“WHEN I reached Great Britain, the right of women to medicine was in this
condition--a learned lawyer explained it carefully to me. I will give you
his words: The unwritten law of every nation admits all mankind, and not
the male half only, to the study and practice of medicine and the sale of
drugs. In Great Britain this law is called the common law and is deeply
respected. Whatever liberty it allows to men or women is held sacred in
our courts until _directly_ and _explicitly_ withdrawn by some act of the
Legislature. Under this ancient liberty, women have occasionally
practiced general medicine and surgery up to the year 1858. But for
centuries they _monopolized,_ by custom, one branch of practice, the
obstetric; and that, together with the occasional treatment of children,
and the nursing of both sexes, which is semi-medical, and is their
_monopoly,_ seems, on the whole, to have contented them, till late years,
when their views were enlarged by wider education and other causes. But
their abstinence from general practice, like their monopoly of
obstetrics, lay with women themselves, and not with the law of England.
That law is the same in this respect as the common law of Italy and
France; and the constitution of Bologna, where so many doctresses have
filled the chairs of medicine and other sciences, makes no more direct
provision for female students than does the constitution of any Scotch or
English university.--The whole thing lay with the women themselves, and
with local civilization. Years ago, Italy was far more civilized than
England; so Italian women took a large sphere. Of late the Anglo-Saxon
has gone in for civilization with his usual energy, and is eclipsing
Italy; therefore his women aspire to larger spheres of intellect and
action, beginning in the States, because American women are better
educated than English. The advance of _women_ in useful attainments is
the most infallible sign in any country of advancing civilization. All
this about civilization is my observation, sir, and not the lawyer's. Now
for the lawyer again: Such being the law of England, the British
Legislature passed an act in 1858, the real object of which was to
protect the public against incapable doctors, not against capable
doctresses or doctors. The act excludes from medical practice all persons
whatever, male or female, unless registered in a certain register; and to
get upon that register the person, male or female, must produce a license
or diploma, granted by one of the British examining boards specified in a
schedule attached to the act.
“Now, these examining boards were all members of the leading medical
schools. If the Legislature had taken the usual precaution, and had added
a clause _compelling_ those boards to examine worthy applicants, the act
would have been a sound public measure; but for want of that
foresight--and without foresight a lawgiver is an impostor and a public
pest--the State robbed women of their old common-law rights with one
hand, and with the other enabled a respectable trades-union to thrust
them out of their new statutory rights. Unfortunately, the respectable
union, to whom the Legislature delegated an unconstitutional power they
did not claim themselves, of excluding qualified persons from
examination, and so robbing them of their license and their bread, had an
overpowering interest to exclude qualified women from medicine. They had
the same interest as the watchmakers' union, the printers', the painters'
on china, the calico-engravers', and others have to exclude qualified
women from those branches, though peculiarly fitted for them; but not
more so than they are for the practice of medicine, God having made
_them,_ and not _men,_ the medical, and unmusical, sex.
“Wherever there's a trades-union, the weakest go to the wall. Those
vulgar unions I have mentioned exclude women from skilled labor they
excel in, by violence and conspiracy, though the law threatens them with
imprisonment for it. Was it in nature, then, that the medical union would
be infinitely forbearing, when the Legislature went and patted it on the
back, and said, you can conspire with safety against your female rivals.
Of course the clique were tempted more than any clique could bear by the
unwariness of the Legislature, and closed the doors of the medical
schools to female applicants. Against unqualified female practitioners
they never acted with such zeal and consent; and why? The female quack is
a public pest, and a good foil to the union; the qualified doctress is a
public good, and a blow to the union.
“The British medical union was now in a fine attitude by act of
Parliament. It could talk its contempt of medical women, and act its
terror of them, and keep both its feigned contempt and its real alarm
safe from the test of a public examination--that crucible in which cant,
surmise, and mendacity are soon evaporated or precipitated, and only the
truth stands firm.
“For all that, two female practitioners got upon the register, and stand
out, living landmarks of experience and the truth, in the dead wilderness
of surmise and prejudice.
“I will tell you how they got in. The act of Parliament makes two
exceptions: first, it lets in, _without examination_--and that is very
unwise--any foreign doctor who shall be practicing in England at the date
of the act, although, with equal incapacity, it omits to provide that any
future foreign doctor shall be able to _demand examination_ (in with the
old foreign fogies, blindfold, right or wrong; out with the rising
foreign luminaries of an ever-advancing science, right or wrong); and,
secondly, it lets in, without examination, to experiment on the vile body
of the public, any person, qualified or unqualified, who may have been
made a doctor by a very venerable and equally irrelevant functionary.
Guess, now, who it is that a British Parliament sets above the law, as a
doctor-maker for that public it professes to love and protect!”
“The Regius Professor of Medicine?”
“No.”
“Tyndall?”
“No.”
“Huxley?”
“No.”
“Then I give it up.”
“The Archbishop of Canterbury.”
“Oh, come! a joke is a joke.”
“This is no joke. Bright monument of British funkyism and imbecility,
there stands the clause setting that reverend and irrelevant doctor-maker
above the law, which sets his grace's female relations below the law,
and, in practice, outlaws the whole female population, starving those who
desire to practice medicine learnedly, and oppressing those who, out of
modesty, not yet quite smothered by custom and monopoly, desire to
consult a learned female physician, instead of being driven, like sheep,
by iron tyranny--in a country that babbles Liberty--to a male physician
or a female quack.
“Well, sir, in 1849 Miss Elizabeth Blackwell fought the good fight in the
United States, and had her troubles; because the States were not so
civilized then as now. She graduated doctor at Geneva, in the State of
New York.
“She was practicing in England in 1858, and demanded her place on the
register. She is an Englishwoman by birth; but she is an English M.D.
only through America having more brains than Britain. This one islander
sings, 'Hail, Columbia!' as often as 'God save the Queen!' I reckon.
“Miss Garrett, an enthusiastic student, traveled north, south, east, and
west, and knocked in vain at the doors of every great school and
university in Britain, but at last found a chink in the iron shutters of
the London Apothecaries'. It seems Parliament was wiser in 1815 than in
1858, for it inserted a clause in the Apothecaries Act of 1815
_compelling_ them to examine all persons who should apply to them for
examination after proper courses of study. Their charter contained no
loop-hole to evade the act, and substitute 'him' for 'person;' so they
let Miss Garrett in as a student. Like all the students, she had to
attend lectures on chemistry botany, materia medica, zoology, natural
philosophy, and clinical surgery. In the collateral subjects they let her
sit with the male students; but in anatomy and surgery she had to attend
the same lectures privately, and pay for lectures all to herself. This
cost her enormous fees. However, it is only fair to say that, if she had
been one of a dozen female students, the fees would have been diffused;
as it was, she had to gild the pill out of her private purse.
