In August 1871, Florence Nightingale wrote to Elizabeth Blackwell, stating, “Nothing that you do, independently of our being old friends, can fail to interest me. I wish you ‘God speed’ on all that you undertake.” The letter represents a new acquisition made through the Library of Congress’s James Madison Council. This 1871 letter joins several other letters exchanged between Blackwell and Nightingale as part of the Manuscript Division’s Blackwell Family Papers. While the opening lines of the letter appear to evoke a lifelong friendship based on common interests in medical training for women, these words conceal as much as they reveal.
Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910) is widely known as the first woman to obtain her medical degree in the United States, while Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) is often described as the founder of modern nursing. The two women were exact contemporaries, and both made great contributions to the field of medicine; however, they took different paths to achieve their goals. When the two women met in England around 1850, they shared ideas regarding their plans and a hope to collaborate in the future. Blackwell had recently earned her medical degree from Geneva Medical College in Geneva, New York, in 1849, and t