never stopped writing to each

other.”

and fashionable study of phrenology”

Definitions:

From Wiktionary: Phrenology: phrenology (countableanduncountable, plural phrenologies)

  1. (medicine, biology, historical) The science or

now discredited pseudo-science,

which studies the relationships between a person's character and

the morphology (structure)

of the skull. quotations ▼

Phrenologyinvolves feeling the bumps in the skull to determine an individual's psychological attributes.

14): “its Vienese originator, Franz Joseph Gall” (re:

phrenology)

contemporary of Freud or Jung?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Joseph_Gall

Franz Joseph Gall or Franz Josef Gall (German: [gal]; 9 March 1758 – 22 August 1828) was a German neuroanatomist, physiologist, and pioneer in the study of the localization of mental functions in the brain.

14-15): Gall “believed that attitudes and aptitudes had their

respective organs in the brain, sized in proportion to their

strength. One had only to examine the bulges and dents of the

cranium to understand deeper truths about an individual’s capacity

for 37 traits including: steadfastness, prudence, enterprise, humor,

and both “amative” or romantic, love and the “philioprogenative”

or parental, kind. Gall’s theory had its orinin in his own

student days, when he noted that the real geniuses among his

classmates had high foreheads and protruding eyes. Gall, naturally,

shared these features.”

Definitions:

from wiktionary:

misanthropic (comparative moremisanthropic, superlative mostmisanthropic)

  1. Having

a negative view of mankind.

This may express itself as, e.g., distrust, dislike, hate, or

contempt. antonym ▲quotations ▼

Antonym: philanthropic

trifled with.”

“Angelina Grimke proposed a resolution on the imperative for women

“to plead the cause of the oppressed in our land-the implication

being that women were among those oppressed.”

has come for woman to move in that sphere which Providence has

assigned her.” quote from Angelina Grimke

Angellina Grimke:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelina_Grimk%C3%A9

Emily Grimké Weld (February

20, 1805 – October 26, 1879) was an American abolitionist,

political activist, [women's

rights](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_rights) advocate,

and supporter of the [women's

suffrage movement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_suffrage_movement).

At one point she was the best known, or "most notorious,"

woman in the country.[1]: 100, 104  She

and her sister [Sarah

Moore Grimké](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Moore_Grimk%C3%A9) were

considered the only notable examples of white Southern

women abolitionists.[2] The

sisters lived together as adults, while Angelina was the wife of

abolitionist leader [Theodore

Dwight Weld](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Dwight_Weld).

grimke Would be a good book to write for Janice P. Nimura!

Definitions:

grimke Would be a good book to write for Janice P. Nimura!

providence 

from wiktionary: providence

  1. (nowrare) Preparation for

the future; good governance; foresight. [from

14th c.]

  1. The careful governance and guidance of God (or

another deity, nature,

etc.). [from 14th c.] quotations ▼

  1. A manifestation of divine care or direction;

an instance of divine intervention. [from

16th c.] quotations ▼

  1. Specifically,

the prudent care and management of resources;

thriftiness, frugality. [from

17th c.]

*Hisprovidencein

saving for his old age is exemplary.*

satisfied in the circumscribed limits with which corrupt custom and

perverted application of Scriptures have encircled her.”

“...I fear...perfect rottenness will be the end and ruin of these

States” per E.B.

Lloyd Garrison?

NY Committee of Vigilance?

“What a dearth of incidents, she griped in the summer of 1837.”

could devise some good way of maintaining myself but the

restrictions which confine my dear sex, render all my aspirations

useless.” E.B.

Queen Victoria.

“Queen Victoria sounded like a woman worth getting to know.”

convergence of economic forces exacerbated by President Andrew

Jackson’s ill-advised financial policies, resulted in a panic that

shuttered banks, ruined fortunes, and brought soldiers onto the

streets to prevent unrest.”

cheap and plentiful, and domestic sugar looked like a promising

investment.”

bought sugar stock? Land?

currently has a monopoly on SUGAR?

days to travel from New York to Cincinnati

is it “Queen of the West” or “Porkopolis” ???

farmers, in 1838, “commonly hired enslaved hands from across the

river in Kentucky as seasonal laborers.”

The Blackwells associated with Lyman Beecher, father of Harriet

Beecher Stowe.

Harriet Beecher Stowe:

Cincinnati: “...perhaps there was scope for young women whose

minds were more impressive than their wardrobes.”

“recorded her father’s symptoms in detail:

1) his distressing restlessness

2) his irregular breathing

3) his slowing pulse

4) the doses of brandy

5) and broth

6) and laudanum

7) the rubbings with mercury ointment

8) and the spongings with muriatic (better known today as hydrochloric) acid

“the germ of her medical future

father died on august 7, 1838, leaving her mother and eight siblings

$20.

fatherlessness?

sisters opened a school to support the family.

“On Sundays, liverated from labor, the Blackwells refreshed

themselves with ideas.”

“announced her intention to be confirmed in the Episcopal Church,

the conservative, socially elite American cousin of the Church of

England.”

21-22): “Whereas Episcopalians hewed to ornate High Church

practices-the Trinity, saints, embroidered vestments, and clouds of

incense-Unitarians believed in the oneness of the divine, with an

emphasis on reason, a tolerance for doubt, and a capacious attitude

toward individual modes of worship.”

“Through Channing, the Blackwells encountered Transcendentalism

which chimed with their own ideas regarding the natural goodness of

humans.”

read “extracts from Emerson’s essays” to EB.

Charles Fourier: “imagined planned communities, or phalanxes, in

which, work, determined by individual passion, would become pleasure

and women would fill any role for which their skills and interests

equipped them.”

brothers, Sam and Henry, supported “admiringly, and sometimes

enviously, their sisters’ bolder journeys.”

Saturday, November 01, 2025 04:11PM