“In the hospital teaching she met difficulties and discouragement, though
she asked for no more opportunities than are granted readily to
professional nurses and female amateurs. But the whole thing is a mere
money question; that is the key to every lock in it.
“She was freely admitted at last to one great hospital, and all went
smoothly till some surgeon examined the students _viva voce;_ then Miss
Garrett was off her guard, and displayed too marked a superiority;
thereupon the male students played the woman, and begged she might be
excluded; and, I am sorry to say, for the credit of your sex, this
unmanly request was complied with by the womanish males in power.
“However, at her next hospital, Miss Garrett was more discreet, and took
pains to conceal her galling superiority.
“All her trouble ended--where her competitors' began--at the public
examination. She passed brilliantly, and is an English apothecary. In
civilized France she is a learned physician.
“She had not been an apothecary a week, before the Apothecaries' Society
received six hundred letters from the medical small-fry in town and
country; they threatened to send no more boys to the Apothecaries', but
to the College of Surgeons, if ever another woman received an
apothecary's license. Now, you know, all men tremble in England at the
threats of a trades-union; so the apothecaries instantly cudgeled their
brains to find a way to disobey the law, and obey the union. The medical
press gave them a hint, and they passed a by-law, forbidding their
students to receive any part of their education _privately,_ and made it
known, at the same time, that their female students would not be allowed
to study the leading subjects _publicly._ And so they baffled the
Legislature, and outlawed half the nation, by a juggle which the press
and the public would have risen against, if a single grown-up man had
been its victim, instead of four million adult women. Now, you are a
straightforward man; what do you think of that?”
“Humph!” said Vizard. “I do not altogether approve it. The strong should
not use the arts of the weak in fighting the weak. But, in spite of your
eloquence, I mean to forgive them anything. Shakespeare has provided
there with an excuse that fits all time:
“'Our poverty, but not our will, consents.'”
“Poverty! the poverty of a company in the city of London! _Allons donc._
Well, sir, for years after this all Europe, even Russia, advanced in
civilization, and opened their medical schools to women; so did the
United States: only the pig-headed Briton stood stock-still, and gloried
in his minority of one; as if one small island is likely to be right in
its monomania, and all civilized nations wrong.
“But while I was studying in France, one lion-hearted Englishwoman was
moving our native isle. First she tried the University of London; and
that sets up for a liberal foundation. Answer--'Our charter is expressly
framed to exclude women from medical instruction.'
“Then she sat down to besiege Edinburgh. Now, Edinburgh is a very
remarkable place. It has only half the houses, but ten times the
intellect, of Liverpool or Manchester. And the university has two
advantages as a home of _science_ over the English universities: it is
far behind them in Greek, which is the language of error and nescience,
and before them in English, and that is a tongue a good deal of knowledge
is printed in. Edinburgh is the only center of British literature, except
London.
“One medical professor received the pioneer with a concise severity, and
declined to hear her plead her cause, and one received her almost
brutally. He said, 'No respectable woman would apply to him to study
medicine.' Now, respectable women were studying it all over Europe.”
“Well, but perhaps his soul lived in an island.”
“That is so. However, personal applicants must expect a rub or two; and
most of the professors, in and out of medicine, treated her with kindness
and courtesy.
“Still, she found even the friendly professors alarmed at the idea of a
woman matriculating, and becoming _Civis Edinensis;_ so she made a
moderate application to the Senate, viz., for leave to attend medical
lectures. This request was indorsed by a majority of the medical
professors, and granted. But on the appeal of a few medical professors
against it, the Senate suspended its resolution, on the ground that there
was only one applicant.
“This got wind, and other ladies came into the field directly, your
humble servant among them. Then the Senate felt bound to recommend the
University Court to admit such female students to matriculate as could
pass the preliminary examination; this is in history, logic, languages,
and other branches; and we prepared for it in good faith. It was a happy
time: after a good day's work, I used to go up the Calton Hill, or
Arthur's Seat, and view the sea, and the Piraens, and the violet hills,
and the romantic undulations of the city itself, and my heart glowed with
love of knowledge, and with honorable ambition. I ran over the names of
worthy women who had adorned medicine at sundry times and in divers
places, and resolved to deserve as great a name as any in history.
Refreshed by my walk--I generally walked eight miles, and practiced
gymnastics to keep my muscles hard--I used to return to my little
lodgings; and they too were sweet to me, for I was learning a new
science--logic.”
“That was a nut to crack.”
“I have met few easier or sweeter. One non-observer had told me it was a
sham science, and mere pedantry; another, that it pretended to show men a
way to truth without observing. I found, on the contrary, that it was a
very pretty little science, which does not affect to discover phenomena,
but simply to guard men against rash generalization, and false deductions
from true data; it taught me the untrained world is brimful of fallacies
and verbal equivoques that ought not to puzzle a child, but, whenever
they creep into an argument, do actually confound the learned and the
simple alike, and all for want of a month's logic.
“Yes, I was happy on the hill, and happy by the hearth; and so things
went on till the preliminary examination came. It was not severe; we
ladies all passed with credit, though many of the male aspirants failed.”
“How do you account for that?” asked Vizard.
“With my eyes. I _observe_ that the average male is very superior in
intellect to the average female; and I _observe_ that the picked female
is immeasurably more superior to the average male, than the average male
is to the average female.”
“Is it so simple as that?”
“Ay; why not? What! are you one of those who believe that Truth is
obscure--hides herself--and lies in a well? I tell you, _sir,_ Truth
lies in no well. The place Truth lies in is--_the middle of the turnpike
road._ But one old fogy puts on his green spectacles to look for her, and
another his red, and another his blue; and so they all miss her, because
she is a colorless diamond. Those spectacles are preconceived notions,
_'a priori_ reasoning, cant, prejudice, the depth of Mr. Shallow's inner
consciousness, etc., etc. Then comes the observer, opens the eyes that
God has given him, tramples on all colored spectacles, and finds Truth as
surely as the spectacled theorists miss her. Say that the intellect of
the average male is to the average female as ten to six, it is to the
intellect of the picked female as ten to a hundred and fifty, or even
less. Now, the intellect of the male Edinburgh student was much above
that of the average male, but still it fell far below that of the picked
female. All the examinations at Edinburgh showed this to all God's
unspectacled creatures that used their eyes.”
