A WOMAN’S QUEST THE LIFE OF MARIE E. ZAKRZEWSKA, M.D. EDITED BY AGNES C. VIETOR, M.D., F.A.C.S. FORMERLY INSTRUCTOR IN PHYSICAL DIAGNOSIS AND SURGERY, WOMAN’S MEDICAL COLLEGE OF THE NEW YORK INFIRMARY; LATER ASSISTANT SURGEON, NEW ENGLAND HOSPITAL FOR WOMEN AND CHILDREN, BOSTON [Illustration] D. APPLETON AND COMPANY NEW YORK :: LONDON :: MCMXXIV COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA [Illustration: MARIE E. ZAKRZEWSKA, M.D. (From a photograph thought to have been taken some time in the ’60’s.)] MARIE E. ZAKRZEWSKA, M.D. (1829-1902) _Accoucheuse en chef, Royal Hospital Charité, Berlin, Prussia; First Resident Physician, New York Infirmary for Women and Children, New York; Professor of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children, and Founder and Attending Physician of the Clinical Department (Hospital), New England Female Medical College, Boston; Founder and First Attending Physician, New England Hospital for Women and Children, Boston._ DEDICATED TO THE DEAR MEMORY OF A FRIEND ELIZABETH BIGELOW CONANT FOREWORD Viewed impersonally, this story of Marie E. Zakrzewska (Zak-shef’ska) is one more document testifying to the Humanity of Woman. The fact that the individual urge for the expression of this humanity found vent along the line of Medicine, is a detail. It is also a detail that the story is interwoven with an interesting transitional period in American history and with the evolution of the American woman physician. The essential interest lies in the fundamental human instinct asserting itself through the individual woman, dominating her and driving her to reach out into the world until, after migrations over thousands of miles and through various phases of civilization, she at last found an environment favorable for the development which her spirit so ardently demanded. Eventually stretching across the Atlantic Ocean, this Polish-German branch of the Human Tree pushed through first one crevice and then another, with here and there a struggling blossoming and leafage, to find at last its best efflorescence and fruitage in the favoring sun and air of America. Transplanted here, as are all the nations of mankind, her life finally found fulfillment through the creation of the New England Hospital for Women and Children, and though the influence which she exerted upon the lives of the numbers of women medical students, women physicians, women surgeons, and women nurses who have there, in turn, been helped to develop and to express _their_ Humanity.