_Interesting adventure leading to acquaintance with Ralph Waldo
Emerson--Marie receives the degree of M.D.--The faculty presents
her, as a gift, with the note which she had given in payment for her
lecture fees--Reflections: direct benefit which the men students
derived from co-education; tribute to her college teachers, especially
Drs. Delamater and Kirtland. (Twenty-six years of age: 1856.)_
This second year of my stay in Cleveland was therefore a most valuable
episode of my life, turning all my views topsy-turvy, uprooting me, so
to say, from all German conservatism and throwing me into this chaotic
medley of contradictions.
However, the one straight aim of preparing myself for the examinations
leading to a medical diploma kept me from any alarming detour in my
progress of evolution, and the year closed without any other than
the usual events in the course of life, as, for instance, the birth
of a nephew which arrived in December and which I superintended, my
brother-in-law defraying my expenses to and from New York.
But I did have one very interesting adventure. And one daughter,
Virginia Vaughan, who had been really the means of my being asked to
become the guest of the house, was the leader in this. Mr. Ralph Waldo
Emerson had lectured in Cleveland and he was as usual a guest of Mrs.
Vaughan; she had been his pupil when a young lady and at school in
Boston and quite an intimacy existed between them. From Cleveland, Mr.
Emerson went to Hudson, ten miles away, the real seat of the Western
Reserve College, and he was advertised to lecture there at six in the
evening.
Virginia, anxious to hear Mr. Emerson again, came to the medical
college which closed at four in the afternoon, and proposed our going
to Hudson on the half-past four o’clock train to return on the one
leaving there at nine. On arriving at the Hudson lecture hall, we found
a notice posted on the door informing the public that the lecture would
be at seven o’clock.
We went back to the station intending to return to Cleveland and there
we found there was no train until the one at nine o’clock. The station
was a crude, cold room, having only an insignificant little stove, so
Virginia proposed that we find Mr. Emerson who, she knew, was at the
house of his cousin, Professor Emerson, a member of the college faculty.
It was a cold, bitter day with plenty of snow everywhere, so we could
do nothing better than seek the house of the Professor. There we were
made so cordially welcome by Mrs. Emerson that we forgot even our very
improper appearance in our common everyday working attire. These kind
hosts would not allow us to return in that last train but telegraphed
to the family in Cleveland of our whereabouts, insisting that we remain
with them over Sunday, there being no trains till Monday morning at
eight o’clock.
That evening, after returning from the lecture and while partaking of a
cup of hot tea, we noticed a bright rosy light upon the parlor windows.
Thinking it was an exhibition of “northern lights,” we all started for
the door. Alas! it was a great conflagration of magnificent hues of
dark red flame.
We went to see the spectacle from a little hill between the house and
the fire where hundreds of people were already assembled, all of whom
were warmed and pleased by the wonderful flames, without any one making
any effort to extinguish them or to try to prevent their spreading from
the burning cheese storehouse to the adjacent factory. Mr. Ralph Waldo
Emerson asked in astonishment of the men standing nearest, “Why don’t
you try to extinguish the fire?” One replied in a very phlegmatic way,
“Because we have no firemen or machines.” While another added, “Even if
we had, there would be no use for them as we have no water.” The little
town of Hudson, with its pretty streets and with a college aspiring to
become soon a university, was without water. This seemed impossible to
believe, yet it was true, as Professor Emerson assured us.
This night will always remain a memorable one, for independently of
that glorious illumination of the snow-covered city and landscape
which was so fearful and yet so wondrously beautiful, it gave me an
opportunity to get acquainted with one of the greatest philosophers
of our times. This opportunity was well used during the Sunday
morning when all but Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson and myself went to
church, I having no suitable clothes for such attendance. This short
acquaintance gave rise to the many kind and pleasant words to people
with which Mr. Emerson favored me in later years, and to a very
interesting friendship with members of Professor Emerson’s family
residing in New York and Boston.
During the winter of 1855-1856, my life in Cleveland became doubly
interesting because I began to speak English and thus was able to
manifest my appreciation of the delightful impressions which I
received, directly and indirectly, through the channels outside of my
medical studies.