These remarks hit Vizard hard. They accorded with his own good sense and
method of arguing; but perhaps my more careful readers may have already
observed this. He nodded hearty approval for once, and she went on:
“We had now a right to matriculate and enter on our medical course. But,
to our dismay, the right was suspended. The proofs of our general
proficiency, which we hoped would reconcile the professors to us as
students of medicine, alarmed people, and raised us unscrupulous enemies
in some who were justly respected, and others who had influence, though
they hardly deserved it.
“A general council of the university was called to reconsider the pledge
the Senate had given us, and overawe the university court by the weight
of academic opinion. The court itself was fluctuating, and ready to turn
either way. A large number of male students co-operated against us with a
petition. They, too, were a little vexed at our respectable figure in the
preliminary examination.
“The assembly met and the union orator got up; he was a preacher of the
Gospel, and carried the weight of that office. Christianity, as well as
science, seemed to rise against us in his person. He made a long and
eloquent speech, based on the intelligent surmises and popular prejudices
that were diffused in a hundred leading articles, and in letters to the
editor by men and women, to whom history was a dead letter in modern
controversies; for the Press battled this matter for two years, and
furnished each party with an artillery of reasons, _pro_ and _con._
“He said, 'Woman's sphere is the hearth and the home: to impair her
delicacy is to take the bloom from the peach: she could not qualify for
medicine without mastering anatomy and surgery--branches that must unsex
her. Providence, intending her to be man's helpmate, not his rival, had
given her a body unfit for war or hard labor, and a brain four ounces
lighter than a man's, and unable to cope with long study and practical
science. In short, she was too good, and too stupid, for medicine.'
“It was eloquent, but it was _'a priori_ reasoning, and conjecture
_versus_ evidence: yet the applause it met with showed one how happy is
the orator 'qui hurle avec les loups.' Taking the scientific preacher's
whole theory in theology and science, woman was high enough in creation
to be the mother of God, but not high enough to be a sawbones.
“Well, a professor of _belles-lettres_ rose on our side, not with a rival
theory, but with facts. He was a pupil of Lord Bacon, and a man of the
nineteenth century; so he objected to _'a priori_ reasoning on a matter
of experience. To settle the question of capacity he gave a long list of
women who had been famous in science. Such as Bettesia Gozzadini, Novella
Andrea, Novella Calderini, Maddelena Buonsignori, and many more, who were
doctors of law and university professors: Dorotea Bocohi, who was
professor both of philosophy and medicine; Laura Bassi, who was elected
professor of philosophy in 1732 by acclamation, and afterward professor
of experimental physics; Anna Manzolini, professor of anatomy in 1760;
Gaetaua Agnesi, professor of mathematics; Christina Roccati, doctor of
philosophy in 1750; Clotilde Tambroni, professor of Greek in 1793; Maria
Dalle Donne, doctor of medicine in 1799; Zaffira Ferretti, doctor of
medicine in 1800; Maria Sega, doctor of medicine in 1799; Madalena Noe,
graduate of civil law in 1807. Ladies innumerable, who graduated in law
and medicine at Pavia, Ferrara, and Padua, including Elena Lucrezia
Cornaro of Padua, a very famous woman. Also in Salamanca, Alcala',
Cordova, he named more than one famous doctress. Also in Heidelberg,
Gottingen, Giessen, Wurzburg, etc., and even at Utrect, with numberless
graduates in the arts and faculties at Montpellier and Paris in all ages.
Also outside reputations, as of Doctor Bouvin and her mother,
acknowledged celebrities in their branch of medicine. This chain, he
said, has never been really broken. There was scarcely a great foreign
university without some female student of high reputation. There were
such women at Vienna and Petersburg; many such at Zurich. At Montpellier
Mademoiselle Doumergue was carrying all before her, and Miss Garrett and
Miss Mary Putnam at Paris, though they were weighted in the race by a
foreign language. Let the male English physician pass a stiff examination
in scientific French before he brayed so loud. He had never done it yet.
This, he said, is not an age of chimeras; it is a wise and wary age,
which has established in all branches of learning a sure test of ability
in man or woman--public examination followed by a public report. These
public examinations are all conducted by males, and women are passing
them triumphantly all over Europe and America, and graduate as doctors in
every civilized country, and even in half-civilized Russia.
“He then went into our own little preliminary examination, and gave the
statistics: In Latin were examined 55 men and 3 women: 10 men were
rejected, but no women; 7 men were respectable, 7 _optimi,_ or
first-rate, 1 woman _bona,_ and 1 _optima._ In mathematics were examined
67 men and 4 women, of whom 1 woman was _optima,_ and 1 _bona:_ 10 men
were _optimi,_ and 25 _boni;_ the rest failed. In German 2 men were
examined, and 1 woman: 1 man was good, and 1 woman. In logic 28 men were
examined, and 1 woman: the woman came out fifth in rank, and she had only
been at it a month. In moral philosophy 16 men were examined; and 1
woman: the woman came out third. In arithmetic, 51 men and 3 women: 2 men
were _optimi,_ and 1 woman _optima;_ several men failed, and not one
woman. In mechanics, 81 men and 1 woman: the woman passed with fair
credit, as did 13 men; the rest failing. In French were examined 58 men
and 4 women: 3 men and 1 woman were respectable; 8 men and 1 woman
passed; two women attained the highest excellence, _optimoe,_ and not one
man. In English, 63 men and 3 women: 3 men were good, and 1 woman; but 2
women were _optimoe,_ and only 1 man.”
“Fancy you remembering figures like that,” said Vizard.
“It is all training and habit,” said she, simply.
“As to the study and practice of medicine degrading women, he asked if it
degraded men. No; it elevated them. They could not contradict him on that
point. He declined to believe, without a particle of evidence, that any
science could elevate the higher sex and degrade the lower. What evidence
we had ran against it. Nurses are not, as a class, unfeminine, yet all
that is most appalling, disgusting, horrible, and _unsexing_ in the art
of healing is monopolized by them., Women see worse things than doctors.
Women nurse all the patients of both sexes, often under horrible and
sickening conditions, and lay out all the corpses. No doctor objects to
this on sentimental grounds; and why? Because the nurses get only a
guinea a week, and not a guinea a flying visit: to women the loathsome
part of medicine; to man the lucrative! The noble nurses of the Crimea
went to attend _males only,_ yet were not charged with indelicacy. They
worked gratis. The would-be doctresses look _mainly to attending women,_
but then they want to be paid for it: there was the rub--it was a mere
money question, and all the attempts of the union to hide this and play
the sentimental shop-man were transparent hypocrisy and humbug.
“A doctor justly revered in Edinburgh answered him, but said nothing new
nor effective; and, to our great joy, the majority went with us.
“Thus encouraged, the university court settled the matter. We were
admitted to matriculate and study medicine, under certain conditions, to
which I beg your attention.
