If I had been writing this work twenty years ago, it would have been
necessary to argue the fitness and propriety of women doctors.
Happily, such an argument is now unnecessary. All but such as live
in darkness welcome women to the medical profession. Already they
have become professors in medical colleges in this country, as they
were for many hundred years in Europe.
Whether a woman has nerve enough to perform a grave surgical
operation, I do not care to inquire.
No thoughtful man who has watched her in the character of nurse,
even when she is uneducated, will entertain a doubt about her happy
qualifications for the management of the sick.
The most important responsibilities of a physician have reference to
ventilation, cleanliness, bathing, feeding,--in brief, to nursing;
and no one but a stupid, obstinate man would suggest her inferiority
for such services.
I have no doubt that, finally, the medical profession will fall
almost exclusively into the hands of women, as its most important
part, nursing, already has.
A very large part of our medical business grows out of the diseases
of women, as such, and I shall not insult my readers by gravely
considering the question whether men or women should examine,
manipulate, and treat such affections. When I hear men protesting
that women cannot understand and manage these affections, I declare,
some very ugly suspicions occur to me. Women and children are the
sick ones. Very few men have occasion to seek the doctor.
If those who read these words understood as I do, how little brain
is used in the selection of drugs, how simple a routine is followed
by the doctor in selecting his medicines from day to day,--if those
who read this, knew as I do, how infinitely more important and
difficult are the duties devolving upon the nurse, who stands by,
and watches day and night, from moment to moment, the changes in the
condition of the patient, and who, without having been trained to
the profession, is entrusted with the responsibility of determining,
throughout all those trying hours, exactly what is to be done upon
the occurrence of this or that change; if those who read this,
understood, as I do, about these things, they would smile when asked
to consider the propriety or possibility of educating women for the
medical profession, so that, in addition to performing all the most
important services, they should be entrusted with the selection of
the drugs, if drugs must be given.