Women -- Employment -- United States; Women -- Social and moral questions
“The ceremonies of graduating Miss Blackwell at Geneva may well be
called a farce. I am sorry that Geneva should be the first to commence
the nefarious process of amalgamation. The profession was quite too
full before.”—_Letter by D. K. to Boston Journal, Feb. 1849._
“The bare thought of married females engaging in the medical
profession is palpably absurd. It carries with it a sense of shame,
vulgarity, and disgust. Nature is responsible for my unqualified
opposition to educating females for the medical profession.”—_Dissert.
on Female Phys. by N. Williams, M.D., read before a N. Y. Med. Soc._,
June 6, 1850.
“Females are ambitious to dabble in medicine as in other matters, with
a view to reorganizing society.”—_Edit. Boston Med. and Surg. Jour._,
1852, p. 106.
“The serious inroads made by female physicians in obstetrical
business, _one of the essential branches of income to a majority of
well established practitioners_, make it natural enough to inquire
what course to pursue.”—_Ibid._, Feb. 1853.
These parallel columns might be extended much further, did our space
permit. We cannot, however, pass by the following gem of eloquence from
an English source, but quoted in the Cincinnati _Lancet and Clinic_ for
1881. It is from the address at the British Medical Association by the
President of that year:
“I am not over-squeamish, nor am I over-sensitive, but I almost shudder
when I hear of things that ladies now do or attempt to do. One can but
blush, and feel that modesty, once inherent in the fairest of God’s
creation, is fast fading away. You gentlemen, who know the delicacy of
women’s organization,—you must know that constitutionally they are unfit
for many of the duties of either doctor or nurse.
“May not habit so change that fine organization, that sensitive nature
of women, as to render her dead to those higher feelings of love and
sympathy which now make our homes so happy, so blessed?
“Will not England’s glory fade without its modest sympathizing women,
and its race of stalwart youths and blooming maidens?
“You now, gentlemen, know my views as to the propriety of ladies
_becoming doctors or nurses_.”[40]
The Fourth period of woman’s medical history was initiated when Mr.
Gregory, supported by the popular enthusiasm he had aroused, succeeded
in opening a School of Medicine (so called) for women, in Nov. 1848.[41]
The first term lasted three months: a second term began the following
April, 1849;—and with the announcement for the second year it was
declared that the twenty pioneer pupils had not only followed the
lectures, but “had attended above 300 midwifery cases with the most
satisfactory success.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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