“The instruction of women for the profession of medicine was to be
conducted in separate classes confined entirely to women.
“The professors of the Faculty of Medicine should, for this purpose, be
permitted to have separate classes for women.
“All these regulations were approved by the chancellor, and are to this
day a part of the law of that university.
“We ladies, five in number, but afterward seven, were matriculated and
registered professional students of medicine, and passed six delightful
months we now look back upon as if it was a happy dream.
“We were picked women, all in earnest. We deserved respect, and we met
with it. The teachers were kind, and we attentive and respectful: the
students were courteous, and we were affable to them, but discreet.
Whatever seven young women could do to earn esteem, and reconcile even
our opponents to the experiment, we did. There was not an anti-student,
or downright flirt, among us; and, indeed, I have observed that an
earnest love of study and science controls the amorous frivolity of women
even more than men's. Perhaps our heads are really _smaller_ than men's,
and we haven't room in them to be like Solomon--extremely wise and arrant
fools.
“This went on until the first professional examination; but, after the
examination, the war, to our consternation, recommenced. Am I, then,
bad-hearted for thinking there must have been something in that
examination which roused the sleeping spirit of trades-unionism?”
“It seems probable.”
“Then view that probability by the light of fact:
“In physiology the male students were 127; in chemistry, 226; 25 obtained
honors in physiology; 31 in chemistry.
“In physiology and chemistry there were five women. One obtained honors
in physiology alone; four obtained honors in both physiology and
chemistry.
“So, you see, the female students beat the male students in physiology at
the rate of five to one; and in chemistry, seven and three-quarters to
one.
“But, horrible to relate, one of the ladies eclipsed twenty-nine out of
the thirty-one gentlemen who took _honors_ in chemistry. In capacity she
surpassed them all; for the two, who were above her, obtained only two
marks more than she did, yet they had been a year longer at the study.
This entitled her to 'a Hope Scholarship' for that year.
“Would you believe it? the scholarship was refused her--in utter defiance
of the founder's conditions--on the idle pretext that she had studied at
a different hour from the male students, and therefore was not a member
of the chemistry class.”
“Then why admit her to the competition?” said Vizard.
“Why? because the _'a priori_ reasoners took for granted she would be
defeated. Then the cry would have been, 'You had your chance; we let you
try for the Hope Scholarship; but you could not win it.' Having won it,
she was to be cheated out of it somehow, or anyhow. The separate-class
system was not that lady's fault; she would have preferred to pay the
university lecturer lighter fees, and attend a better lecture with the
male students. The separate class was an unfavorable condition of study,
which the university imposed on us, as the condition of admitting us to
the professional study of medicine? Surely, then, to cheat that lady out
of her Hope Scholarship, when she had earned it under conditions of study
enforced and unfavorable, was perfidious and dishonest. It was even a
little ungrateful to the injured sex; for the money which founded these
scholarships was women's money, every penny of it. The good Professor
Hope had lectured to ladies fifty years ago; had taken their fees, and
founded his scholarships with their money: and it would have done his
heart good to see a lady win and wear that prize which, but for his
female pupils, would never have existed. But it is easy to trample on a
dead man: as easy as on living women.
“The perfidy was followed by ruthless tyranny. They refused to admit the
fair criminal to the laboratory, 'else,' said they, 'she'll defeat more
men.
“That killed her, as a chemist. It gave inferior male students too great
an advantage over her. And so the public and Professor Hope were
sacrificed to a trades-union, and lost a great analytical chemist, and
something more--she had, to my knowledge, a subtle diagnosis. Now we have
at present no _great_ analyst, and the few competent analysts we have do
not possess diagnosis in proportion. They can find a few poisons in the
dead, but they are slow to discover them in the living; so they are not
to be counted on to save a life, where crime is administering poison.
That woman could, and would, I think.
“They drove her out of chemistry, wherein she was a genius, into surgery,
in which she was only a talent. She is now house-surgeon in a great
hospital, and the public has lost a great chemist and diagnostic
physician combined.
“Up to the date of this enormity, the Press had been pretty evenly
divided for and against us. But now, to their credit, they were
unanimous, and reprobated the juggle as a breach of public faith and
plain morality. Backed by public opinion, one friendly professor took
this occasion to move the university to relax the regulation of separate
classes since it had been abused. He proposed that the female students
should be admitted to the ordinary classes.
“This proposal was negatived by 58 to 47.
“This small majority was gained by a characteristic maneuver. The queen's
name was gravely dragged in as disapproving the proposal, when, in fact,
it could never have been submitted to her, or her comment, if any, must
have been in writing; and as to the general question, she has never said
a public word against medical women. She has too much sense not to ask
herself how can any woman be fit to be a queen, with powers of life and
death, if no woman is fit to be so small a thing, by comparison, as a
physician or a surgeon.
“We were victims of a small majority, obtained by imagination playing
upon flunkyism, and the first result was we were not allowed to sit down
to botany with males. Mind you, we might have gathered blackberries with
them in umbrageous woods from morn till dewy eve, and not a professor
shocked in the whole faculty; but we must not sit down with them to an
intellectual dinner of herbs, and listen, in their company, to the
pedantic terms and childish classifications of botany, in which kindred
properties are ignored. Only the male student must be told in public that
a fox-glove is _Digitalis purpurea_ in the improved nomenclature of
science, and crow-foot is _Ranunculus sceleratus,_ and the buck-bean is
_Menyanthis trifoliata,_ and mugwort is _Artemesia Judaica;_ that, having
lost the properties of hyssop known to Solomon, we regain our superiority
over that learned Hebrew by christening it _Gratiola officinalis._ The
sexes must not be taught in one room to discard such ugly and
inexpressive terms as snow-drop, meadow-sweet, heart's-ease, fever-few,
cowslip, etc., and learn to know the cowslip as _Primula veris_--by
class, _Pentandria monogynia;_ and the buttercup as _Ranunculus
acnis_--_Polyandria monogynia;_ the snow-drop as _Galanthus
nivalis_--_Hexandria monogynia;_ and the meadow-sweet as _Ulnaria;_ the
heart's ease as _Viola tricolor;_ and the daisy as _Bellis
perennis_--_Syngenesia superflua.”_
“Well,” said Vizard, “I think the individual names can only hurt the jaws
and other organs of speech. But the classification! Is the mild luster of
science to be cast over the natural disposition of young women toward
_Polyandria monogynia?_ Is trigamy to be identified in their sweet souls
with floral innocence, and their victims sitting by?”
“Such classifications are puerile and fanciful,” said Miss Gale; “but,
for that very reason, they don't infect _animals_ with trigamy. Novels
are much more likely to do that.”
