pronounced incompatible with medical attainments. She had, indeed, a
certain flower-like beauty, a peculiar softness and elegance of
appearance and manner. I have wondered whether she did not resemble
Angelica Kaufman. Underneath this softness, however, lay a decision of
purpose, a Puritan austerity of character that made itself felt,
though unseen. “She ruled the hospital like a little Napoleon,” said a
lady who had been there.... Both the surgical talents and surgical
training of Dr. Dimock are certainly at the present date (1875),
exceptional among women. It is on this account that our loss is
irreparable, for at this moment there seems to be no one to take her
place. Many battles have been lost from such a cause. But although
ours be ultimately won, we would not, if we could, grieve less loyally
for this girl, so brilliant and so gentle, so single of purpose and so
wide of aim, whose life had been thus ruthlessly uprooted and thrown
upon the waves at the very moment it touched upon fruition.”—M. P.
Jacobi in _New York Medical Record_, 1875.
Dr. Dimock, like so many of the early gynæcological surgeons of
America, was a Southerner, born in North Carolina.
Footnote 81:
Nineteenth Annual Report Chicago Hospital for Women and Children,
1884.
Footnote 82:
Report, _loc. cit._
Footnote 83:
“To the fixedness and honesty of purpose of Dr. Mary H. Thompson, may
be credited these satisfactory results of nineteen years’ work. They
mean a devotion and self-sacrifice on her part that few can
estimate.”—_Report of results from 1884 to 1888_.
Footnote 84:
_Medical News_, 1885. Reprint of address at Birmingham by Lawson Tait.
Footnote 85:
The establishment of such schools, professing to further the education
of women, has continued to be the greatest bane to the movement for
their effective education. So late as the current year (1890), a lady
writes from Cincinnati: “The college already in existence is one of
the unpardonable sins against a confiding public.”
Footnote 86:
Memorial of Trustees of Women’s Medical College of N. Y. Infirmary,
1887.
Footnote 87:
The same thing had happened at Harvard, when it raised its standard of
requirements.
Footnote 88:
Memorial Trustees, _loc. cit._
Footnote 89:
_Ibid._
Footnote 90:
See history of the founding of the University of Michigan, chapter
Education in the Western States.—ED.
Footnote 91:
Letter from Chicago in _Boston Med. and Surg. Journal_, July, 1878.
Footnote 92:
“History of Competitive Examinations for the Woman’s Medical College
of Chicago.” Read before its Alumnæ Association, April 1, 1889, by Dr.
Marie Mergler.
Footnote 93:
These early experiences were, as has already been hinted, common to
all the schools ever established independently for women. Until very
recently, the gentlemen who have professed to teach surgery have never
persuaded themselves to take their subject seriously.
Footnote 94:
Dr. Sutro Merritt, daughter of the famous engineer, and who married a
fellow student from the University of California; and the twin
sisters, Agnes and Isabel Lowry.
Footnote 95:
“The education of the college is a conquered standpoint: what remains
is to make the post-collegiate education equally easy of access to
women. To duplicate the great laboratories and the great
professorships of the two or three colleges which give adequate
post-graduate instruction, would be foolish in the extreme. It is
little less than silly to suppose that seriously minded men and women
could not brave the associations of the lecture room without danger of
impropriety. What possible reason can Columbia College, or Clark
University, or the Johns Hopkins urge for not throwing open their
post-graduate courses to women? What more graceful act could be
imagined with which to mark this memorable year, when Vassar College
celebrates her first quarter of a century and when Phillipa Fawcett is
four hundred marks ahead of the senior wrangler, than for these
universities, without further wheedling or coaxing or bribing, to open
to women the opportunities for hard work which women covet, and which
the sense of justice of men, tardy though it be, will not permit them
much longer to refuse.”—Editorial in _New York Evening Post_, June 17,
1890.
Footnote 96:
_New York Medical Record_, June 24, 1885.
Footnote 97:
Of which sixteen admit women. There are altogether thirty-five
co-educational medical schools. See _Record_, _loc. cit._
Footnote 98:
_Ut supra_, p. 106.
Footnote 99:
_Phil. Med. and Surg. Reporter_, 1867, vol. 16.
Footnote 100:
The distinguished ovariotomist, one of the earliest in the country.
Footnote 101:
Quite a number of the members of the Society defied the authority of
its resolution, and “consulted” with women or even taught them. Among
the latter, Dr. Hartshorne, who became an able professor of the
Woman’s College, was the only one who took the trouble to withdraw
from the County Medical Society on account of his relations with the
woman’s school.
