What is the importance of Elizabeth Blackwell in the nonfiction book, Witches, Midwives, and Nurses?

Elizabeth Blackwell was America's first woman to be educated alongside male physicians and given the status of a "regular" (73). However, she represents a very small window of opportunity for women as her alma matter soon passed a resolution barring further female students. Despite this act of sexist exclusion, Blackwell is symbolic of how women have not been bystanders in medicine, but have always sought the same education and professional designations as men, whether or not they were always allowed to do so. However, Blackwell is also symbolic of the fractured nature of both the women's movement and the popular health movement. Through their rarefied status as "regulars" condoned by the ruling classes and backed by a particular kind of medical education, female medical leaders like Blackwell allied with their male colleagues against female lay practitioners and midwives. This demonstrates that the struggle for power in the healthcare industry is not only gendered but is also classist and elitist.