“Especially ladies' novels,” suggested Vizard, meekly.
“Some,” suggested the accurate Rhoda. “But the sexes will never lose
either morals or delicacy through courses of botany endured together. It
will not hurt young ladies a bit to tell them in the presence of young
gentlemen that a cabbage is a thalamifioral exogen, and its stamens are
tetradynamous; nor that the mushroom, _Psalliata campestris,_ and the
toad-stool, _Myoena campestris,_ are confounded by this science in one
class, _Cryptogamia._ It will not even hurt them to be told that the
properties of the _Arum maculatum_ are little known, but that the males
are crowded round the center of the spadix, and the females seated at the
base.”
Said Vizard, pompously, “The pulpit and the tea-table are centers of
similar phenomena. Now I think of it, the pulpit is a very fair calyx,
but the tea-table is sadly squat.”
“Yes, sir. But, more than that, not one of these pedants who growled at
promiscuous botany has once objected to promiscuous dancing, not even
with the gentleman's arm round the lady's waist, which the custom of
centuries cannot render decent. Yet the professors of delicacy connive,
and the Mother Geese sit smirking at the wall. Oh, world of hypocrites
and humbugs!”
“I am afraid you are an upsetter general,” said Vizard. “But you are
abominably sincere; and all this is a curious chapter of human nature.
Pray proceed.”
Miss Gale nodded gravely, and resumed.
“So much public ridicule fell on the union for this, and the blind
flunkyism which could believe the queen had meddled in the detail, that
the professors melted under it, and threw open botany and natural history
to us, with other collateral sciences.
“Then came the great fight, which is not ended yet.
“To qualify for medicine and pass the stiff examination, by which the
public is very properly protected, you must be versed in anatomy and
clinical surgery. Books and lectures do not suffice for this, without the
human subject--alive and dead. The university court knew that very well
when it matriculated us, and therefore it provided for our instruction by
promising us separate classes.
“Backed by this public pledge, we waited on the university professor of
anatomy to arrange our fees for a separate lecture. He flatly refused to
instruct us separately for love or money, or to permit his assistants.
That meant, 'The union sees a way to put you in a cleft stick and cheat
you out of your degree, in spite of the pledge the university has given
you; in spite of your fees, and of your time given to study in reliance
on the promise.'
“This was a heavy blow. But there was an extramural establishment called
Surgeons' Hall, and the university formally recognized all the lecturers
in this Hall; so we applied to those lecturers, and they were shocked at
the illiberality of the university professors, and admitted us at once to
mixed classes. We attended lectures with the male students on anatomy and
surgery, and _of all the anticipated evils, not one took place, sir._
“The objections to mixed classes proved to be idle words; yet the
old-fashioned minds opposed to us shut their eyes and went on reasoning
_'a priori,_ and proving that the evils which they saw did not arise
_must_ arise should the experiment of mixed classes, which was then
succeeding, ever he tried.
“To qualify us for examination we now needed but one thing more--hospital
practice. The infirmary is supported not so much by the university as the
town. We applied, therefore, with some confidence, for the permission
usually conceded to medical students. The managers refused us the _town
infirmary._ Then we applied to the subscribers. The majority, not
belonging to a trades-union, declared in our favor, and intimated plainly
that they would turn out the illiberal managers at the next election of
managers.
“But by this time the war was hot and general, and hard blows dealt on
both sides. It was artfully suppressed by our enemies in the profession
and in the Press that we had begged hard for the separate class which had
been promised us in anatomy, and permission to attend, by ourselves, a
limited number of wards in the infirmary; and on this falsehood by
suppression worse calumnies were built.
“I shall tell you what we really were, and what foul mouths and pens
insinuated we must be.
“Two accomplished women had joined us, and we were now the seven wise
virgins of a half-civilized nation, and, if I know black from white, we
were seven of its brightest ornaments. We were seven ladies, who wished
to be doctresses, especially devoted to our own sex; seven good students,
who went on our knees to the university for those separate classes in
anatomy and clinical surgery which the university was bound in honor to
supply us; but, our prayer rejected, said to the university, 'Well, use
your own discretion about separate or mixed classes; but for your own
credit, and that of human nature, do not willfully tie a hangman's noose
to throttle the weak and deserving, and don't cheat seven poor,
hard-working, meritorious women, your own matriculated students, out of
our entrance-fees, which lie to this day in the university coffers, out
of the exceptionally heavy fees we have paid to your professors, out of
all the fruit of our hard study, out of our diplomas, and our bread.
Solve the knot your own way. We will submit to mixed classes, or
anything, except professional destruction.'
“In this spirit our lion-hearted leader wrote the letter of an uninjured
dove, and said there were a great many more wards in the infirmary than
any male student could or did attend; we would be content to divide the
matter thus: the male students to have the monopoly of two-thirds, we to
have the bare right of admission to one-third. By this the male students
(if any) who had a sincere objection to study the sick, and witness
operations, in our company, could never be troubled with us; and we,
though less favored than the male students, could just manage to qualify
for that public examination, which was to prove whether we could make
able physicians or not.
“Sir, this gentle proposal was rejected with rude scorn, and in
aggressive terms. Such is the spirit of a trades-union.
“Having now shown you what we were, I will now tell you what our enemies,
declining to observe our conduct, though it was very public, suggested we
_must_ be--seven shameless women, who pursued medicine as a handle for
sexuality; who went into the dissecting-room to dissect males, and into
the hospital to crowd round the male patient, and who _demanded_ mixed
classes, that we might have male companions in those studies which every
feminine woman would avoid altogether.
“This key-note struck, the public was regaled with a burst of hypocrisy
such as Moli'ere never had the luck to witness, or oh, what a comedy he
would have written!
“The immodest sex, taking advantage of Moli'ere's decease without heirs
of his brains, set to work in public to teach the modest sex modesty.
“In the conduct of this pleasant paradox, the representatives of that
sex, which has much courage and little modesty, were two professors--who
conducted the paradox so judiciously that the London Press reprimanded
them for their foul insinuations--and a number of young men called
medical students.
“Now, the medical student surpasses most young men in looseness of life,
and indecency of mind and speech.
“The representatives of womanhood to be instructed in modesty by these
animals, old and young, were seven prudes, whose minds were devoted to
study and honorable ambition. These women were as much above the average
of their sex in feminine reserve and independence of the male sex as they
were in intellect.
“The average girl, who throughout this discussion was all of a sudden
puffed as a lily, because she ceased to be _observed,_ can attend to
nothing if a man is by; she can't work, she can't play, she is so eaten
up with sexuality. The frivolous soul can just manage to play croquet
with females; but, enter a man upon the scene, and she does even that
very ill, and can hardly be got to take her turn in the only thing she
has really given her mind to. We were angels compared with this paltry
creature, and she was the standing butt of public censure, until it was
found that an imaginary picture of her could be made the handle for
insulting her betters.
