Sophia Louisa Jex-Blake

Sophia Louisa Jex-Blake (1840-1912), British physician who fought for the right of women to earn medical degrees. Jex-Blake was the first woman physician in Scotland, and she founded the first medical school for women in Scotland.

Jex-Blake was born in Hastings, England. From 1858 to 1861 she attended Queen's College for Women in London. During her last two years there, she also tutored mathematics. In 1865 she journeyed to Boston, Massachusetts, to investigate American teaching methods; she instead became interested in the study of medicine (see Medical Education) under the guidance of Dr. Lucy Sewall. After her application to Harvard University Medical School was rejected, Jex-Blake also spent time in New York City studying anatomy with Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female physician in the United States. Jex-Blake returned to England in 1868, when her father died.

Upon her arrival home, she applied for admission to the University of London Medical School, which refused her application because she was a woman. She was accepted to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland in 1869 along with several other women. However, the controversy their admission created eventually led the university to refuse to grant them degrees. The women fought hard to reverse the university's decision—Jex-Blake being the most outspoken of the group—but they failed.

In 1872 Jex-Blake summarized the efforts of the early women physicians in her book Medical Women, and in 1874 she founded the London School of Medicine for Women. Three years later, in 1877, the London Free Hospital allowed women to complete the clinical training required for an M.D. degree. England, in the Russell Gurney Enabling Act of 1876, had finally granted women the right to become physicians. In 1877, Jex-Blake received her own M.D. degree from the University of Bern in Switzerland and a second M.D. degree from the Irish College of Physicians in Dublin.

In 1878 Jex-Blake left the London School of Medicine for Women after disagreeing with one of the founders, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson—the first female physician in England—on how women could best advance in medicine. Jex-Blake then established a private practice in Edinburgh. In 1885 she founded the Edinburgh Women's Hospital and, in 1886, the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women. This school closed after the University of Edinburgh rendered it obsolete by accepting women into its medical school.

Jex-Blake spent much of her career working toward England's granting women the right to become physicians. When the University of London Medical School, which had denied her the opportunity to study medicine, finally admitted women, she knew that she had won. Jex-Blake retired from medical practice in 1899.