ABSTRACT
Two medical apprentices from Homer, New York, twenty-four-year-old Stephen Smith and twenty-three-year-old Elisha Harris, began studies at Geneva Medical College in the fall of 1847. Shortly after classes started, twenty-six-year-old Elizabeth Blackwell, the country’s first woman medical student, joined them. Smith had an interest in surgery and took his second year of study in Buffalo, while Harris went to New York City and Blackwell stayed at Geneva. The following summer, as Blackwell headed to Europe, Smith and Harris confronted the cholera pandemic of 1849, which killed 850 in Buffalo and 5,000 in New York City. Once the cholera threat receded, Smith transferred to The College of Physicians and Surgeons in Manhattan. He began a house officer job at Bellevue Hospital following his medical school graduation in 1850.