“Against these seven prudes, decent dotards and their foul-mouthed allies
flung out insinuations which did not escape public censure; and the
medical students declared their modesty was shocked at our intrusion into
anatomy and surgery, and petitioned against us. Some of the Press were
deceived by this for a time, and _hurlaient avec les loups._
“I took up, one day, my favorite weekly, in which nearly every writer
seems to me a scholar, and was regaled with such lines as these:
“'It appears that girls are to associate with boys as medical students,
in order that, when they become women, they may be able to speak to men
with entire plainness upon all the subjects of a doctor's daily practice.
“'In plain words, the aspirants to medicine and surgery desire to rid
themselves speedily and effectually of that modesty which nature has
planted in women.' And then the writer concludes: 'We beg to suggest that
there are other places besides dissecting-rooms and hospitals where those
ladies may relieve themselves of the modesty which they find so
troublesome. But fathers naturally object to this being done at their
sons' expense.”
“Infamous!” cried Vizard. “One comfort, no man ever penned that. That is
some old woman writing down young ones.”
“I don't know,” said Rhoda. “I have met so many womanish men in this
business. All I know is, that my cheeks burned, and, for once in the
fight, scalding tears ran down them. It was as if a friend had spat upon
me.
“What a chimera! What a monstrous misinterpretation of pure minds by
minds impure! To _us_ the dissecting-room was a temple, and the dead an
awe, revolting to all our senses, until the knife revealed to our minds
the Creator's hand in structural beauties that the trained can
appreciate, if wicked dunces can't.
“And as to the infirmary, we should have done just what we did at Zurich.
We held a little aloof from the male patients, unless some good-natured
lecturer, or pupil, gave us a signal, and then we came forward. If we
came uninvited, we always stood behind the male students: but we did
crowd round the beds of the female patients, and claimed the inner row:
AND, SIR, THEY THANKED GOD FOR US OPENLY.
“A few awkward revelations were made during this discussion. A medical
student had the candor to write and say that he had been at a lecture,
and the professor had told an indelicate story, and, finding it palatable
to his modest males, had said, 'There, gentlemen: now, if female students
were admitted here, I could not have told you this amusing circumstance.'
So that it was our purifying influence he dreaded in secret, though he
told the public he dreaded the reverse.
“Again, female patients wrote to the journals to beg that female students
might be admitted to come between them and the brutal curiosity of the
male students, to which they were subjected in so offensive a way that
more than one poor creature declared she had felt agonies of shame, even
in the middle of an agonizing operation.
“This being a cry from that public for whose sake the whole clique of
physicians--male and female--exists, had, of course, no great weight in
the union controversy.
“But, sir, if grave men and women will sit calmly down and fling dirt
upon every woman who shall aspire to medicine in an island, though she
can do so on a neighboring continent with honor, and choose their time
when the dirt can only fall on seven known women--since the female
students in that island are only seven--the pretended generality becomes
a cowardly personality, and wounds as such, and excites less
cold-hearted, and more hot-headed blackguards to outrage. It was so at
Philadelphia, and it was so at Edinburgh.
“Our extramural teacher in anatomy was about to give a competitive
examination. Now, on these occasions, we were particularly obnoxious.
Often and clearly as it had been proved, by _'a priori_ reasoning, that
we _must_ be infinitely inferior to the average male, we persisted in
proving, by hard fact, that we were infinitely his superior; and every
examination gave us an opportunity of crushing solid reasons under hollow
fact.
“A band of medical students determined that for once _'a priori_
reasoning should have fair play, and not be crushed by a thing so
illusory as fact. Accordingly, they got the gates closed, and collected
round them. We came up, one after another, and were received with hisses,
groans, and abusive epithets.
“This mode of reasoning must have been admirably adapted to my weak
understanding; for it convinced me at once I had no business there, and I
was for private study directly.
“But, sir, you know the ancients said, 'Better is an army of stags with a
lion for their leader, than an army of lions with a stag for their
leader.' Now, it so happened that we had a lioness for our leader. She
pushed manfully through the crowd, and hammered at the door: then we
crept quaking after. She ordered those inside to open the gates; and some
student took shame, and did. In marched our lioness, crept after by
her--her--”
“Her cubs.”
“A thousand thanks, good sir. Her does. On second thoughts, 'her hinds.'
Doe is the female of buck. Now, I said stags. Well, the ruffians who had
undertaken to teach us modesty swarmed in too. They dragged a sheep into
the lecture-room, lighted pipes, produced bottles, drank, smoked, and
abused us ladies to our faces, and interrupted the lecturer at intervals
with their howls and ribaldry: that was intended to show the professor he
should not be listened to any more if he admitted the female students.
The affair got wind, and other students, not connected with medicine,
came pouring in, with no worse motive, probably, than to see the lark.
Some of these, however, thought the introduction of the sheep unfair to
so respected a lecturer, and proceeded to remove her; but the professor
put up his hand, and said, 'Oh, don't remove _her:_ she is superior in
intellect to many persons here present.'
“At the end of the lecture, thinking us in actual danger from these
ruffians, he offered to let us out by a side door; but our lioness stood
up and said, in a voice that rings in my ear even now, 'Thank you, sir;
no. There are _gentlemen_ enough here to escort us safely.'
“The magic of a great word from a great heart, at certain moments when
minds are heated! At that word, sir, the scales fell from a hundred eyes;
manhood awoke with a start, ay, and chivalry too; fifty manly fellows
were round us in a moment, with glowing cheeks and eyes, and they carried
us all home to our several lodgings in triumph. The cowardly caitiffs of
the trades-union howled outside, and managed to throw a little dirt upon
our gowns, and also hurled epithets, most of which were new to me; but it
has since been stated by persons more versed in the language of the
_canaille_ that no fouler terms are known to the dregs of mankind.
“Thus did the immodest sex, in the person of the medical student, outrage
seven fair samples of the modest sex--to teach them modesty.
“Next morning the police magistrates dealt with a few of our teachers,
inflicted severe rebukes on them, and feeble fines.
“The craftier elders disowned the riot in public, but approved it in
private; and continued to act in concert with it, only with cunning, not
violence. _It caused no honest revulsion of feeling,_ except in the
disgusted public, and they had no power to help us.
“The next incident was a stormy debate by the subscribers to the
infirmary; and here we had a little feminine revenge, which, outraged as
we had been, I hope you will not grudge us.
