CHAPTER XXII
Dr. Blackwell goes to England for vacation—Dr. Zakrzewska’s health suffers under increased strain—Goes to Boston for vacation—Is there urged to become professor of obstetrics in the New England Female Medical College, and to establish a hospital for this college—Accepts offer and removes to Boston. (Twenty-nine years of age: 1859.)
New Year’s Day, 1859, was a very cold one, bleak winds prevailing after a snowstorm. A number of invitations were extended to us by friends, who did not simply array their houses for callers bringing their congratulations in Dutch fashion and receiving the customary refreshments. I decided to accept the hospitality of Mrs. and Mr. Booth in Williamsburg, the home of our friend and companion, Mary L. Booth, while the rest of the household was treated to a dinner of roast goose which kind patrons had provided. We never could have thought of such luxuries ourselves, nor on Thanksgiving Day nor Christmas, either. However, we never suffered for the want of them—they always appeared in due time on these holidays.
This furnishes proof that it is a pleasure to be kind and that there are more good people in the world than we may realize. If only one half of humanity could be brought into absolute contact individually with the other half which is neglected, degraded and discouraged, there is no doubt that we would witness the same equalization in the large cities as that which prevails in the country towns and villages. Not that there is no difference of subsistence in these latter, but the absolute poverty is not to be found in them as we find it in the former.
Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell now went to England for a vacation and to visit old friends. Her absence caused an increase in work and responsibility, as Dr. Emily and myself had to divide the work which she had done in the dispensary. This increase was just the little more which I could not bear, and the sick headaches returned so often and with such violence that I had to relinquish a good deal of supervision to my head nurse, and finally I was obliged to keep to my bed for a whole week.
When they were visiting the Infirmary, the Boston friends of woman’s medical education, of whom I have spoken, had kindly asked me to visit them. So I concluded to take a short vacation in February, placing my senior students in charge of the medical work, under the supervision of Dr. Emily Blackwell.
My visit to Boston, towards the last of February, was exceedingly interesting. I found that Mr. Samuel E. Sewall, as well as his associate directors of the New England Female Medical College, had been anxious to add a clinical department to their purely theoretical school.
And outside friends, who had become interested in me personally as well as in my plans to aid the education of medical women by training them in practical work, also were anxious that I should change my place of residence from New York to Boston and accept the position of organizer of this clinical department.
The impression which I received when first visiting Boston in 1856 was deepened. And it was exceedingly favorable as to the earnestness of all the women with whom I came in contact, and as to their desire to elevate the education of womankind in general and in medicine especially. I felt that a larger field for my efforts might be opened there in connection with a medical school rather than in New York where the two Drs. Blackwell controlled the direction of efforts towards what seemed to them wisest and best.
Besides, the financial condition of the Infirmary was improving so steadily that the services which I had been rendering gratuitously could now be hired; while the medical applicants were of an unusual talent and more and more willing to make arrangements for a longer period of service with increased responsibilities, although they still had to pay their expenses.
Also, my private practice had increased to such an extent that I was free from debt, having repaid all loans advanced to me during my studies save the two hundred dollars which the Cleveland society had expended towards my first year. This, I could not now repay as the society had dissolved. But I kept this amount to loan to poor students, without note or interest. Some repaid the loan of fifty dollars or one hundred dollars from time to time; others, not able perhaps to do so, are still holding it, and I am unable to say positively who they are as I did not record the names. I am only sure that these amounts, and some more, are in their hands. The first one to whom I loaned the whole two hundred dollars was Dr. Susan Dimock, when she was going to Europe to study, she repaying it before she made that fatal trip abroad in 1875.
All these considerations influenced me when Boston’s liberal friends of women, or of “the Cause,” as it was styled, offered me the position of organizer and head of the clinical department which they were ready to establish. And the directors of the medical college offered me the chair of obstetrics in that school, which being my specialty had great attraction for me.
After hesitating for a long time as to what course to pursue, I went to Boston in the spring to define in a public address my views and position in respect to the study of medicine. I found so great a desire prevailing for the elevation of the medical college for women to the standard of the male medical colleges and such enthusiasm in respect to the proposed hospital, that I felt a great desire to make the new hospital department as useful to the public and to the students as the New York Infirmary had become.
