"We have the pleasure of an acquaintance with Mrs. Dr. Longshore--she is a lady possessing a strong and original mind, close powers of perception and reasoning, and a thorough medical education. As a practical anatomist she has few superiors, even among practitioners of the 'sterner mould.' Mrs. Dr. Longshore is 'a Friend,' and her whole character is marked by the excellencies of the 'Friends,' or Quakers, as they are called. Placid, thoughtful, observant, full of sympathy, and governed by an active benevolence, she delights in doing good. Her practice is large, rapidly increasing, and generally successful, and she is devoutly attached to her noble profession.... "Medicine and midwifery are both domestic arts; woman is all but born a doctor. Ladies of England, think of this. Hitherto you have left the field of 'labour' to men who would be better employed with your distaffs and spindles. Mothers of England, you have a mission--fulfil it; proclaim to your daughters that the birth of a child is not a surgical operation, but a natural process; and that there is no case of parturition so difficult that may not be better managed by a well instructed woman than by a man, whose very presence in the sick chamber disturbs the uterine action, and causes the greater number of difficulties that occur in such cases." "In a country like England, to clear away a given folly is too often, unfortunately, only to make room for some other folly equally egregious. This, in our day, has been the case with medicine. Just as a considerable number of physicians had come to adopt my own view of the true constitutional origin of diseases, up sprung a class of people who will have it, that in the majority of female complaints, at least, there must ever be more or less of _local wrong_, which no possible constitutional treatment can cure! Whispering mysteriously the words 'engorgement,' 'tumour,' 'inflammation,' 'ulceration of the _os_,' 'version,' and 'retroversion'--phrases for the most part invented for the mere purpose of striking panic into the hearts of families who must ever be in the dark _here_--these men straightway confine the patient to her couch--in which unnatural position they keep her for months, and, if possible, for years together--during which they subject her to the most odious treatment; performing, with speculum, caustic, and other dangerous appliances, the most daring and indecent operations....