“Our lioness subscribed five pounds, and became entitled to vote and
speech. As the foulest epithets had been hurled at her by the union, and
a certain professor had told her, to her face, no respectable woman would
come to him and propose to study medicine, she said, publicly, that she
had come to his opinion, and respectable women would avoid him--which
caused a laugh.
“She also gave a venerable old physician, our bitter opponent, a slap
that was not quite so fair. His attendant had been concerned in that
outrage, and she assumed--in which she was not justified--that the old
doctor approved. 'To be sure,' said she, 'they say he was intoxicated,
and that is the only possible excuse.'
“The old doctor had only to say that he did not control his assistants in
the street; and his own mode of conducting the opposition, and his long
life of honor, were there to correct this young woman's unworthy
surmises, and she would have had to apologize for going too far on mere
surmise. But, instead of that, he was so injudicious as to accuse her of
foul language, and say, 'My attendant is a perfect gentleman; he would
not be my attendant if he were not.'
“Our lioness had him directly. 'Oh,' said she, 'if Dr. So-and-so prefers
to say that his attendant committed that outrage on decency when in his
sober senses, I am quite content.'
“This was described as violent invective by people with weak memories,
who had forgotten the nature of the outrage our lioness was commenting
on; but in truth it was only superior skill in debate, with truth to back
it.
“For my part, I kept the police report at the time, and have compared it
with her speech. The judicial comments on those rioters are far more
severe than hers. The truth is it was her facts that hit too hard, not
her expressions.
“Well, sir, she obtained a majority; and those managers of the infirmary
who objected to female students were dismissed, and others elected. At
the same meeting the Court of Contributors passed a statute, making it
the law of the infirmary that students should be admitted without regard
to sex.
“But as to the mere election of managers, the other party demanded a
scrutiny of the votes, and instructive figures came out. There voted with
us twenty-eight firms, thirty-one ladies, seven doctors.
“There voted with the union fourteen firms, two ladies, _thirty-seven
doctors,_ and three _druggists._
“Thereupon the trades-union, as declared by the figures, alleged that
firms ought not to vote. _Nota bene,_ they always had voted unchallenged
till they voted for fair play to women.
“The union served the provost with an interdict not to declare the new
managers elected.
“We applied for our tickets under the new statute, but were impudently
refused, under the plea that the managers must first be consulted: so did
the servants of the infirmary defy the masters in order to exclude us.
“By this time the great desire of women to practice medicine had begun to
show itself. Numbers came in and matriculated; and the pressure on the
authorities to keep faith, and relax the dead-lock they had put us in,
was great.
“Thereupon the authorities, instead of saying, 'We have pledged ourselves
to a great number of persons, and pocketed their fees,' took fright, and
cast about for juggles. They affected to discover all of a sudden that
they had acted illegally in matriculating female students. They would,
therefore, not give back their fees, and pay them two hundred pounds
apiece for breach of contract, but detain their fees and stop their
studies until compelled by judicial decision to keep faith. Observe, it
was under advice of the lord-justice-general they had matriculated us,
and entered into a contract with us, _for fulfilling which it was not,
and is not, in the power of any mortal man to punish them._
“But these pettifoggers said this: _'We_ have acted illegally, and
therefore not we, but _you,_ shall suffer: _we_ will _profit_ by our
illegal act, for we will cheat you out of your fees to the university and
your fees to its professors, as well as the seed-time of your youth that
we have wasted.'
“Now, in that country they can get the opinions of the judges by raising
what they call an action of declarator.
“One would think it was their business to go to the judges, and meantime
give us the benefit of the legal doubt, while it lasted, and of the moral
no-doubt, which will last till the day of judgment, and a day after.
“Not a bit of it. They deliberately broke their contract with us, kept
our fees, and cheated us out of the article we had bought of them,
disowned all sense of morality, yet shifted the burden of law on to our
shoulders. Litigation is long. Perfidy was in possession. Possession is
nine points. The female students are now sitting with their hands before
them, juggled out of their studies, in plain defiance of justice and
public faith, waiting till time shall show them whether provincial
lawyers can pettifog as well as trades-union doctors.
“As for me, I had retired to civilized climes long before this. I used to
write twice a week to my parents, but I withheld all mention of the
outrage at Surgeons' Hall. I knew it would give them useless pain. But in
three weeks or so came a letter from my father, unlike any other I ever
knew him to write. It did not even begin, 'My dear child.' This was what
he said (the words are engraved in my memory): 'Out of that nation of
cowards and skunks! out of it this moment, once and forever! The States
are your home. Draft on London inclosed. Write to me from France next
week, or write to me no more. Graduate in France. Then come North, and
sail from Havre to New York. You have done with Britain, and so have I,
till our next war. Pray God that mayn't be long!'
“It was like a lion's roar of anguish. I saw my dear father's heart was
bursting with agony and rage at the insult to his daughter, and I shed
tears for him those wretches had never drawn from me.
“I had cried at being insulted by scholars in the Press; but what was it
to me that the scum of the medical profession, which is the scum of God's
whole creation, called me words I did not know the meaning of, and flung
the dirt of their streets, and the filth of their souls, after me? I was
frightened a little, that is all. But that these reptiles could wound my
darling old lion's heart across the ocean! Sir, he was a man who could be
keen and even severe with men, but every virtuous woman was a sacred
thing to him. Had he seen one, though a stranger, insulted as we were, he
would have died in her defense. He was a true American. And to think the
dregs of mankind could wound him for his daughter, and so near the end of
his own dear life. Oh!” She turned her head away.
“My poor girl!” said Vizard, and his own voice was broken.
When he said that, she gave him her hand, and seemed to cling to his a
little; but she turned her head away from him and cried, and even
trembled a little.
But she very soon recovered herself, and said she would try to end her
story. It had been long enough.
“Sir, my father had often obeyed me; but now I knew I must obey him. I
got testimonials in Edinburgh, and started South directly. In a week I
was in the South of France. Oh, what a change in people's minds by mere
change of place! The professors received me with winning courtesy; some
hats were lifted to me in the street, with marked respect; flowers were
sent to my lodgings by gentlemen who never once intruded, on me in
person. I was in a civilized land. Yet there was a disappointment for me.
I inquired for Cornelia. The wretch had just gone and married a
professor. I feared she was up to no good, by her writing so seldom of
late.
“I sent her a line that an old friend had returned, and had not forgotten
her, nor our mutual vows.
“She came directly, and was for caressing away her crime, and dissolving
it in crocodile tears; but I played the injured friend and the tyrant.
“Then she curled round me, and coaxed, and said, 'Sweetheart, I can
advance your interests all the better. You shall be famous for us both. I
shall be happier in your success than in my own.'