Footnote 102:
_Boston Medical and Surgical Journal_, May 25, 1871.
Footnote 103:
The matter had apparently first been brought forward in 1868, at a
meeting held at Washington, D. C., by a resolution offered by Dr.
Bowditch of Boston.—_N. Y. Med. Record_, 1868.
Footnote 104:
_New York Medical Record_, June 10, 1876.
Footnote 105:
“History of Proceedings to procure the Recognition of Women Physicians
by the Medical Profession of the State.” By Dr. Hiram Corson.
Philadelphia, 1888.
Footnote 106:
“It must be acknowledged that the strictly regular instruction
imparted in the principal medical schools for women has excited
respect, and greatly tended to overcome former prejudices. The
admission of women is now a fixed fact.”—_Phil. Med. Times_, 1883.
Footnote 107:
This society no longer exists; but it can hardly be said to have died
from the admission of women, as it never had but three female members.
Footnote 108:
Mary Putnam, who was in fact the first woman to be admitted to the
Paris School, though Miss Garrett of London was the first to graduate
from it. The paper read before the New York Society was on Septicæmia,
and seems to have been the first read by a woman physician in the
United States, before a medical society.
Footnote 109:
Miss Putnam’s graduating thesis had moreover secured a bronze medal,
the second prize awarded.
Footnote 110:
Drs. Cushier, McNutt, Withington, Dixon Jones.
Footnote 111:
Drs. Peckham, Fiske-Bryson.
Footnote 112:
Dr. McNutt.
Footnote 113:
Drs. Peckham, Cushier.
Footnote 114:
Dr. Cushier.
Footnote 115:
In 1876, the Boylston Prize, conferred every two years by Harvard
University for a medical essay, was won by Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi. The
prizes were awarded in ignorance of the names of the writers, and
consequently of their sex; but this was the first occasion on which a
woman had competed. The subject was, “The Question of Rest for Women
during Menstruation.”
Dr. Boylston, the founder of the prize, had been the first colonial
physician to practice inoculation, after this had been suggested by
Cotton Mather.
Footnote 116:
The committee consisted of Prof. Alexander Agassiz chairman, Dr.
Morrill Wyman, President Eliot, Mr. J. Elliott Cabot, Dr. Le Baron
Russell.
Footnote 117:
_Boston Medical and Surgical Journal_, May 22, 1879. The editor
expresses surprise at “so frank a confession of inferiority.” Although
it was only a few years since women physicians were ostracised on the
ostensible ground of the necessary inferiority of their means of
education, the Boston editor now, in order to confute the claim of
necessity for the Harvard education, passes in most flattering review
the existing schools for women at New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago,
and insists that these offer all the advantages any reasonable woman
can want. Thus (this in 1879):
Philadelphia, 29th year, class 90 students.
New York, 10th year, class 47 students.
Chicago, 9th year, class 32 students.
“Answers to letters of inquiry show that these schools for women are
looked on with great favor.”
Footnote 118:
Chadwick, “Admission of Women to the Massachusetts Medical Society,”
_Boston Medical and Surgical Journal_, 1881.
Footnote 119:
The editor of the _Boston Medical and Surgical Journal_ announced this
decision with great regret. The writer declared it “to be impossible
that women can frequent our public meetings or lecture-rooms when
certain topics are discussed, without breaking through barriers which
decency has built up, and which it is for the interest of every lady
and gentleman to preserve.... The moral tone of the society will soon
be perceptibly lowered.”—(_Loc. cit._, October, 1879.)
The success of the movement was due to the chivalrous energy of a
group of younger members, especially Drs. James and Charles Putnam,
Dr. Chadwick, Dr. Cabot, and Dr. Derby.
Footnote 120:
It will be remembered that it was the experience gained in the rude
hospitals of the Revolutionary War, which, by affording American
physicians for collective observation of the sick on a large scale,
first breathed some scientific spirit into the profession. Similar
experience was afterwards gained in the epidemics of yellow fever and
of spotted fever, that at different times ravaged the country. An
analogous influence was exercised by the Civil War, which influence is
becoming most distinct a quarter of a century after its close.
Footnote 121:
It was also ruled that “any cases deemed improper for a mixed audience
should be reserved for the end of the lecture, and that the surgeon
before proceeding with them may require the withdrawal of all male or
female students as the case may be”; further, “No female patient shall
be taken into the amphitheatre without the attendance of a female
nurse: and no operation upon a female patient requiring special
exposure shall be performed in the presence of male visiting
students.”