How often was I surprised by the doubts of these more or less radical
reformers concerning the success of women as medical practitioners.
Only Ralph Waldo Emerson spoke rationally about the innovation of
women physicians; yet he doubted that women would enter upon any other
profession except that of teaching.
Having spent Christmas in New York with my sisters and the family, who
enjoyed the newly arrived baby as only the first one can be enjoyed, I
returned to my college life with new zest, and I now had the extra task
to perform of writing my thesis for examination.
New Year’s Day, 1856, was cold and windy and brought a snowstorm. The
lake opposite the house presented a sad and terrible aspect in the
presence of an icebound schooner with several dead sailors covered
with ice and hanging in its rigging. Attempts to reach the vessel in
small boats had failed, and a number of sturdy, sympathizing men were
standing on the shore discussing plans for relief that still might be
given to some unseen fellow beings on board.
As the day was no holiday, I, of course, had to go to college. But it
was a bitter day. I thought my first winter in Cleveland was a severe
one, but this was cruelly so and it continued till late in March.
The first ten weeks of the year were spent very industriously by me in
preparing to pass my examinations, after my thesis was accepted. The
latter was considered exceptionally good, and was the cause of my not
failing as a candidate for a diploma, because I received only mediocre
marks in all the branches of study, even falling below the passing mark
in one branch.
I wish to make a statement of this fact here for many good reasons.
One is, that it shows the utter absurdity of giving marks or numbers
at all, for independently of my being still very awkward in English
expressions, I was, and still am, very slow in thinking out any subject
and I have a very poor mechanical memory.
Among my three companions I was very much liked when discussing or
reasoning out problems of our studies, often systematizing what seemed
to us chaotic on a first reading. They often made me the “quizzer,” and
I was not a little ashamed to hear with what readiness they gave names
and relations of organs, knowing how impossible it would be for me to
do the same.
But when it came to practical deductions or applications they always
relied upon me. I enjoyed the confidence of those professors with whom
I had practical instruction, and I had always out-patients on hand
to look after. For this latter, my companions felt they had no time,
sitting and committing to memory their lessons, and only one of them
had had any practical work in that she had lived in a “water-cure”
establishment.
I envied my three friends not a little when I found they graduated with
full marks and high honors. However, the desired diploma of “M.D.” was
also awarded to me. I felt grateful for it, intending to make the most
conscientious use of the power thus given to me and which I felt I
fully deserved, as I could not help judging my medical knowledge to be
as complete as that of any one of the forty-two graduates.
And it is for this reason, also, that I condemn the method of judging
of the ability or competence of any student simply from questions and
answers. So much knowledge can be acquired by storing the memory with
all sorts of details, without making one’s self fit to digest what
is learned and to assimilate even a part of it. But how necessary is
this latter when one is called upon to help all sorts of conditions
in people who seek advice for physical, mental or moral ailments.
And a physician, in the full sense of the word, must be qualified to
help human nature from these three points of view. The mere studying
and learning by heart of the symptoms of diseases, and of the origin,
preparation and doses of drugs, ought to be the last chapter to be
examined upon.
My private studies in which examinations would have given much
more satisfactory results, were “biology,” “cellular anatomy” and
“comparative anatomy,” in none of which subjects had we any instruction
in the college. And it is my opinion that the medical profession will
not, and cannot, make medicine a science as long as these branches
(in both their physiological and pathological forms) are not studied
profoundly and made a foundation upon which to build methods for
averting or controlling disease. So long as physicians are taught to
talk of “curing disease,” so long will the whole profession wander in
the realm of empiricism, if not outright quackery.
It may be excusable that I thus use myself in illustrating what I
think is so pernicious, namely, cramming the memory with learning
isolated facts and filling the brain to its fullest capacity with the
names of authors and their opinions, leaving no room for individual
reasoning or research or for the power of making original deductions
and applications.
After this apparent digression, I must return to my theme, namely,
the last few weeks of my student life in Cleveland. As I have already
stated how distrustful the so-called “good society” was concerning
female medical students and how ready the so-called “reformers” were to
seek them, I must here mention a peculiar aberration which had taken
hold of the whole community. I refer to what was then called Mesmerism.