The chance of being able to carry out my own plans of work instead of being simply assistant to the Drs. Blackwell was a final temptation, and after inquiries and consultations with Dr. Emily I decided in May to accept the offered position and to remove at once to Boston. My decision was aided by two facts: the first, that Dr. Blackwell’s absence had proved that the Infirmary could be sustained by two doctors, not only without loss but with a continuance of its steady increase, this latter being the consequence of the good already done to the community through its ministrations. And the second was that my health was becoming uncertain under the strain of the work which, by virtue of necessity as well as of habit, would remain my share in New York.
Having fulfilled my promise of contribution to the Infirmary of two years’ gratuitous services and having put everything in order and divided the duties which I had been discharging, I left the Infirmary on June 1, 1859, taking a short vacation in New York but arriving in Boston on the sixth, as I found to my great disappointment that no short vacation would bring back the strength which I had wasted in my zeal to advance “the Cause” more rapidly than the law of evolution permits.
Thus ended my New York career. I left feeling that I could be spared, although the breaking up of several true friendships saddened the departure. Of all the friends, Mary L. Booth was the dearest to me. It is not through blood kinship that we feel the strongest; nay, we may even feel no affinity at all towards the sisters and brothers we so love, while the few kindred spirits we meet fill our souls with life and inspiration.
The few friends to whom I was thus sincerely attached remained such for life, and the professional affinities stand to-day in the same relation to me as when we were young, while a few non-professional New York friends find time and opportunity to meet me occasionally to exchange reminiscences of the golden days of our youth.
About this date, there were already a goodly number of women upon whom the degree of M.D. had been legally conferred, but the minds of those who understood the conditions which prevailed were far from being satisfied with results.
Recognition in the profession and opportunities for a good education for others who wished to cultivate this field of labor were our aims. And so we labored on, the Drs. Blackwell and myself in New York and Dr. Ann Preston in Philadelphia—the latter for the “college,” and all the former for the “hospital” education of female students.
Meanwhile, a number of spurious institutions proclaiming the same aim had sprung up like weeds which threatened to choke the wheat in the field. After the interest of a few high-minded male physicians had been secured, the battle with and against these institutions had to be fought—and it is still to be fought.
The best of these secondary institutions existed in Boston, and it was thither that I was going with the hopefulness which befits the missionary spirit.
[As has been elsewhere stated, most of the preceding chapters were written by Dr. Zakrzewska in a letter to her friend, Miss Mary L. Booth, in New York. And she closes this letter with the paragraphs which follow.]
... I could not refrain from writing fully of this part of my life which has been the object of all my undertakings, and for which I have borne trials and overcome difficulties which would have crushed nine out of ten in my position. I do not expect that this will be the end of my usefulness; but I do expect that I shall not have to write to you any more of my doings. It was simply in order that you, my friend, should understand me fully, and because you have so often expressed a wish to know my life before we met, that I finished this letter. Now you have me externally and internally, past and present. And, although there have been many influences besides which have made their impressions on my peculiar development, yet they are not of a nature to be spoken of as facts, as, for instance, your friendship for me.
On looking back upon my past life, I may say that I am like a fine ship that, launched upon high seas, is tossed about by the winds and waves and steered against contrary currents until finally stranded upon the shore. There, from the materials a small boat is built, just strong enough to reach the port into which the ship had expected to enter with proudly swelling sails. But this ambition is entirely gone and I care now very little whether or not people recognize what is in me, so long as the object for which I have lived becomes a reality.
And now, my good friend, I must add one wish before I send these last few pages to you, namely, that I may be enabled some day to go with you to Berlin to show you the scenes in which my childhood and youth were passed, and to teach you on the spot the difference between Europe and America. All other inducements to return have vanished. Nearly all the men who aided in promoting my wishes have passed away, and the only stimulus that now remains to make me want to revisit the home of my youth, is the wish to wander about there with you and perhaps with two or three other of my American friends. Until this can be accomplished, I hope to continue my present work in the New England Female Medical College which, though by no means yet what we wish it to be, is deserving of every effort to raise it to the position that it ought to take among the medical institutions of America.