CHAPTER XXX

New England Hospital students granted the privilege of visiting Massachusetts General Hospital—Letter from University of Zurich stating women are admitted on equal terms with men—Extracts from letter by Dr. Zakrzewska to Dr. Sewall on vacation in Europe—Sophia Jex-Blake collects endowment for four free beds—Dr. Samuel Cabot resumes his position of consulting surgeon—Dr. Zakrzewska resigns from service at the Dispensary, being succeeded by Dr. Helen Morton—Dr. Zakrzewska shares her service at the Hospital with Dr. Sewall who is appointed second attending physician—Land bought in Roxbury for new Hospital buildings. (1866-1871.)

Returning to our chronicle of 1866, the immediate consequence of the foregoing tempest was that the Hospital remained for the rest of the year without either attending or consulting surgeon, the surgical cases being treated by the assistant surgeon, with the aid of Dr. Samuel Cabot (acting unofficially), and by the attending and resident physicians—Dr. Zakrzewska and Dr. Sewall.

The annual report of this year notes the receipt of the first annual report of the Chicago Hospital for Women and Children, founded by Dr. Mary Harris Thompson.[12] This institution may be called the oldest hospital daughter of Dr. Zakrzewska, a previous attempt by Dr. C. Annette Buckel[13] to open a woman’s hospital being obliged to yield in its infancy to the greater interests excited by the outbreak of the Civil War, Dr. Buckel giving her services to the Sanitary Commission.

An important event of the year 1866-1867 was the granting to the New England Hospital students of the privilege of visiting the Massachusetts General Hospital under certain restrictions.

The house at 14 Warren Street (changed to Warrenton Street the following year) was now used for the medical and surgical wards and for the offices of the assistant physician and the matron. Of the Pleasant Street houses, No. 13 was the house of the resident physician, No. 15 contained the Lying-in Wards, and No. 17 was given over to the Dispensary.

Once more the course of the Hospital becomes the uneventful one of quiet, continuous growth, and Dr. Zakrzewska as attending physician concludes her report for 1867-1868, as follows:

The Hospital and Dispensary are established; many physicians who a few years ago were opposed to female practitioners have not only become convinced of their professional capability, but several have been willing to give instruction and aid in any way possible.

The Massachusetts General Hospital has been admitting the few students whom we consider under our guidance and instruction. We have good reason to hope that this friendly relation will continue. Harvard College is still closed against us for theoretical instruction, but I do not think that free, liberal America will remain long behind another republic across the ocean—I mean Switzerland.

One of our students who made application to the University of Zurich, received the following reply:

Zurich, May 6, 1868.

Dear Madam:

I reply to your letter of March 17 which has just come to hand. I have the honor to inform you that there exists in this University no lawful impediment to the matriculation of female students, and that female students enjoy equal advantages with male students.

There is here full liberty, and every one may attend the lectures as long as he may desire. The majority of the students need from five to five and a half years’ course before taking their degree.

In answer to other questions of yours, I send you some printed regulations of the University.

I am, with great esteem,

Yours,

Biermer,
Professor and Dean of Medical Faculty.

The University of Zurich is known as one where only men of the highest standing in the profession are employed to instruct the students. Such names as Moleschott, Griesinger, Breslau, von Graefe, Horner, Mayer, and Billroth are familiar as authorities in the medical world, and these men have been, and still are, the most influential teachers there.

In Paris, also, women can have the same advantages as men. And in America the time is rapidly approaching when through the deeds and words of women the profession at large will be convinced of the wisdom of following the same course.

A breath of encouragement was at this time wafted from New York in a speech by Dr. Willard Parker, this noted physician saying at the opening of the Woman’s College of the New York Infirmary, which took place on November 2, 1868:

Woman has always been a helpmeet to man and to a great extent is a co-worker with him, and as such in medicine, I bid her Godspeed. If it is charged that women who study medicine are sometimes unfit for practice, I would answer—so are many men. A doctor is born, not made, and is, naturally, found in both sexes.

