Perhaps English authors and English readers may be satisfied to allow the
above meagre and unenviable array of pretenders to stand on record as the
representatives of "female doctors" in their liberal and enlightened
country! Americans can boast of a better representative.
While England claims a "Female Medical Society," and one "Female Medical
College," the United States has several of the former, and three regularly
chartered "Female Medical Colleges." In a recent announcement of the
English college, it claims fifty students, "but the aim of the whole
movement is at present only to furnish competent midwives."
The "Maternity Hospital," of Paris (which existed long before the late
Franco-Prussian war, but which we can learn nothing of since the fall of
that once beautiful city), "afforded some opportunity for observation,
receiving females nominally as students, but they were not allowed to
prescribe in the wards, nor were they instructed in regard to the use and
properties of the remedies there prescribed. Indeed, they can hardly rise
above the position of proficient nurses," says our informant.
Some few medical colleges of the United States are admitting females on
the same footing as the heretofore more favored "lords of creation."
A female college has been in existence in Philadelphia for above twenty
years. The "New England Female Medical College" was chartered in 1856; but
the "regular" colleges, as Yale, Harvard, etc., refuse all female
applicants.
New York has been more liberal towards the gentler sex. At Geneva,
Rochester, Syracuse, and elsewhere, as early as 1849-50, medical schools
of the more liberal sort, but of undoubted respectability and legal
charters, opened their doors to female students. In 1869 the New York
Female Medical College was chartered, since which time more than two
hundred ladies have therein received medical instruction.
In all the principal cities of the Union may be found from one to a dozen
respectably educated and successful female practitioners, who have
attained to some eminence in spite of the opposition of the "faculty," and
the ignorant prejudices of the common people.
It is surprising how early and persistently some men forget that they were
"born of woman!" Their contempt of the capabilities of womankind would
lead one to suppose them to be ashamed of their own mothers. Mark Twain's
facetious but instructive speech, once delivered before an editorial
gathering in Boston, ought to be rehearsed to them daily; yes, and
enforced by petticoat government upon their notice till it became
stereotyped into their stupid brains. Mark says,
"What, sir, would the peoples of the earth be without woman? They would be
scarce, sir,--almighty scarce! (Laughter.) Then let us cherish her; let us
protect her; let us give her our support, our encouragement, our
sympathy,--our--selves, if we get a chance.
"But, jesting aside, Mr. President, woman is gracious, lovable, kind of
heart, beautiful, worthy of all respect, of all esteem, of all deference.
Not any here will refuse to drink her health right cordially, for each and
every one of us has personally known, and loved, and honored the very best
of them all,--_his own mother_!"
Sarah B. Chase, M. D., a respectable and successful female physician of
Ohio, gives the following excellent advice:--
"I would not encourage any woman to study medicine, with the expectation
of practising, who is not ready and willing--ay, _anxious_ and
_determined_--to go through the same severe drill of preparation, the same
thorough discipline, as is required of man before he is crowned with the
honors of an M. D."