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Physician, historian and medical writer Mike Magee, MD, is a graduate of Upstate's College of Medicine and Syracuse's Le Moyne College .
Physician, historian and medical writer Mike Magee, MD, is a graduate of Upstate's College of Medicine and Syracuse's Le Moyne College .

Medical trailblazers and frenemies, Elizabeth Blackwell and Florence Nightingale fought Victorian social expectations on parallel tracks

How far has medicine come since the days of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell and nursing pioneer Florence Nightingale? And what was the relationship between those two prominent women? Mike Magee, MD -- a 1973 graduate of Upstate Medical University's College of Medicine and also a graduate of Syracuse's Le Moyne College -- contrasts medical education and practice in the Victorian era to that of today and explores the complex, sometimes caustic, interplay of Blackwell and Nightingale. This year, Upstate is celebrating the 200th birthday of Blackwell, the first woman to graduate from medical school in the United States. In the 1840s she graduated from Geneva Medical College, a predecessor to Upstate. 

 

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