"Angel of Patience! sent to calm
Our feverish brow with cooling palm;
To lay the storm of hope and fears,
And reconcile life's smile and tears;
The throb of wounded pride to still,
And make our own our Father's will."--WHITTIER.
HER "MISSION."--NO PLACE IN MEDICAL HISTORY.--ONE OF THEM.--MRS.
STEPHENS.--"CRAZY SALLY."--RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS.--RUNS IN THE
FAMILY.--ANECDOTES.--"WHICH GOT THRASHED?"--A WRETCHED END.--AMERICAN
FEMALE PHYSICIANS.--A PIONEER.--A LAUGHABLE ANECDOTE.--"THREE WISE
MEN."--"A SHORT HORSE," ETC.--BOSTON AND NEW YORK FEMALE DOCTORS.--A
STORY.--"LOVE AND THOROUGHWORT."--A GAY BEAU.--UP THE
PENOBSCOT.--DYING FOR LOVE.--"IS HE MAD?"--THOROUGHWORT WINS.
"From the earliest ages the care of the sick has devolved on woman. A
group by one of our sculptors, representing Eve with the body of Abel
stretched upon her lap, bending over him in bewildered grief, and striving
to restore the vital spirit which she can hardly believe to have departed,
is a type of the province of the sex ever since pain and death entered the
world.
"To be first the vehicle for human life, and then its devoted guardian; to
remove or alleviate the physical evils which afflict the race, or to watch
their wasting, and tenderly care for all that remains when they have
wrought their result--this is her divinely appointed and universally
conceded mission.
"Were she to refuse it, to forsake her station beside the suffering, the
office of medicine and the efforts of the physician would be more than
half baffled. And yet, where her post is avowedly so important, she has
generally been denied the liberty of understanding much that is involved
in its intelligent occupancy. With the human body so largely in her charge
from birth to death, she is not allowed to inquire into its marvellous
mechanism. With the administering of remedies intrusted to her vigilance
and faithfulness, she has not been allowed to investigate the qualities,
or even know the names or the operations of those substances committed to
her use. To be a student with scientific thoroughness, and to practise
independently with what she has thus acquired, has been regarded as
unseemly, or as beyond her capacity, or as an invasion of prerogatives
claimed exclusively for men.
"Indeed, the whole domain of medicine has been '_pre-empted_' by men, and
in their '_squatter sovereignty_' they have sturdily warned off the
gentler sex."--Rev. H. B. Elliot, in "_Eminent Women of the Age_."
It seems to my mind, and ought to every thinking mind, to be ridiculously
absurd that "man born of woman" should set up his authority against woman
understanding "herself." "Man, know thyself," is stereotyped, but if it
ever was put in type form for "woman to know herself," it has long since
been "_pied_."
"Search the Scriptures," and you would never mistrust that "eternal life,"
or any other life, came, or existed a day, through woman. Mythological
writers, who come next to scriptural, give woman no credit in medical
science. We will except Hygeia, the goddess of health, the fabled daughter
of Æsculapius. In the _medical_ history of no country does she occupy any
prominence. There were "Witches," "Enchantresses," "Wise Women,"
"Fortune-tellers," who in every age have existed to no small extent, and
under various names have figured in the histories of all nations,
receiving the countenance of prince and beggar--but females as physicians,
_as a class_, have never been recognized by nations or governments, or
scarcely by communities or individuals.
In searching the memorials of English authors for two hundred years past,
we can find but little to disprove the above assertions. In Mr.
Jeaffreson's "Book of Doctors," the author fails to find memorials of
their actions, as female physicians, sufficient to fill a single chapter;
and those of whom he has made mention, he discourses of mostly in a
ridiculous light, as though entirely out of their sphere, or as being of
the coarser sort, and questions "if two score could be rescued from
oblivion whom our ancestors intrusted with the care of their invalid wives
and children."
In this connection, let us briefly mention such as are better known in
English literature, as doctresses especially as mentioned by Mr.
Jeaffreson.
Two ladies, who are immortalized in "Philosophical Transactions for 1694,"
were Sarah Hastings and Mrs. French. Another, who received the support of
bishops, dukes, lords, countesses, etc., in 1738-9, was Mrs. Joanna
Stephens, "an ignorant and vulgar creature." After enriching herself by
her specifics, consisting of a "pill, a powder and a decoction," she
bamboozled the English Parliament into purchasing the secret, for the
(then) enormous sum of £5000. "The Powder consists of _eggshells_ and
_snails_, both calcined."
"The decoction is made by boiling together Alicant _soap_, swine's-cresses
burnt to a blackness, honey, camomile, fennel, parsley, and burdock
leaves." "The pill consists of snails, wild carrot and burdock seeds,
ashen keys, hips, and haws, all burnt to a blackness; soap and honey."
When we take into consideration the fact that there were no "medical
schools for females," at that day, nor until within the last ten or twelve
years, that every female applicant was rejected by the medical colleges of
England, and that all female practitioners were held in disrepute by both
physician and the public, the above repulsive remedies may not so greatly
excite our surprise.
"CRAZY SALLY."
