Garrett received her Doctor of Medicine degree from the Sorbonne, becoming the first woman to earn an MD in France.
On 20 December 1870, Elizabeth Garrett was awarded the degree of Doctor of Medicine (MD) from the University of Paris (the Sorbonne), having sought international qualifications after facing continued resistance from British institutions despite her 1865 Apothecaries licence.
She had learned French specifically to sit the examinations and submitted a thesis in French, an extraordinary feat of dedication given the linguistic and cultural barriers involved, on top of the scientific rigor required. Her success made her the first woman to obtain a medical doctorate in France, a nation whose medical faculties, like Britain's, had previously excluded women from full qualification.
This achievement gave Garrett a formal doctorate credential to complement her British apothecary's licence, bolstering her professional standing and giving her greater authority in her ongoing campaign for women's admission to the medical profession in Britain. It also had symbolic international significance, demonstrating that talented women could succeed at the highest levels of medical education when given the opportunity, regardless of national context.
Her Paris MD added weight to her advocacy for opening British medical schools and licensing bodies to women, a cause she pursued for the rest of her career, including through founding the London School of Medicine for Women a few years later.