In the summer of 1868, Dr. Lucy E. Sewall, who was continuing as resident physician, took a vacation of three months in England and France for recreation and study. In a letter to her, dated July 16, Dr. Zakrzewska writing from her new address, No. 1041 Washington Street, says:

I have hardly anything to report except that we have had intensely hot weather since you left, such as I have not experienced since the first year of my arrival in America. The thermometer stood at ninety-six degrees in our parlor in Roxbury, and we felt that we were cooling ourselves when we entered there. Yesterday, it was one hundred and three in the shade out of doors.... I envied you very much when I read how cool you were in Halifax and thereabouts. I am sure I would have been very glad to play the lady with you. You will now understand how pleasant it is to be away from business for a while.

Dr. Buckel will write you all about the Hospital. You need not worry in the least as all is going on well. At our last Hospital meeting Mrs. Cheney reported, “I feared very much for the Hospital when I saw how heartbroken the patients were after Dr. Sewall’s departure. But a day after they sang the praises of Dr. Buckel as loudly as if they had never known Dr. Sewall.”

To this report I added, “It is the old story although a very unsatisfactory one. Our places are filled just as soon as we leave them. And we all have to learn that lesson and feel comforted by it because it is thus that the world does not get off its hinges.”

The day before yesterday, we had our housewarming—I missed you very much.... The heat has prevented me from going to Melrose [Dr. Sewall’s home] so far; all we can do is to live and to fan....

Within the two years just closing, the financial pressure began to be relieved and four free beds were established in the medical wards. About the same time, it was decided to charge at the Dispensary a fee of twenty-five cents to such of the patients as were able to pay this amount. The results exceeded all expectations. The patients acknowledged the fairness of the rule and yet the really poor were not shut out.

Nevertheless, it was at the close of this year, as already noted, that the Hospital was obliged to borrow money to meet its outstanding debts.

This was truly the darkest hour and it was followed by the dawn of which the proverb speaks. As the sunshine of help from the community grew stronger, it was possible steadily to extend the ministrations of the Hospital to the more dependent, so the report of 1898-1899 was able to state:

Nearly (if not quite) two thirds of all our work is given in charity ... though we are slow to give charity indiscriminately but would have each one make some return, however small, for benefits received, thereby aiding her to keep her self-respect.

The treasurer’s report for the year of 1868 notes the receipt of one thousand dollars which was collected by Miss Sophia Jex-Blake for supporting four free beds. Sophia Jex-Blake came to this country as a student of Dr. Sewall and was a resident student at the Hospital. She went later to the newly opened Woman’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary, and still later she returned to Great Britain and became the leader in the struggle which attended the attempt to open to women the medical course at the University of Edinburgh—reference to which has been made by Dr. Zakrzewska in a previous chapter. The attempt failed and she went to Switzerland where the men students at the University of Berne seemed to find no difficulty in permitting women to study medicine with them.[14]

The year of 1869 was especially noteworthy for the burden which was lifted from Dr. Zakrzewska’s mind by the official return of Dr. Samuel Cabot to the consulting staff of the Hospital, though ever since his formal resignation in June, 1866, he had continued to advise the women who, against almost insurmountable obstacles, were struggling to give the surgical help called for by the increasing numbers of their patients.

If one requires expert teaching and constant practice to learn to diagnosticate and prescribe for medical ailments, it is much more difficult for one to learn to diagnosticate and prescribe for surgical ailments, since a surgical prescription demands trained skill of the hands as well as of the brain. And opportunities for acquiring this trained skill of the hands are at the best very limited in number and very expensive in detail, while they also require a very exacting environment and an entourage trained to the highest degree. And they are, further, beset on all sides by dangers which are momentous and immediate as well as more remote.

It is a fine index of the essential quality of these earlier women that they were not daunted by the difficulties of the situation, and that the conservative spirit of the sex was not too much affrighted by the dangers which on every hand confronted them and their patients.

Under the necessities of the situation, a friendly surgeon of the eminence of Dr. Samuel Cabot was a veritable tower of strength. Well might Dr. Zakrzewska, with gratitude that failed of words to express itself, say year after year in her annual report as attending physician, “To Dr. Samuel Cabot, we are again indebted for advice and instruction in all the important surgical cases which have occurred during the year.”