The most remarkable woman doctor made mention of in English literature,
was Mrs. Mapp, _née_ Sally Wallin. We have collected these facts
respecting her origin, character, and career, from _Chambers' Miscellany_
and the _Gentlemen's Magazine_, 1736-7. Hogarth has immortalized her in
his "Undertaker's arms." She is placed at the top of that picture, between
Josh Ward, the _Pill_ doctor, and Chevalier Taylor, the quack oculist.
(See page 668.)
She was born in Weltshire, in 169-. Her father was a "bone-setter," which
occupation "run in the family," like that of the Sweets, of Connecticut,
or like the marine whom Mrs. Mapp saw one day, as she, in her carriage,
was driving "along the Strand, O."
Said sailor having a wooden leg, the doctress asked, "How does it happen,
fellow, that you've a wooden leg."
"O, easy enough, madam; my father had one before me. It sort o' runs in
the family, marm," was the laconic reply. From a barefooted school-girl at
Weltshire, where Sally obtained barely the rudiments of a common
education, she became her father's assistant in bone-setting and
manipulating.
The next we hear of Miss Wallin, is at Epsom, where she became known as
"Crazy Sally." She has been described as a "very coarse, large, vulgar,
illiterate, drunken, bawling woman," "known as a haunter of fairs, about
which she loved to reel, screaming and abusive, in a state of roaring
intoxication."
It is astonishing as true, that this unattractive specimen of the female
sex became so esteemed in Epsom, where she set up as a physician, that the
town offered her £100 to remain there a year! The newspapers sounded her
praise, the gentry, even, lauded her skill, and physicians witnessed her
operations.
"Crazy Sally" awoke one morning and found herself famous. Patients of rank
and wealth flocked from every quarter. Attracted by her success and her
accumulating wealth, rather than by her _beauty_ or _amiable_ disposition,
an Epsom swain made her an offer of marriage, which she, like a woman,
accepted. This fellow's name was Mapp, who lived with her but for a
fortnight, during which time he "thrashed her" (or she him, it is not just
clear which) "three times," and appropriating all of her spare change,
amounting to five hundred dollars, he took to himself one half of the
world, and quietly left her the other. Our informant adds, "She found
consolation for her wounded affections in the homage of the world. She
became a notoriety of the first water; every day the public journals gave
some interesting account of her, and her remarkable operations."
The _Grub Street Journal_ of that period said, "The remarkable cures of
the woman bone-setter, Mrs. Mapp, are too numerous to enumerate. Her
bandages are extraordinarily neat, and her dexterity in reducing
dislocations and fractures most wonderful. She has cured persons who have
been twenty years disabled." Her patients were both male and female. Some
of her most difficult operations were performed before physicians of
eminence.
Her carriage was splendid, on the panels of which were emblazoned her coat
of arms. Regularly every week she visited London in this magnificent
chariot drawn by four superb, cream-white horses, attended by servants,
arrayed in gorgeous liveries. She put up at the Grecian Coffee-House, and
forthwith her rooms would be thronged by invalids.
Notices of her were not always of the most complimentary sort. Being one
day detained by a cart of coal that was unloading in a narrow street of
the metropolis, on which occasion she was arrayed in a loosely fitting
robe-de-chambre, with large flowing sleeves, which set off her massive
proportion most conspicuously, she let down the windows of her carriage,
and leaning her bare arms upon the door, she impatiently exclaimed,--
"Fellow, how dare you detain a lady of rank thus?"
"A lady of rank!" sneered the coal-man.
"Yes, you villain!" screamed the enraged doctress. "Don't you observe the
arms of Mrs. Mapp on the carriage?"
[Illustration: "DON'T YOU OBSERVE THE ARMS OF MRS. MAPP?"]
"Yes--I _do_ see the arms," replied the impudent fellow, "and a pair of
durned coarse ones they are, to be sure."
On another occasion she was riding up Old Kent Road, dressed as above
described. "Her obesity, immodest attire, intoxication, and dazzling
equipage were, in the eyes of the mob, so sure signs of royalty, that she
was taken for a court lady, of German origin, and of unpopular repute. The
crowd gathered about her carriage, and with oaths and yells were about to
demolish the windows with clubs and stones, when the nowise alarmed
occupant, like Nellie Gwynn, on a similar occasion, rose in her seat,
and, with imprecations more emphatic than polite, exclaimed,--
"---- you! Don't you know who I am? I am Mrs. Sally Mapp, the celebrated
bone-setter of Epsom!"
"This brief address so tickled the humor of the rabble that the lady was
permitted to proceed on her way, amid deafening acclamations and
laughter."
This famous woman's career may be likened to a rocket. She flashed before
the people as suddenly, ascended as brilliantly to the zenith of fame, and
fell like the burned, blackened stick.
Mrs. Mapp spent her last days in poverty, wretchedness, and obscurity, at
"Seven Dials," where she died almost unattended, on the night of December
22, 1737. Her demise was thus briefly announced in the journals:--
"Died at her lodgings, near Seven Dials, last week, Mrs. Mapp, the once
much-talked-of bone-setter of Epsom, so wretchedly poor that the parish
was obliged to bury her."
Mr. Jeaffreson makes mention of two more "female doctors;" one an honest
widow, mother of "Chevalier Taylor," who, at Norwich, carried on a
respectable business as an apothecary and doctress, and Mrs. Colonel
Blood, who, at Romford, supported herself and son by keeping an apothecary
shop.