The individual thinking and theorizing on this subject assumed with
many persons a perfectly preposterous form. The views held were based
on no scientific research or study but simply on memorizing what was
published (often after the most superficial observation) regarding
hysterical or somnambulistic manifestations.
The faith with which statements of so-called “cures” in all sorts of
illnesses were received was just as widespread as that which later
accepted Clairvoyance, Hypnotism and Christian Science. These, one
after the other, followed the Mesmerism and Magnetism waves; but they
are all precisely the same thing, under other names, and they are
all more or less influenced by what is called Spiritualism. And the
countless “miracle” workers, under a host of names, are all of the same
class.
The desire for the assistance of superrational influences is one of
the greatest obstacles which the human mind has to overcome. It will
take centuries of education before the majority of thinking beings will
learn that a cell will produce only its like, that modifications of the
cell are produced only after a time of slow and, as yet, imperceptible
changes, and not suddenly by prayer or personal magnetism.
One of the most perplexing phenomena which I observed was that educated
men themselves became victims of these delusions. For instance, I knew
a professor of botany who was so completely absorbed in the phenomena
of _Spiritualism_ and _Magnetism_ that he submitted himself
to treatment by these uneducated pretenders for an ailment produced by
malaria. It is sometimes almost discouraging to see that even education
will not prevent faith in the superrational or supernatural.
But the Earth has billions and billions of years to live, and at the
rate of mental development as we have observed it, I have no doubt
that the human intellect will grow out of its present infantile
condition into a maturity of which even the present generations have
no conception, although, unconsciously, we all assist in nursing the
embryo of intelligence which we call “knowledge” and “science.”
One may dream of the greatness of the human mind when all the
inhabitants of the earth will be as well-developed mentally as the few
out of the billions are to-day. One may imagine that the lowest of the
Pygmies in mid-Africa or the stupidest Esquimaux near the North Pole
will be able to think, to reason and to enjoy, as much as I do now; and
that the then great minds will work and struggle to bring up in the
scale such poor ignorant mortals as those of my present level, these
then existing by the billions as we have the billions of illiterate
existing to-day.
[Walt Whitman had a similar thought, and it is interesting to compare
her and his expression of it, remembering the difference between prose
and poetry, and the obstruction to expression caused by a foreign
tongue which never became easy to her. In “Leaves of Grass,” he says:
This day before dawn I ascended a hill and looked at the crowded
heaven,
And I said to my Spirit, _When we become the enfolders of those
orbs, and the pleasure and knowledge of everything in them, shall
we be filled and satisfied then?_
And my Spirit said, _No, we but level that lift to pass and continue
beyond._]
In March, 1856, the great event took place. On Commencement Day,
forty-two students, four of whom were women, received the degree of
“M.D.” The hall in which the exercises took place was crowded, not only
with friends of the graduates but with a goodly number of the curious
of the city who had come to get a look at the women doctors. A deep
silence prevailed after the president had alluded to the female portion
of the students, and the dropping of a pin might have been heard when
one after the other, according to alphabetical arrangement, they
stepped up to the platform, each to receive her roll of parchment. No
sign for or against them was made and all went home in a dull, somber
mood.
The doors of the college had closed behind us, and the words of advice
to “go out and do honor to your chosen profession” with which the whole
event had concluded, rang in my ears, though I had not the slightest
idea how to realize them.
Shortly after Commencement, the dean of the college (Dr. Delamater)
called upon me. A call from this venerable gentleman was a thing so
unusual that numberless conjectures as to what this visit might mean
flitted through my brain on my way to the parlor. He received me, as
usual, paternally, wished me a thousand blessings, and handed back to
me the note for one hundred and twenty dollars, payable in two years,
which I had given for the lecture fees. He told me that in the meeting
of the faculty after graduation day, it was proposed by one of the
professors to return the note to me as a gift. To this, those present
cheerfully gave a unanimous vote, adding their wishes for my success
and appointing Dr. Delamater as their delegate to inform me of the
proceedings.