In this simple and even-handed manner were adjudged the vexed
questions that had been declared so insoluble.
Footnote 122:
_New York Medical Record_, Jan. 1, 1870.
Footnote 123:
These inadequacies might be rectified, without necessarily introducing
into clinical practice the brutalities that so often disfigure the
European treatment of hospital patients.
Footnote 124:
Including Dr. Jacobi, Dr. Emil Krackowizer, Dr. Guhleke. The two
former were German radicals of 1848, and in this action remained
consistent with philosophic principles of their youth.
Footnote 125:
It has been said that if any woman was admitted on the staff of
internes, all the patients would demand her for the personal services
now rendered by young men, and which are now accepted, though under
protest, for the sake of the special skill of the distinguished
visiting surgeons of the institution.
Footnote 126:
Elizabeth Blackwell in 1848.
Footnote 127:
Dr. Mary P. Root.
Footnote 128:
Dr. Marie Mergler, _loc. cit._
Footnote 129:
Dr. Mary H. Stinson, of Norristown, Pa.
Footnote 130:
Dr. Hiram Corson, Dr. A. Nebinger, Dr. R. L. Sibbett.
Footnote 131:
It was signed first by Dr. Kirkbride, superintendent of the
Pennsylvania Insane Asylum, and then by the surgeons and physicians,
the consultants and the assistants, the indoor and out-door staff of
thirteen colleges and hospitals, of which only one received insane
patients, the Blockley. In addition were the names of nineteen
physicians unconnected with any institution.
Footnote 132:
Dr. Bennett’s nomination was indorsed by eminent physicians from
Philadelphia, Drs. Joseph Leidy, Wm. Pepper, S. Weir Mitchell, H. C.
Wood, W. W. Keen, S. D. Gross. The latter venerable surgeon had
formerly been bitterly opposed to women physicians.
Footnote 133:
“The only regret and wonder are that a provision so humane and natural
and consoling for these unfortunate wards of the State, has not yet
been made law.”—_Harper’s Weekly_, 1890.
Footnote 134:
_Woman’s Journal_, April 26, 1890.
Footnote 135:
Rhoda Wilkins, in 1885, a graduate of the New York Infirmary School.
Footnote 136:
The following is a partial list of the women now or recently holding
such positions, in addition to those already named: Helen Bissell,
Kalamazoo, Michigan; Alice M. Farnham, Hart’s Island, New York City;
Alice Wakeman and Augusta Steadman, Blackwell’s Island, New York; Jane
Garver, Harrisburg, Pa.; Amelia Gilman, Blockley Insane Hospital,
Philadelphia; Laura Hulme, Worcester, Mass.; Martha Morgan,
Harrisburg, Pa.; F. McQuaide, Norristown, Pa.; Martha Perry, Taunton,
Mass.; Alice Rogers, Taunton, Mass.; Julia K. Cary, Danvers, Mass.;
and others in Maine, Minnesota, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, and
California.
Footnote 137:
“It was a great step for Virginia, thus taken by the trustees, and
required considerable effort on the part of some members of the
board.... Massachusetts is the only State where it is absolutely
required by law that every such hospital shall employ one woman
assistant physician.”—_Springfield Republican._
Footnote 138:
The Directors of the Woman’s Educational and Industrial Union of
Buffalo wrote to the superintendents of insane asylums in 38 States,
asking their opinion on the law pending in the New York Legislature
during its session of 1889–1890. Forty-six answers were received from
32 States, of which 33 favored the law, 5 were opposed, 5
non-committal, and 3 not prejudiced.
Footnote 139:
“The Practice of Medicine by Women in the United States.” Paper read
before Social Science Association, by Emily H. Pope, M.D., Sept. 7,
1881; and “The College Story,”—address at Woman’s Medical College of
Philadelphia, by Dean Rachel Bodley, March 17, 1881.
Footnote 140:
Dr. Bodley sent circulars only to the graduates of the Philadelphia
school, of whom, in 1881, there had been 276. Of these, 189 answered
the circular. Dr. Pope sent circulars to 470 graduates of all schools,
and received 390 answers, many, however, duplicating those of the
Philadelphia circular of March.
Footnote 141:
$2907.30 exactly.
