_Learns that Dr. Blackwell is working for the same purpose that
brought her (Marie) to America, that is, to establish a Hospital for
Women; and that she (Dr. Blackwell) has already progressed as far
as opening a dispensary (the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women
and Children)--Dr. Blackwell invites Marie to assist her in the
dispensary, gives her lessons in English, and urges her to acquire
the degree of M.D.--Elizabeth Blackwell first English-speaking woman
to receive such degree--Italian, German and French women her only
predecessors in this respect--Since beginning of the race, women have
instinctively practiced obstetrics and general medicine but their
education has been opposed--Marie’s business goes out of fashion--She
substitutes a new one which pays very poorly and is complicated by
frequent suggestions for irregular sex life with employers--Refusal
leads to loss of work--She is compelled to draw on her savings--In the
autumn with a balance of fifty dollars, she sets out for Cleveland
to enter the Medical Department of the Western Reserve College.
(Twenty-five years of age: 1854.)_
On the morning of the 15th of May, 1854--the anniversary of the death
of Dr. Schmidt, the day of my greatest joy and my greatest misery--we
received a call from Miss Goodrich who told us that she had seen
Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, and that she thought she had also procured
a suitable place for my sister. She gave us the addresses of Dr.
Blackwell and of Miss Catherine Sedgwick.
We called first upon the latter, who was extremely kind, and although
she had quite misunderstood our wishes--having exerted herself to
procure a place for my sister in a way that manifested the belief that
we had neither a home nor the means to live--yet her friendliness and
readiness to assist us made us forever grateful to her. At that time we
did not know her standing in society and looked upon her merely as a
benevolent and wealthy woman. We soon learned more of her, however, for
though unsuccessful in her first efforts, she shortly after sent for
my sister, having secured for her a place in Mr. Theodore Sedgwick’s
family, which was acceptable inasmuch as it placed her above the level
of the servants. She remained there for seven weeks and then returned
home.
On the same morning, I saw Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell--and from this call
of the 15th of May, 1854, I date my new life in America. She spoke a
little German and understood me perfectly when I talked. I gave her all
my certificates for inspection, but said nothing to her of my plans
in coming to America. It would have seemed too ludicrous for me in my
position to tell her that I entertained the idea of interesting the
people in the establishment of a hospital for women. I hardly know what
I told her, indeed, for I had no other plan of which to speak, and
therefore talked confusedly like an adventurer. I only know that I said
that I would even take the position of nurse if I could enter one of
the large hospitals, in order to learn the manner in which they were
managed in this country.
I cannot comprehend how Dr. Blackwell could ever have taken so deep an
interest in me as she manifested that morning, for I never in my life
was so little myself. Yet she did take this interest, for she gave me
a sketch of her own experience in acquiring a medical education and
explained the requirements for such in this country and the obstacles
that are thrown in the way of women who seek to become physicians.
She told me of her plan of founding a hospital--the long-cherished idea
of my life--and said that she had opened a little dispensary on the 1st
of May, two weeks before (the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and
Children), which was designed to be the nucleus for this hospital, and
she invited me to come and assist her.
She insisted that first of all I should learn English, and she offered
to give me lessons twice a week and also to make efforts to enable
me to enter a college to acquire the title of “M.D.,” which I had
not the right to attach to my name. I left her after several hours’
conversation, and we parted friends.
[Dr. Blackwell, in her autobiography, tells of writing to her sister,
Dr. Emily, giving her impression of this interview: “I have at last
found a student in whom I can take a great deal of interest, Marie
Zakrzewska, a German about twenty-six.... There is true stuff in her,
and I shall do my best to bring it out.... She must obtain a medical
degree.”]
I found Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell a rather short but stately lady, blonde
with wavy hair, very dignified, kindly in speech, and very deliberate
and wise in her remarks.
The cordiality with which she welcomed me as a co-worker, I can never
describe nor forget. It aroused all my sunken hopes and energies and
directed them again to the field of work which I had cultivated and
which I had almost given up in despair. Now, I was finding the welcome
and the beginning of which I had dreamed, and all the many days of
disappointment were instantly forgotten.
I met in Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell no eccentric person who wanted to
bring about the millennium for women, for I soon learned from her of
the great obstacles which were to be overcome in the social stratum.
Soon, indeed, I learned that social prejudices, habits and customs can
be as strong barriers to intellectual development as those placed in
the way of reform by a despotic German government.
However, behind this social barrier, a number of high-minded and
intellectually advanced women were ready to enter upon a struggle
for greater freedom of action. They were especially inspired by the
Anti-Slavery movement, which was then fully established and which
appealed so strongly to the emotional nature of women. The paths these
women trod were full of thorns and thistles yet they bore everything
patiently, for, knowing their country and its people, they foresaw all
the possibilities for good which could be achieved.
Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, while not the first woman practitioner of
medicine even in America, was yet the pioneer in the movement which
insisted that medical women should be educated so as to stand equal
with men physicians in medical knowledge and in legalized position.
