Suffering womanhood undoubtedly owes much to Marion Sim’s inventive genius. But, on the other hand, Sim’s fame and fortune may be said to have been all made by women, from the poor slaves in Alabama who, unnarcotized, surrendered their patient bodies to his experiments,[60] to the New York ladies whose alert sympathies and open purses had enabled him to realize his dream, and establish his personal fortunes. It would have been an act both graceful and just on his part, at this crisis, to have shared his opportunities with the two women who, like himself, had been well buffeted in an opposing world,[61] and whose work and aspirations were so closely identified with his own. But this he failed to do; and the lost opportunity made all the difference to the pioneer women physicians, between brilliant and modest, between immediate and tardy professional success. Unable elsewhere to obtain hospital opportunities, the Blackwells resolved to found a hospital that should be conducted not only for, but by women. The New York Infirmary, chartered in 1854, preceded the Woman’s Hospital by a year, and, like it, was the first institution of the kind in the world. For three years it consisted exclusively of a dispensary; then was added a tiny lying-in ward of twelve beds. At this moment the advance guard of women physicians received their fourth recruit, Marie Zakzrewska, a young midwife from Germany. She had been a favorite pupil of Dr. Schmidt, one of the state examiners of the school for midwives in Berlin, and chief director of the Charity Hospital. He had been so impressed by the talents of his pupil, as to entrust her with the responsibility of teaching his own classes, when ill-health compelled him to resign his work. Discouraged, however, by some intrigues which sprang up after the death of her powerful friend, Fräulein Zakzrewska decided to abandon the home where a career seemed ready marked out for her, and to seek a wider horizon and larger fortunes in America. Here she arrived in 1853. Her pluck and courage carried her safely through the first difficult year of an almost penniless exile; then the generous kindness of Elizabeth Blackwell secured her a place among the advance guard of women physicians, taught her English, and procured her admission to the Medical School at Cleveland. She assisted the Blackwells in the task of collecting from an indifferent or hostile community the first few hundred dollars with which to found the New York Infirmary, and in this served as physician for a year; was thence invited to lecture on midwifery at the Female Medical School at Boston; was finally summoned to build up the New England Hospital, which for many years was almost identified with her name and with that of Dr. Lucy Sewall,[62] and of Dr. Helen Morton. This, the second hospital to be conducted by women physicians, was founded in 1862.