Footnote 142:
The writer knows personally of two women physicians, one in large
general practice including much surgery, the other at the head of a
Sanitarium, who have each brought up and educated twelve children. One
of these ladies was a widow, with one child, when she began to study
medicine; the other was never married. A very large number of
childless women adopt children, or contribute to the education of the
children of brothers or sisters.
Footnote 143:
A distinguished surgeon recently wrote to a woman physician, when he
had confirmed her diagnosis in a serious case, where the family then
requested the presence of the consultant at the operation the woman
physician was to perform: “I shall be out of town for a week; you had
better not wait for me—go ahead and operate yourself.” Which she did
successfully.
Footnote 144:
The above form of consultation has greatly extended the facilities of
medical treatment for unmarried women and young girls.
Footnote 145:
“I believe that the department of medicine in which the great and
beneficent influence of women may be especially exerted, is that of
the family physician. Not as specialists, but as the trusted guides
and wise counselors in all that concerns the physical welfare of the
family, they will find their most congenial field of labor.” Elizabeth
Blackwell, “The Influence of Women in the Profession of Medicine.”
Address before London Medical School for Women, 1889.
Footnote 146:
See Tenon’s report on the Hôtel Dieu of Paris, made to the National
Assembly in 1789. He describes the usage of the time, which eight
centuries of hospital existence had not taught how to improve.
Footnote 147:
Dr. Sims, in his treatise on Uterine Surgery, declared that the local
treatment of uterine diseases was, almost always, surgical.
Footnote 148:
During this year Dr. Broomall has gone to Asia, to make a tour of the
different missionary stations where there are women physicians, and
there perform capital operations on the cases which have been
accumulating. This is an expedition unique of its kind in history.
Footnote 149:
At the meeting of the Philadelphia Alumnæ Association, held in March,
1889, six successful cases of capital operations in abdominal surgery
were reported by members, including two Cæsarean sections and one
hysterectomy. Sixteen laparotomies were further reported from the
Woman’s Hospital, but these have been included in the statistical
table.
Footnote 150:
See APPENDIX D.
Footnote 151:
Centenary of American Methodism.
Footnote 152:
Centenary American Methodism.
Footnote 153:
Rev. Annie H. Shaw.
Footnote 154:
Christian Womanhood, W. C. Black, D.D.
Footnote 155:
Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, the first woman ordained in this
country.
Mrs. Blackwell writes: “At the time of my ordination I was pastor of
the church of ‘South Butler and Savannah,’ New York State. The church
called a council to ordain me and install me as the regular minister.
It was an orthodox society in good and regular standing among other
Congregational churches, and the ordination was quite according to
precedent; though doubtless the Congregational body as a whole never
would have ordained a woman either then, thirty-seven years ago, nor
yet to-day.”—ED. note.
Footnote 156:
Rev. Louise S. Baker, pastor of the Orthodox Congregational Church, in
Nantucket, Mass., was ordained by the deacons of that church in 1884,
two of the four deacons being women.
Footnote 157:
Report of the Dedication of the Mary J. Drexel Home and Mother-house
of Deaconesses, December 6, 1888. In 1887 Mrs. Lucy Rider Meyer, M.D.,
connected with the Chicago Training School, with a few women to
assist, gave the first impulse to the Deaconess movement in the
Methodist Episcopal Church, which has resulted in the establishment of
Mother-houses in Chicago, New York, Boston and other large cities. The
church, seeing the measureless opportunities offered by such an
institution, has wisely been prompt to adopt it, and this will
doubtless encourage the adoption of the order by other denominations.
Footnote 158:
The Grace House Training School for Deaconesses was opened for the
admission of candidates October (1890), in New York, adjoining Grace
Church. The General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in
October, 1889, provided that every candidate for the office of
Deaconess, before she is set apart, shall have had “an adequate
preparation for her work, both technical and religious, which
preparation shall cover the period of two years.” The Grace House
Training School is provided to furnish this preparation.—ED.
Footnote 159:
Rev. Olympia Brown Willis.
Footnote 160:
“Biography of Distinguished Women,” Sarah J. Hale.
Footnote 161:
Dr. Kempin writes: The Law School for women was a private undertaking,
but founded with the aim to connect it with an already existing
institution after having proven its vitality. With the help of the
Women’s Legal Education Society, an incorporated body of women
interested in the higher education of their sex, the Law School
succeeded in connecting itself with the University of the City of New
York. In response to a request of the Women’s Legal Education Society
the doors of the Law Department of the University were thrown open to
women on the same terms as to men, and a lectureship created to which
I was selected as a lecturer on the same footing as other lecturers in
the Law Department and especially to instruct classes of
non-matriculating students who desire a knowledge of law for practical
guidance and general culture.—ED.