Hence, she began her medical life not by practicing her art but by
working for the degree of “M.D.” from one of the regularly constituted
medical colleges, this meaning at that time a medical college
established exclusively for men.
In this course, she followed the example of at least three Italian
women who had, near the end of the eighteenth century and in the
beginning of the nineteenth, taken the medical degree at the
Universities of Florence and Bologna. But her autobiography is well
entitled, _Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to
Women_, because nothing of this kind had been undertaken by an
English-speaking woman. Exceptionally, women have, here and there,
received the same training as men, as evidenced by ancient histories.
And early in this nineteenth century, two German women had received
the medical degree at the University of Giessen. And the French
obstetrician, Madame Boivin, had the medical degree conferred on her by
the University of Marburg before she died in 1841.
From the earliest history of the human race, women have been the
practitioners of obstetrics, and thence, naturally, the practitioners
in the diseases of women and children.
But even such women suffered from the subjection which was inflicted
upon all their sex. Hence, as the science of medicine became organized,
and as systematized instruction in both the science and the art became
established, opportunities for study and advanced practice were more
and more monopolized by men; and women were more and more hindered
from exercising and developing their instinctive tendencies in these
directions.
But the monopoly has never been secure. Always, large numbers of
people, especially of women, have persisted in the desire to be
advised medically by women; and always, a certain number of women have
responded to their instincts and have prepared themselves as best they
could to give medical advice and help, especially to women and children.
Thus even at this date all over the world large numbers of women
continued to practice obstetrics, largely as “midwives.” But a
considerable number of women also practiced general medicine,
especially where they did not come in conflict with medical or civil
laws, which were designed to exclude all except the practitioners of
the dominant medical group. The passage of laws regulating the practice
of medicine is undoubtedly actuated by a sincere desire to raise the
standard of medical practice throughout the community, but only too
frequently these laws give power to a group of medical oligarchs, a
fact which I was many times to observe later.
The best known of the last class of women just described is Dr.
Harriot K. Hunt, who was at this date preparing for publication
her autobiography which appeared under the title of _Glances and
Glimpses_.
Dr. Blackwell was graduated from the Geneva (New York) Medical College,
in 1849, and she then went to Europe to obtain the clinical experience
which was denied to women in America, returning to see her sister Emily
also become a regular M.D. (1854).
The two sisters procured a charter from the New York Legislature to
establish the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children, both
feeling the absolute necessity for continued clinical experience before
offering their services to suffering humanity at large. Dr. Emily then
went to Europe for special clinical study and she was still there. Dr.
Blackwell said to me, “My sister has just gone to Europe to finish what
she began here, and you have come here to finish what you began in
Europe.”
And here I am obliged to give a short statement of the mode of study in
the medical profession at that time.
The young student had to find a “preceptor,” a physician of good
standing, with whom he studied the preliminaries necessary for
entering a medical college or school. He also visited patients with
this preceptor and assisted the latter in every way possible. The
student thus became familiar with the details of practice even before
matriculating regularly in a medical college. I have met young men who
had been for years such assistants to physicians, and who later entered
college merely to become legally qualified.
Any student who could bring certificates from an acceptable preceptor
could easily procure a diploma by attending the medical school of any
college for two short successive winter sessions, often of only sixteen
weeks’ duration.
This method of clinical experience in private practice made hospital
attendance by the student seem almost unnecessary. Even opportunities
for attendance at dispensaries, when such existed in the larger cities,
were not much sought after by the young men, they feeling that they
could gain all the required knowledge by attaching themselves to
preceptors.
Society, and indeed civilization in general, was in a primitive stage
of development, in spite of material elegance, yes, even of luxury and
refined manners. It would take a long time to describe the great change
which has taken place in the educational and intellectual development
of the people in the United States and the increased facilities which
they have for the higher and deeper studies.
The time which it would take with a monarchically limited people to
advance any social improvement or reform would require generations,
while under free, unlimited social laws, months instead of years will
serve to bring about the desired evolution.
Under these conditions, I became the student of Dr. Elizabeth
Blackwell, she assuming the rôle of medical preceptor, as well as most
patient instructor in the English language.
In consequence of her having obtained a charter for a hospital, a few
high-minded and progressive friends had contributed sufficient money
to open one room for dispensary purposes in a very poor quarter of
the East Side of New York. Here poor women and children came three
afternoons a week, from three to five o’clock, for medical advice
and such simple medicines as Dr. Blackwell could dispense without
assistance, until I became her pupil.
The beneficiaries were by no means always grateful; on the contrary,
they often considered themselves as important patrons of the women
doctors. An incident will illustrate this.
One day, in the hall of the Dispensary, the few settees were filled
with patients waiting for our arrival, and two old and decrepit women
had taken seats on the curbstone of the sidewalk, also waiting for us.
It unavoidably happened that we were fifteen minutes behind the regular
time for opening the Dispensary.
As these two old women saw us turning around the corner of Second
Avenue, one of them called to those within hearing in the hall, “There
come the Dispensary women now!”
And to us, she said, reproachfully, “Those ladies in the hall have been
waiting a whole hour already.”