Dr. Anita E. Tyng who had spent her apprenticeship as assistant surgeon to the Hospital, had been obliged to resign her position there, but Dr. Zakrzewska and Dr. Sewall were ably assisted in this branch of practice by Dr. C. Annette Buckel who had been assistant physician for the past three years and who, having particular ability for surgery, desired to specialize in that direction. They were now aided also by Dr. Helen Morton[15] who had returned from Paris and had become connected with the Dispensary.

With the arrival of such capable assistants among the younger women who had all been her students, Dr. Zakrzewska felt justified in relinquishing some of her arduous duties. And now her leading assistant, Dr. Lucy E. Sewall, resigned as resident physician (a position which she had held since 1863) and was appointed second attending physician. She thus divided the Hospital service with Dr. Zakrzewska, each being on duty every alternate three months.

Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D.
(About 1870)

Dr. Zakrzewska continued to serve on the board of directors as she had done since the beginning of the Hospital, but the added freedom gained by being released from work at the Dispensary and in being able to share her Hospital duties, gave her greater opportunity to elaborate and press forward her plans for building a hospital which should be more suitable for its purposes than any altered dwelling houses could possibly be. Writing of the successes achieved by the Hospital and of the satisfactions derived from its possession of the four houses in Warrenton and Pleasant streets, she continues:

But after a few years, we found that even these accommodations were becoming too small. Also, the character of the neighborhood was changing from private residences to retail trading stores, and it was easy to foresee that the time was coming when this location would be entirely unsuitable for the sick.

As it was neither my intention nor that of the Directors to carry on simply a charity, but rather to make this charity at the same time a school for educating women physicians on the European plan before mentioned and for the training of nurses for the benefit of the community, we felt that confidence in the value and need of our work had now been sufficiently established to warrant our erecting a building which would serve all these purposes and which in its arrangement might become a model hospital among the charitable institutions of the country.

About this time an especially interesting bequest of two thousand dollars was received by the Hospital from the estate of Mrs. Robert G. Shaw, the language of the bequest stating that the money was “to be used by Dr. Zakrzewska in aid of any Hospital or Infirmary for the poor and sick which may be under her superintendence in the City of Boston at the time of my decease.”

The accumulating demand for a children’s ward in the Hospital was so strongly felt this year that one of the physicians took into her own household for care and treatment a child patient whose case was particularly urgent.

This pressure for a children’s ward was an additional factor in making Dr. Zakrzewska and her associates begin a still more definite campaign for the erection of new hospital buildings which should be especially suitable for the varied demands made upon them. Alterations in the streets and increase of business in that part of the city had enhanced the pecuniary value of land in that vicinity, so it was hoped that the sale of the present property would supply the money needed for building the new structure. It was planned to hold a Fair in December in order to raise the money needed for the purchase of the new land.

And one may judge of the courage required to attempt to carry such ambitions into execution when it is noted that the institution had just held its own financially, the year closing with the same amount of debt as that with which it began.

The Fair in December, 1870, justified the ardent hopes which breathed through every detail of its preparation and completion, and over twelve thousand dollars was realized.

A committee was immediately appointed to select a site, and after much investigation this committee recommended the purchase of an estate in Boston Highlands (now Roxbury), on Codman Avenue (now Dimock Street), between Shawmut Avenue (now Washington Street) and Amory Street (now Columbus Avenue).

With the formation of a building committee (which included all the medical officers) the new venture was definitely launched. The skies were lifting, favoring breezes prevailed, and the year closed with all running expenses met, all debts paid, and only the new building expenses to confront the treasurer—but it must be admitted that these were formidable enough, since they were on such an expanded scale.

The report of the resident physician, Dr. Buckel, for the year of 1870-1871 reflects so clearly her association with Dr. Zakrzewska and contains such interesting pictures of some phases of the social life of the period that a few paragraphs may be quoted, especially as some of them bear upon variations of a question which to-day is still perplexing our community, and which has at last reached legislators all over the United States in a concrete and radical form.[16]