When our students expressed their surprise that no books of patients were kept in these large and rich institutions, no records of cases or prescriptions retained, in fact, that no methodical system was followed, these men inquired into our doings and came and looked through our system, by means of which every patient could be traced--the name, residence, diagnosis, treatment and subsequent course. This was a revelation to them; as it was further when I told them that I never allowed in out-door practice any student to give a prescription without signing her name to it. Thus, in case of any question being raised as to mistake in the prescription or mistake by the druggist (who was by no means in those years always a professional person in that line, but often a mere business man who opened an apothecary store), this signature would always tell where to place the responsibility for the writing of the prescription. At that time I did not realize, as I do now, that these men, like all those whose position is fully established both professionally and financially, could afford to step outside the pale of professional custom and take up what was not recognized in the strict sense of common daily life. It is the insecure, struggling physician who is hostile to the woman innovator, actually fearing for his bread and butter much more than for any alleged inferiority of intellect or of professional skill in the woman, although these latter have always been used as the war cry against women doctors. The Boston _Medical and Surgical Journal_, Feb. 16, 1853, expresses this point of view in an editorial on female physicians, apropos of Dr. Hunt’s receiving an honorary degree of M.D. from the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania. It says: It is not a matter to be laughed down as readily as was at first anticipated. The serious inroads made by female physicians in obstetrical business, one of the essential branches of income to a majority of well-established practitioners, makes it natural enough to inquire what course it is best to pursue. Among the young men at that time, Dr. J. Marion Sims played such a peculiar rôle and one which is so characteristic that I must relate it here. Dr. Sims had come from the South to New York in 1853, poor and unknown. He had perfected an important operation which was based on a German theory, but for which no material to practice on could be found either in Europe or America, until he was able to utilize the negro slave women. Dr. Sims quotes “the great Würtzer, of Germany”; and he told me by word of mouth that he had operated one hundred and eleven times before he had the first success. This first success followed the performance of the thirtieth operation upon one of the six or seven slave women upon whom he had unlimited freedom for experimentation.