This was a glorious beginning, for which I am more than thankful, and
for which I was especially so at that time when I had barely money
enough to return to New York, with very small prospects of getting
means wherewith to commence practice. The mention of this fact might
be thought indiscreet by the faculty in Cleveland were they still so
organized as to admit women, which I am sorry to say is no longer the
case, though they give as their reason that women at present have their
own medical colleges and, consequently, no longer have need of theirs.
Before I quit the subject of the Cleveland College, I must mention a
fact which may serve as an argument against the belief that the sexes
cannot study together without exerting an injurious effect upon each
other. During the last winter of my study, there was such emulation in
respect to the graduating honors among the candidates for graduation,
comprising thirty-eight male and four female students, that all studied
more closely than they had ever done before--the men not wishing
to be excelled by the women, nor the women by the men. One of the
professors afterwards told me that whereas it was usually a difficult
thing to decide upon the best three theses to be read publicly at the
Commencement, since all were more or less indifferently written, this
year the theses were all so good that it was necessary, to avoid doing
absolute injustice, to select thirteen from which parts should be read.
Does not this prove that the stimulus of the one sex upon the other
would act favorably rather than otherwise upon the profession? And
would not the very best tonic that could be given to the individual be
to pique his _amour propre_ by the danger of being excelled by one
of the opposite sex? Is not this natural, and would not this be the
best and the surest reformation of humanity and its social condition,
if left free to work out its own development?
On the day following the visit of Dr. Delamater, I received a letter
from my brother-in-law in which he told me that his business compelled
him to go to Europe for half a year, and that he had, therefore, made
arrangements for me to procure money, in case that I should need it to
commence my practice. He said that he intended to assist me afterwards,
but that as he thought it best for my sister (his wife) to live out of
New York during his absence, he was willing to lend me as much money
as I required until his return. I accepted his offer with infinite
pleasure, for it was another instance of real friendship. He was by
no means a rich man but was simply in the employ of a large importing
house.
By giving lessons in German, I had earned a little money that served
to cover my most necessary expenses. For the last months that I spent
in Cleveland, I carried in my purse one solitary cent as a sort of
talisman, firmly believing that some day it would turn into gold; but
this did not happen, and on the day that I was expecting the receipt of
the last eighteen dollars for my lessons, which were designed to bear
my expenses to New York, I gave it to a poor woman in the street who
begged me for a cent, and it doubtless ere long found its way into a
ginshop.
The twenty months that I spent in Cleveland were chiefly devoted to the
study of medicine in the English language, and in this I was assisted
by most noble-hearted men. Dr. Delamater’s office became a pleasant
spot and its occupants a necessity to me. On the days that I did not
meet them, my spirits fell below zero.
In spite of the pecuniary distress from which I constantly suffered,
I was happier in Cleveland than ever before or since. I lived in my
element, having a fixed purpose in view and enjoying the warmest tokens
of real friendship. I was liked in college, and though the students
often found it impossible to repress a hearty laugh at my ridiculous
blunders in English, they always showed me respect and fellowship in
the highest sense of the terms.
After receiving the degree of “M.D.” and leaving the college behind me,
it seems quite right to stop for a few moments and cast a retrospective
glance at my own situation, objectively. I wonder whether any one can
justly claim that one has always followed a well-laid plan in life, or
whether conditions and environment do not mold our actions, sustain our
firmness and fortify our persistence in following or working towards a
positive aim.
I do not think that in youth the individual shapes the _modus
operandi_ of any undertaking. In spite of having a vague idea, or
even a strong desire to carry into effect such an idea, environment
as well as outside influences must come to the aid, in order to keep
alive and to nourish the hope that his preconceived idea or desire
can ever be realized. Without such assistance, the young aspirant can
easily be diverted and led into spheres of action not intended or
desired in the first instance.
After we become older, we may honestly imagine that we followed a
regularly planned course in life, when we really lived simply according
to whatever chances from time to time molded or influenced our activity.
During the years from 1850 to March, 1856, it now seems to me that no
definite plan determined my action, and that all that guided me was the
strong desire to make for myself “an independent livelihood” and to
assist all persons who felt that same strong desire.
