1.—“_Woman’s own soul must seek and find_ ...”
On women of medical education especially is the duty incumbent to
investigate the world of biological experience in woman. They may not
sit quietly down and assume that in learning all that man has to teach,
they rest his equals, and that the last word has been said on the
matter. They have a field of exploration, with opportunities, with
implements, and with capacities, which man cannot have. His research on
such a question as the recognisedly most vital one of human embryology
with all its issues, can get but rare and uncertain light from
accidental occasions, and is, moreover, simply as it were a dead
anatomising; nor can he by any means reach the psychic or introspective
phase of enquiry; but woman has the live subject, body and soul, in her
own organism, to study at her leisure. Does she not yet see how to grasp
such further living knowledge? But that is the very quest here
indicated. The askidian also had no strength of vision, yet we can now
tell and test the light and the components of distant spheres.
There are, undoubtedly, what may be termed intelligent operations
carried on in the body unconsciously to oneself, or at any rate beyond
the present ken of one’s actively perceptive and volitional faculties.
Observation and recognition of these is to be striven for, and even
guidance or command of them may be ours in a worthy future. The _Times_
of 27th January, 1892, reported a lecture at the Royal Institution on
the previous day by Professor Victor Horsley, in the course of which the
lecturer—
“... pointed out the pineal gland, which Descartes thought to be the
seat of the soul, but which was now known to be an invertebrate eye.
He also explained the functions of certain small masses of grey
matter, which are two, viz.—sight and equilibration. The optic nerve
was situated close to the crura, and equilibration was subserved by
the cerebellum. After referring to the basal ganglia, Professor
Horsley admitted that as science advanced we seem to know less and
less about the specific functions of the various masses of grey
matter, and less definite views than formerly prevailed were now held
with respect to the local source of what are termed voluntary
impulses, and that of sensations.... We were still in ignorance as to
the functions of the optic thalamus, and of the corpus striatum. Those
of the cortex had to some extent been ascertained. They might be
divided into three classes, viz.—movement, sensation, and what was
termed mental phenomena. But we were still in the dark as to those
portions of the brain which subserved intellectual operations, memory,
and emotional impulses. A like ignorance prevailed with respect to the
basal ganglia.”
What as yet unrecognised inward eyes watch over the embryo life?
3.—“... _counsel helpful_ ...”
Mrs. Eliza W. Farnham says:—“In this day the most needed science to
humankind is that which will commend women to confidence in themselves
and their sex as the leading force of the coming Era—the Era of
spiritual rule and movement; in which, through them, the race is
destined to rise to a more exalted position than ever before it has
held, and for the first time to form its dominant ties of relationship
to that world of purer action and diviner motion, which lies above the
material one of intellectual struggle and selfish purpose wherein man
has held and exercised his long sovereignty.”—(“Woman and Her Era,” Vol.
I., p. 311).
5.—“... _philosophic lore_ ...”
“The farther our knowledge advances, the greater will be the need of
rising to transcendental views of the physical world.... If the
imagination had been more cultivated, if there had been a closer union
between the spirit of poetry and the spirit of science, natural
philosophy would have made greater progress because natural philosophers
would have taken a higher and more successful aim, and would have
enlisted on their side a wider range of human sympathies.”—Buckle
(“Influence of Women on the Progress of Knowledge”).
_Id._ “... _chirurgic lore_ ...”
“The Lady Dufferin fund had already been the means of opening a
school of medicine for Indian women, who would consequently devote
themselves to the study of anatomy. Anatomy and Asiatic women. That
was the most extraordinary association of ideas one could ever have
imagined.”—Professor Vambéry (Lecture to the Royal Scottish
Geographical Society, Edinburgh, 20th May, 1891). Reported in the
_Times_ of following day.
8.—“_Regent of Nature’s will_, ...”
“Woman will grow into fitness for the sublime work which nature has
given her to do, and man through her help and persuasion will
spontaneously assume the relation of a co-operator in it. Finding that
nature intends his highest good and that of his species, through the
emancipation and development of woman into the fulness of her powers, he
will gratefully seek his own profit and happiness in harmonising himself
with this method; he will honour it as nature’s method, and woman as its
chief executor; and will joyfully find that not only individuals,
families, and communities, but nations, have been wisely dependent on
her, in their more advanced conditions, for the good which can come only
from the most perfect, artistic, and spiritual being who inhabits our
earth.”—Eliza W. Farnham (“Woman and Her Era,” Vol. II., p. 423).