I continued my work at home, going regularly to Dr. Blackwell to
receive lessons in English and to assist her in the Dispensary. As we
grew better acquainted, I disclosed more to her of the fact that I had
a fixed plan in coming to this country, which increased her interest in
me.
She wrote in my behalf to the different colleges, and at length
succeeded in obtaining admission for me to the Cleveland Medical
College (Western Reserve) on the most favorable terms, credit being
given me on the lecture fees for an indefinite time.
Here I must stop to tell you why this credit was necessary. The
articles that I had manufactured had gone out of fashion in May, and I
could not invent anything new, partly because I no longer felt the same
interest as before, knowing that I should soon go to a medical college,
and partly because the articles then in fashion were cheaper when
imported.
We had to live for a little while on the money that we had laid up,
until I procured a commission for embroidering caps. It is perfectly
wonderful into what kinds of business I was forced, all foreign to my
taste.
And here let me tell you some secrets of this kind of business, in
which hundreds of women starve and hundreds more go down to a life of
infamy.
Cap-making (the great business of Water Street of New York) gives
employment to thousands of unfortunates. For embroidering caps, the
wholesale dealer pays seven cents each; and for making up, three cents.
To make a dozen a day, one must work for sixteen hours.
The embroidering is done in this wise: I received the cut cloth from
the wholesale dealer; drew the pattern upon each cap; gave them with
three cents’ worth of silk to the embroiderer, who received three cents
for her work; then pressed and returned them; thus making one cent on
each for myself.
By working steadily for sixteen hours, a girl could embroider fifteen
in a day. I gave out about six dozen daily, earning like the rest fifty
cents a day; unless I chose to do the stamping and pressing at night
and to embroider a dozen during the day, in which case I earned a
dollar. One can live in this way for a little while until health fails
or the merchant says that the work has come to an end.
You will think this terrible again. Oh, no! This is not terrible. The
good men provide another way.
They tell every woman of a prepossessing appearance that it is wrong
in her to work so hard, that many a man would be glad to care for her,
and that many women live quite comfortably with the help of a “friend.”
They say, further, that it is lonely to live without ever going to
church, to the concert and theater, and that if these women would only
permit the speakers to visit them and to attend them to any of these
places, they would soon find that they would no longer be obliged to
work so hard.
This is the polished talk of gentlemen who enjoy the reputation of
piety and respectability and who think it a bad speculation to pay
women liberally for their work. So it would be, in truth, for these
poor creatures would not be so willing to abandon themselves to a
disreputable life if they could procure bread in any other way.
During the summer of 1854, I took work on commission from men of this
sort. While in Berlin, I had learned from the prostitutes in the
hospital in what manner educated women often became what they then were.
The average story was always the same. Love, even the purest, made
them weak; their lover deceived and deserted them; their family cast
them off by way of punishment. In their disgrace, they went to bury
themselves in large cities, where the work that they could find
scarcely gave them their daily bread. Their employers, attracted by
their personal appearance and the refinements of their speech and
manners, offered them assistance in another way, in which they could
earn money without work. In despair, they accepted the proposals and
sank gradually step by step to the depths of degradation, as depicted
by Hogarth in the _Harlot’s Progress_.
In New York, I was thrown continually among men who were of the stamp
that I described before, and I can say, even from my own experience,
that no man is ever more polite, more friendly or more kind than one
who has impure wishes in his heart. It is really so dangerous for a
woman of refined nature to go to such stores that I never suffered my
sister to visit them; not because I feared that she would listen to
these men, but because I could not endure the thought that so innocent
and beautiful a girl should come in contact with them or even breathe
the same atmosphere.
When fathers are unwilling that their daughters shall enter life as
physicians, lawyers, merchants, or in any other public capacity, it is
simply because they belong to the class that so contaminates the air
that none can breathe it but themselves; or because, from being thrown
constantly in contact with such men, they arrive at the same point at
which I then stood, and say to themselves, “_I_ can afford to meet
such men. I am steeled by my knowledge of mankind and supported by the
philosophy that I have learned during years of trial. It cannot hurt
_me_; but by all means, spare the young and beautiful the same
experience!”
I dealt somewhat haughtily with the merchants whom I have described,
in a manner that at once convinced them of my position. But the
consequence was that the embroidery commission which had commenced so
favorably, suddenly ceased, “because the Southern trade had failed”; in
truth, because I would not allow any of these men to say any more to me
than was absolutely necessary in our business.
My income became less and less, and we were forced to live upon the
money that we had laid up during the year. I did not look for any
new sources of employment for I was intending to go to Cleveland in
October. My next sister had business of her own, and Anna was engaged
to be married to our friend Mr. C. My brother was also with them, and
my mother’s brother, whom she had adopted as a child, was on his way to
America.
After having settled our affairs, fifty dollars remained as my share,
and with this sum I set out for Cleveland, on the 16th of October,
1854. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell had supplied me with the necessary
medical textbooks, so that I had no other expenses than those of my
journey and the matriculation fees which together amounted to twenty
dollars, leaving thirty dollars in my possession.