“In short, she made it very hard to hold spite; and it ended in
feeble-minded embraces. Indeed, she _was_ of service to me. I had a favor
to ask: I wanted leave to count my Scotch time in France.
“My view was tenable; and Cornelia, by her beauty and her popularity,
gained over all the professors to it but one. He stood out.
“Well, sir, an extraordinary occurrence befriended me; no, not
extraordinary--unusual.
“I lodged on a second floor. The first floor was very handsome. A young
Englishman and his wife took it for a week. She was musical--a real
genius. The only woman I ever heard sing without whining; for we are, by
nature, the medical and unmusical sex.”
“So you said before.”
“I know I did; and I mean to keep saying it till people see it. Well, the
young man was taken violently and mysteriously ill; had syncope after
syncope, and at last ceased to breathe.
“The wife was paralyzed, and sat stupefied, and the people about feared
for her reason.
“After a time they begged me to come down and talk to her. Of course I
went. I found her with her head upon his knees. I sat down quietly, and
looked at him. He was young and beautiful, but with a feminine beauty;
his head finely shaped, with curly locks that glittered in the sun, and
one golden lock lighter than the rest; his eyes and eyelashes, his oval
face, his white neck, and his white hand, all beautiful. His left hand
rested on the counterpane. There was an emerald ring on one finger. He
was like some beautiful flower cut down. I can see him now.
“The woman lifted her head and saw me. She had a noble face, though now
distorted and wild.
“She cried, 'Tell me he is not dead! tell me he is not dead!' and when I
did not reply, the poor creature gave a wild cry, and her senses left
her. We carried her into another room.
“While the women were bringing her to, an official came to insist on the
interment taking place. They are terribly expeditious in the South of
France.
“This caused an altercation, and the poor lady rushed out; and finding
the officer peremptory, flung her arms round the body, and said they
should not be parted--she would be buried with him.
“The official was moved, but said the law was strict, and the town must
conduct the funeral unless she could find the sad courage to give the
necessary instructions. With this he was going out, inexorable, when all
of a sudden I observed something that sent my heart into my mouth, and I
cried 'Arretez!' so loud that everybody stared.
“I said, 'You must wait till a physician has seen him; he has moved a
finger.'
“I stared at the body, and they all stared at me.
“He _had_ moved a finger. When I first saw him, his fingers were all
close together; but now the little finger was quite away from the third
finger--the one with the ring on.
“I felt his heart, and found a little warmth about it, but no perceptible
pulse. I ordered them to take off his sheet and put on blankets, but not
to touch him till I came back with a learned physician. The wife embraced
me, all trembling, and promised obedience. I got a _fiacre_ and drove to
Dr. Brasseur, who was my hostile professor, but very able. I burst on
him, and told him I had a case of catalepsy for him--it wasn't catalepsy,
you know, but physicians are fond of Greek; they prefer the wrong Greek
word to the right English. So I called it 'catalepsy,' and said I
believed they were going to bury a live man. He shrugged his shoulders,
and said that was one of the customs of the country. He would come in an
hour. I told him that would not do, the man would be in his coffin; he
must come directly. He smiled at my impetuosity, and yielded.
“I got him to the patient. He examined him, and said he might be alive,
but feared the last spark was going out. He dared not venture on
friction. We must be wary.
“Well, we tried this stimulant and that, till at last we got a sigh out
of the patient; and I shall not forget the scream of joy at that sigh,
which made the room ring, and thrilled us all.
“By-and-by I was so fortunate as to suggest letting a small stream of
water fall from a height on his head and face. We managed that, and
by-and-by were rewarded with a sneeze.
“I think a sneeze must revivify the brain wonderfully, for he made rapid
progress, and then we tried friction, and he got well very quick. Indeed,
as he had nothing the matter with him, except being dead, he got
ridiculously well, and began paying us fulsome compliments, the doctor
and me.
“So then we handed him to his joyful wife.
“They talk of crying for joy, as if it was done every day. I never saw it
but once, and she was the woman. She made a curious gurgle; but it was
very pretty. I was glad to have seen it, and very proud to be the cause.”
The next day that pair left. He was English and so many good-natured
strangers called on him that he fled swiftly, and did not even bid me
good-by. However, I was told they both inquired for me, and were sorry I
was out when they went.
“How good of them!” said Vizard, turning red.
“Oh, never mind, sir; I made use of _him._ I scribbled an article that
very day, entitled it, 'While there's life there's hope,' and rushed with
it to the editor of a journal. He took it with delight. I wrote it _'a la
Francaise:_ picture of the dead husband, mourning wife, the impending
interment; effaced myself entirely, and said the wife had refused to bury
him until Dr. Brasseur, whose fame had reached her ears, had seen the
body. To humor her, the doctor was applied to, and, his benevolence being
equal to his science, he came: when, lo! a sudden surprise; the swift,
unerring eye of science detected some subtle sign that had escaped the
lesser luminaries. He doubted the death. He applied remedies; he
exhausted the means of his art, with little avail at first, but at last a
sigh was elicited, then a sneeze; and, marvelous to relate, in one hour
the dead man was sitting up, not convalescent, but well. I concluded with
some reflections on this _most important case of suspended animation_
very creditable to the profession of medicine, and Dr. Brasseur.”
“There was a fox!”
“Well, look at my hair. What else could you expect? I said that before,
too.
“My notice published, I sent it to the doctor, with my respects, but did
not call on him. However, one day he met me, and greeted me with a low
bow. 'Mademoiselle,' said he, 'you were always a good student; but now
you show the spirit of a _confr'ere,_ and so gracefully, that we are all
agreed we must have you for one as soon as possible.'
“I courtesied, and felt my face red, and said I should be the proudest
woman in France.
“'Grand Dieu,' said he, 'I hope not; for your modesty is not the least of
your charms.'
“So, the way was made smooth, and I had to work hard, and in about
fourteen months I was admitted to my final examination. It was a severe
one, but I had some advantages. Each nation has its wisdom, and I had
studied in various schools.
“Being a linguist, with a trained memory, I occasionally backed my
replies with a string of French, German, English, and Italian authorities
that looked imposing.
“In short, I did pass with public applause and cordial felicitation; they
quite _fe'ted_ me. The old welcomed me; the young escorted me home and
flung flowers over me at my door. I reappeared in the balcony, and said a
few words of gratitude to them and their noble nation. They cheered, and
dispersed.
“My heart was in a glow. I turned my eyes toward New York: a fortnight
more, and my parents should greet me as a European doctress, if not a
British.
“The excitement had been too great; I sunk, a little exhausted, on the
sofa. They bought me a letter. It was black-edged. I tore it open with a
scream. My father was dead.”