BBC拍摄的屠呦呦短片，令人赞叹！

或许是天意，名字源于《诗经》著名的诗句“呦呦鹿鸣，食野之蒿”的屠呦呦，似乎注定了今生要与青蒿素结下不解之缘。屠呦呦获2015年诺贝尔生理学或医学奖，成为首位获该奖项的中国人，英国亦拍摄纪录片介绍这位中国医学界的杰出女性。

殊不知，150年前，就在英国，也同样有一位在医学领域的杰出女性。她就是英国首位女医生伊丽莎白 · 加勒特 · 安德森。只可惜，生逢那个年代，还没有如此先进的纪录片来记录她的生平事迹，我们只能借助文字来了解她。

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson

伊丽莎白 · 加勒特 · 安德森

1836—1917

England’s first female doctor

英格兰第一位女医生

I was the first English woman to work as a doctor in my own country. During my long life, I tried to improve the lives of women. And I helped to create Britain’s first medical school for women.

I was born in Whitechapel, East London, on 9th June 1836. I was the second of my parents’ 11 children. My father, Newson Garrett, worked for a company that bought and sold jewellery. He also made silver jewellery himself. But he wasn’t a Londoner. His family lived in Suffolk, in the eastern part of England. They lived in a small town called Leiston, and my father was born there. His family owned a factory in Leiston that made things from iron. My father had two brothers who worked for the company, so he decided to have a different career.

My father was successful and he earned a lot of money in London. But when I was about 5 years old, he decided to move back to Suffolk. He bought a company that sold coal and also barley. My father built a large factory in Snape, which was a few miles from Leiston. The workers in the factory malted the barley.

barley n. 大麦malted v. 使（谷物）成为麦芽，制麦芽

My father paid for a good education for all his sons and daughters. But when I left school, I became interested in feminism — the rights of women. I met a young woman called Emily Davies who was also a feminist. We wanted men and women to have equal rights. We talked about that a lot. My ambition was to become a doctor. But at that time, there were no women doctors in England. I wanted to be a student at a medical school, but none of the medical schools accepted me. They told me that women could never be doctors.

I couldn’t study to be a doctor in England, so I decided to become a student nurse in London. I began to learn about medicine in the hospital where I trained. I was sometimes allowed to watch the doctors while they worked. But I wanted to be a doctor myself, not a nurse. I couldn’t take examinations to qualify as a doctor at an English medical school. I decided to try something different.

qualify v. 取得资格

There was a Society of Apothecaries in London. Apothecaries prepared drugs and gave them to sick people. They often worked as family doctors. But they weren’t surgeons — they didn’t operate on people. The society held examinations for people who wanted to become apothecaries. And the rules of their society didn’t stop women taking their examinations. So I joined the society and worked as an apprentice apothecary for five years — now I was training to be an apothecary.

operate v. 动手术

During that time, I visited Scotland. English medical schools weren’t helpful to me. But the medical schools in the Scottish universities were more helpful to women. Doctor Day, the Professor of Medicine at Saint Andrew’s University, allowed me to listen to lectures with the male students. Doctor Simpson, in Edinburgh, also helped me. I learned things in Scotland that I couldn’t learn in England. But some of the teachers there refused to teach me too. One of them wrote that ladies could only be bad doctors, so there was no need for them.

I returned to London, and I continued to work as a nurse in hospitals there. The conditions were terrible. Surgeons operated on people without any hygiene. Many of the patients got infections and died. I wanted to make operations safer for them.

In 1865, after my time as an apprentice finished, I was ready to qualify as an apothecary. But suddenly, there was a problem. The Society of Apothecaries tried to stop me taking their examinations. My father said that he was going to sue the society, and it knew that he had a strong argument. So I was allowed to answer the examination questions. I passed the examinations and I qualified as an apothecary. The society changed its rules after that, so that women couldn’t take their examinations. But the society couldn’t take away my qualification. So, at last, I was a sort of doctor.

sue v. 控告，提起诉讼

qualification n. 资格

I was still not able to work as a doctor in any British hospital. But my father helped me to establish a dispensary for women in London. I was able to treat women’s illnesses there. And fortunately, I met some people who had the same ideas about women’s problems. One of them, Elizabeth Blackwell, had qualified as a doctor in America. The two of us established several medical centres for women. And also in 1865, my friend Emily Davies and I established the Kensington Society with some other women. This was a society of feminists.