Footnote 162:
Harvard chartered 1650; Yale, 1701; Columbia, 1754; William and Mary,
1693.—ED.
Footnote 163:
See chapter on The Work of Antislavery Women.—ED.
Footnote 164:
See chapter on Red Cross.
Footnote 165:
See chapters on Woman in the Ministry, Woman in Law, Woman in
Medicine.—ED.
Footnote 166:
See chapter Hospitals and Training Schools managed by Women.—ED.
Footnote 167:
See chapter Woman in Journalism.—ED.
Footnote 168:
See chapter on Woman’s Work in the W. C. T. U.—ED.
Footnote 169:
See APPENDIX E, for Civil Rights of Women.—ED.
Footnote 170:
Wyoming was admitted to statehood, with equal suffrage for men and
women incorporated in her constitution, by an Act of Congress, July,
1890.
Footnote 171:
And yet co-education had its birth in Ohio (Oberlin, 1833).—ED.
Footnote 172:
“Women as Inventors.” Mrs. Gage, _North American Review_, 1883, p.
478.
Footnote 173:
“For generations,” writes Johnstone, in his ‘History of Connecticut,’
“merchants and mechanics had been outranked by farmers.”
Footnote 174:
Material for the account of Lowell has been taken from Mrs. H. H.
Robinson’s interesting paper on Early Factory Life in New England,
Dickens’s American Notes, Lowell Offering, and Appleton’s American
Cyclopædia.
Footnote 175:
“Think and Act,” “Men and Women,” “Work and Wages.” Virginia Penny,
1869.
Footnote 176:
See chapter, Aid for the Criminal Classes.—ED.
Footnote 177:
Speech of Mr. Frederic Coudert at the Lenox Lyceum, April 7, 1890.
Footnote 178:
This thought of the greater benefit to be derived from the
organizations of labor as opposed to the philanthropic work done by
the employing classes for the people who work, has been ably carried
out in a paper read by Mrs. Florence Kelley Wischnewtzky before the
New York Association of Collegiate Alumni, May 14, 1887, entitled “The
Need of Theoretical Preparations for Philanthropic Work.” This essay
will appear in an early number of the Boston “Nationalist.”
Footnote 179:
Since the Grangers were first organized, that body has amalgamated its
efforts with those of the Farmers Alliances and these again with the
Knights of Labor. The Alliances are in many respects more socialistic
than the Socialists, inasmuch as the last-named have only proposed, by
a transitional and constitutional method, to arrive at the demands now
made by the Alliances, and these only after the altruistic and
industrial planks in their platform have been gradually conceded by
National and State Legislatures. The Farmers Alliances, which number
possibly 5,000,000 members, demand the immediate ownership by the
people of all the means of transportation and communication, railways,
canals, telegraphs, telephones, etc. But more than this, their
platform calls upon the nation through Congress and the Treasury
department for a system of sub-treasuries, which have to aid directly
in the purchase, storage, and distribution of the products of farms
and plantations—that is of all grain, tobacco, and cotton.
Footnote 180:
The first one established of any note was that of the Daughters of
Crispin, in Massachusetts, an organization of shoemakers, incorporated
in 1872.
Footnote 181:
One evil that shirt-makers and seamstresses of all kinds had to
contend with was that the work was given out to contractors, families,
and institutions, principally to the Roman Catholic Protectory and the
House of the Good Shepherd.
Footnote 182:
Ohio Report for 1887. L. McHugh, commissioner.
Footnote 183:
Condition of the Working Classes in England in 1844, Frederick Engels.
Translated by Florence Kelley Wischnewetzky.
Footnote 184:
In England this outrage on humanity was forbidden, in 1878, by Clause
No. 35 of the Factory Bill, which provided that “no young person, or
woman, shall be employed in any part of a factory in which the wet
spinning of flax, hemp, jute, or tow is carried on, unless sufficient
means be employed and continued for protecting the workers from being
wetted, and, where hot water is used, for preventing the escape of
steam into the room occupied by the workers.”
Footnote 185:
Fall River, Lowell, and Lawrence. Thirteenth Annual Report,
Massachusetts Bureau Statistics of Labor.
Footnote 186: