What a wonderful change has taken place in the medical world almost within the space of a single generation! The tiny grain of mustard that was sown by two lone women, the Misses Blackwell and Jex-Blake, in their chosen field of effort has grown and "waxed a great tree." Women doctors are now found in all parts of the civilized world and are numbered by thousands. And so great has been their professional success, so widespread is the desire to secure their services, especially in countries like America and England, where opposition was in the beginning especially bitter, that the proportion of women practitioners in medicine and surgery is now regarded as the best index of a nation's enlightenment. The healing art of Greece and Rome has broadened out into the noble sciences of medicine and surgery of to-day. For, based as they now are on the sciences of chemistry, botany, biology, hygiene, physiology, anatomy and bacteriology, which have all witnessed such extraordinary developments during the last half century, they both deserve a preeminent place in the history of the sciences. And the success which has crowned woman's efforts in surgery and medicine is not only a conclusive indication of her capacity, so long denied by her self-interested opponents, but also the most convincing indication that she is at last properly occupied in a field of activity from which she was too long excluded. Her contributions as writer and investigator toward the progress of both sciences, even during the short time in which she has been able to give proof of her ability, have been notable and augur well for the share she will have in their future advancement. But more important still is the refining influence she has already exerted on both professions, and the relief she has been able to afford to countless thousands of her own sex who would otherwise have been the voluntary victims of untold misery. Women doctors are, indeed, not only worthy representatives of Aesculapia Victrix and of the two sciences which they have so elevated and so ennobled, but are also ministering angels to poor, suffering humanity comparable only with the heroic Sisters of Charity and the devoted nurses of the Red Cross. FOOTNOTES: [182] Quoted in _Medical Women_, p. 11, by Sophia Jex-Blake, M. D., Edinburgh, 1886. Cf. Hyginus, _Fabularum Liber_, No. 274. [183] Charles Daremberg, who, at the time of his death in 1872, was professor of the history of medicine in the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, had the intention of publishing this work [Greek: Peri ton gynaichaion tazon].--On the Diseases of Women--but his premature death prevented him from executing his project. It is to be hoped that some one else, interested in woman's medical work, may at an early date give this production to the public with an appropriate commentary. [184] Cf. Hertzen et Rossi _Inscriptiones Urbis Romae Latinae_, p. 1245, No. 9478, Berlin, 1882.