dispensary n. 医务室，诊所


At that time, women couldn’t vote in elections in Britain. We wanted women to be able to vote so we sent a petition — a document signed by a lot of people — to the British government. But the government didn’t listen to us. As a result, a new society — the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies — was created. ‘Suffrage’ was the right to vote. Women who wanted this right were called ‘suffragettes’.

election n. 选举

One person who listened to our ideas was a man called Henry Fawcett. He was a member of the British parliament, and he was blind. He invited me to have dinner with him one day, and after that we often met. I liked him a lot, and soon he asked me to marry him. I didn’t want to do that, but we stayed friends. Later, Henry married Millicent, one of my sisters. Millicent later became a very famous suffragette.My main ambition was still to help women and children who were ill. Many poor people came to my dispensary for help and advice. But I needed to qualify as a hospital doctor to do the work that I wanted to do in England.The English medical schools still refused to teach women. But in France, it was possible for women to study in medical schools. So I learned some French and I travelled to France. And at the University of Paris, I earned a medical degree at last.
After that, I thought that I could start my medical career in England. But I was wrong. All doctors had to be members of the British Medical Register if they worked in British hospitals. This was a list of people who were qualified as hospital doctors. The men who controlled the Register refused to accept my French qualification.

Now I knew that qualifications weren’t enough. Political changes were needed too. So I had to become a well-known person and then to fight for my ideas. First, I became involved in education. In 1870, I was elected to the East London School Board. This was a group of people who controlled education in the East London area. I was the first woman who was ever elected to a school board in England.

involved v. 参与

elect v. 选举

A man called James Anderson was involved in my election campaign. He worked for the Orient Steamship Company, and he was very successful businessman. We became very close and in 1871, we were married. After that, I was called Elizabeth Garrett Anderson — that is the name most people now remember.

campaign n. 运动

James and I had three children together — two girls and a boy. Unfortunately, one of our daughters died when she was very young.



I already had my dispensary. Then in 1872, I decided to change it into a hospital — the New Hospital for Women. I had to collect money and find a new building. And I had to find staff — people to work there. But it was my own hospital, so all the staff were women when the hospital opened in 1874. Before that happened, in 1873, I became the first woman member of the British Medical Association. It was 19 years before there was another female member of that society, because the Association changed its rules after I joined. Most British doctors didn’t want women to join them.
While I worked at the hospital, I continued with my political work. I wanted politicians to give women more opportunities. Talking to politicians was hard work, but in 1876 my feminist friends and I had a great success. In that year, the British parliament passed a new law. It allowed women in Britain to qualify as doctors and to be listed on the Medical Register. This new law encouraged girls to study medical subjects. Universities began to establish more medical courses as a result. Change was slow, but it happened.

In 1883, I became the head of the London School of Medicine. By now I knew that people needed more than medicine and doctors to improve their lives. People’s living conditions had to change. Poor people lived in awful houses. Often, many people lived in one room. The drains in the large cities were very bad. Diseases were common in conditions like these. I tried to improve conditions for the people who came to me for advice.

I continued my fight until I stopped working as a doctor. Then in 1902, when I was 66, we moved back to Suffolk. We lived in Aldeburgh, a small town on the coast. It was only a few miles from Leiston and Snape and it was a place which I knew well from my childhood. We became involved in Suffolk politics. My husband became the Mayor of Aldeburgh. We tried to improve conditions for the poor people of the town. James died in 1907, but the people of the town elected me as their next mayor. I became the first female mayor in England. But I was still interested in national politics, and in feminism.
I became a member of the Women’s Social and Political Union and I often joined the suffragettes in London. We wanted votes for women and we complained about the government. We stood and shouted outside government buildings and we didn’t let the politicians forget about us.
Because of my age, the police didn’t arrest me. But many suffragettes were arrested and sent to prison. My daughter Louisa, like me, was a doctor and a suffragette. I was proud of her. We fought together for women’s rights and for children’s rights. Although some suffragettes believed that only violence could change the government’s ideas, I didn’t agree. Those women broke windows and damaged buildings, but I tried always to use peaceful arguments.
When I died, on 17th December 1917, I’d lived a long and useful life. By then, there were many woman doctors in Britain. And 11 years after my death, all British women over the age of 21 finally got the vote.（以上内容摘自《了不起的医护人员》，图片来自网络）

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