Several times I was tempted to change my field of work so as to
obtain this independence. For instance, in Berlin, after leaving the
Charité Hospital, offers were made to me by eminent physicians to take
charge of private hospitals which were then beginning to be started,
especially for surgery. I did not accept these offers, partly because
they again placed me in dependence and partly because surgery had been
distasteful to me as it was then practiced, without anesthetics, the
use of neither ether nor chloroform having become general.
So, as we reason from the concrete to the abstract, I doubt that any
one, man or woman, can stand up and declare that one has achieved
exactly what one hoped to achieve when entering upon the battlefield of
active life. There is no doubt that an intrinsic fitness for a certain
kind of activity guides us towards such influences as we need to
develop this fitness, but that is all.
It is for this reason, perhaps, that I never married, although educated
and trained with the idea that the true sphere of woman is to be a
wife and mother. Also, I was very sentimentally inclined towards men,
to moonlight walks and to the exchange of friendly letters; but I
always grew tired of it all in a very short time and decided that none
of these attachments was the right one, proving that my desire for
independence was innate. So, happy the man who got released from me and
happy was I to remain free.
Again, after arriving in New York, I might just as well have become a
manufacturer, as I had begun to be, if I had become familiar with the
English language. I was quite happy in that branch of work and was
able to assist many a woman in various ways. But the impossibility of
acquiring the language in that limited sphere prevented the enlargement
of my knowledge and connections necessary in that branch of activity.
Then later came, last but not least, the temptation to go as missionary
to the Cherokee Indians. I have not a doubt that in that direction I
could have developed my independence and have been extremely useful,
had I not been influenced by people in whose judgment I had full
confidence--a rare thing in young, impulsive, enthusiastic natures, to
accept the advice of others. I was bridled and held in check, not by a
clear vision but by influences which overpowered me as the magnet does
the iron which it attracts.
Also, do I consider it fair and right and not out of place to speak of
the lecturers and teachers connected with the medical department of the
Western Reserve College. At the time as well as in the following years,
I often heard depreciatory remarks about our professors and their
methods of instruction.
There was no doubt that a very few of the students in attendance had
a collegiate education superior to that which some of the professors
might have had in their younger days, for instance, Dr. John J.
Delamater, then over seventy years old, and Dr. J. B. Kirtland, not far
from seventy, both of them the kindest of men, true philanthropists and
men of a natural genius who had attained a high position among their
fellow men.
They had had, perhaps, less advantages in booklearning when young, yet
they had the power of inspiring youth to a higher and more thorough
study, and their influence in developing the thinking powers of the
students was something remarkable. Originality of thought, reasoning
and deduction was the example given to us by them. And the form of
their teachings was not so much memorizing prescribed methods as the
teaching of the students how to observe closely all the phenomena of
the case of illness in question and how to study the smallest details,
physical, mental and moral, in order to find the primary cause. Such
instruction can never be gained from books, although medical literature
has now begun to attempt it. Many of the students ridiculed the hints
and directions given, while to others they were the inspiration for
deeper study even after the degree was obtained.
I know it was so in my case, and works like Kölliker’s _Comparative
Anatomy_, later Virchow’s _Cellular Pathology_, and works on
biology, embryology and histology became really the foundation upon
which I built my practice, taking little heed of recommendations of how
to treat cases or how to administer doses of this or that old or new
remedy or system of remedies. I did my own reasoning, I made my own
deductions, in as logical a method as possible as the cases revealed
themselves to my understanding through physical or psychical symptoms.
Originality and spontaneity of mental action are injured by unthinking
cramming of mind and memory with booklearning.
It is for these reasons that I love to think, with gratitude and a deep
feeling of honor, of the men who then constituted the medical faculty,
although two of them were greatly annoyed by the presence of the four
women students and did not hesitate to manifest their feelings in word
and deed, without being offensive.
Indeed, even this feeling that our presence was objectionable was of
use in our training, as it gave us a strong foretaste of the prejudice
which we were to meet in our professional lives. And it helped us in
many ways to develop the courage which we were to need in meeting the
offensive behavior of many physicians and students with whom we were
obliged to come in contact when trying to seek fellowship in private
practice, or to increase our knowledge, or to gain admittance to public
institutions.