CHAPTER XXXVII
Opening of the Medical School of the Johns Hopkins University to women on equal terms with men—Consultations with Dr. Zakrzewska by women interested in the event—Her report of the attitude of the community towards women surgeons—New building for the Maternity Department of the Hospital (the Sewall Maternity and, later, the Helen Morton Wing)—Opening of the Goddard Home for Nurses—Because of misbehavior of men students, Columbia University of Georgetown closes its doors to women—Dr. Zakrzewska writes on “the Emancipation of Woman: Will it be a Success?” (1888-1894.)
These were eventful days (1888-1890) for all friends of the advancement of the medical education of women, leading up as they did to the opening to women of the medical school of the Johns Hopkins University in 1890.
The same fear of beguilement and subsequent disillusionment which Dr. Zakrzewska had felt regarding the proposed opening to women of the Medical School of Harvard University, away back at the time when the future of the New England Female Medical College hung in the balance, haunted the minds of all workers for the cause of medical women.
So many colleges had been opened to women and had then been closed to them, in response to the storm raised by one or another protesting group, that experience had made women feel they must always be on their guard.
One of the prominent women of Worcester wrote to Dr. Zakrzewska in 1890:
Our Women’s Club has been urged to contribute to assist the Medical School of the Johns Hopkins University, with the idea that women shall have there all the advantages which men have, and as I have seen your name with other well-known names, I desire to ask if you really think that they will act in good faith if the $100,000 should be given them.
We are told by parties in Baltimore who ought to know that the whole policy of Johns Hopkins is conservative in spite of its high rank, and that women would never be admitted on the same terms as men.
As one of an investigating committee, I am to report on October 22d. Will you be so kind as to tell me what you think of the scheme? If the money is raised and offered on condition that women shall be so received, we are told that it will be refused. In that case, it would not seem worth while to give anything towards it.
This must be a matter which would greatly interest you, and I venture to hope that you will find a moment to reply.
In the course of her correspondence with Dr. Zakrzewska, a leading woman of Baltimore who was one of those foremost in the present movement, writes:
I will bear your cautions in mind and watch very carefully. I myself have not much confidence in the willingness of many men to give women a fair chance, but since out of the four women who began this movement, three of them have fathers on the two boards who are deeply convinced of the righteousness of the cause, I cannot help feeling hopeful. Moreover, the physicians at the Hospital have been most cordial and helpful to every well-qualified woman who has sought its advantages.
I inclose a copy of the trustees’ resolutions. I do not see how, although they reserve the right of making “such rules and regulations as they may deem necessary for the government of its School of Medicine,” they can possibly ignore the paragraph that “in making such rules and regulations, the terms of this minute shall always be respected and observed”—and these terms we insisted should be the same, not equal.
However, I agree with you that we must watch carefully, and if there should ever be a sign of trying to evade it you may depend on us to fight it out.
It is interesting to note that half of the $100,000 was given by one woman, Miss Mary Garrett, daughter of one of the original trustees of the Johns Hopkins University. Also, that the $10,000 previously offered by Miss Hovey to Harvard, on condition of its admitting women and which was declined by its medical faculty, was transferred to the Johns Hopkins.
When, in 1888, Dr. Zakrzewska and her two earliest co-workers on the Hospital staff, Drs. Sewall and Morton, resigned as attending physicians and became advisory physicians, Dr. Sewall had in the state of her health an additional reason for relinquishing her arduous duties. And Dr. Zakrzewska suffered keenly during the next few years in realizing the approaching loss of this particularly dear colleague, who had always been to her as her own child though her junior by only a few years. Dr. Sewall died in February, 1890.
At the annual meeting at the close of the Hospital year, 1890, Dr. Zakrzewska again was called upon to present the report from the resident physician—this position being temporarily vacant.
Referring especially to the increasing work of the Hospital under women surgeons, she says:
The results thus far are so satisfactory that no other hospital can show a greater percentage of recoveries. Our reputation for successful operations increases; and the request is often made by patients that no men shall be present.
An old lady of seventy-nine years, the prolongation of whose life depended upon the immediate removal of a large ovarian tumor—an accidental fall having caused inflammation—insisted upon having even no consultation with men, nor any men present at the operation, saying, “I am old enough anyway to die, only I don’t want to suffer as I do now; and if the women can save my life for a while longer, I shall be grateful.” She was saved, and went home well in just four weeks from the day of operation.
Another change has come with this advance in the medical women’s world. Women now express the strongest confidence in women’s skill, entirely refuting the fears and opinions of former years that “women would never have confidence in their own sex.” The opposite condition has now become so manifest that when in a first consultation a patient decides at once and unreservedly to employ a woman surgeon, we are frequently obliged to remind her that her friends or her family may prefer to have a man perform the operation.
A patient was brought into my office from the carriage before the door. She seemed so weak and exhausted that I did not venture to speak frankly to her but called the friends into an outer room and informed them of the need of the removal of a large abdominal tumor without delay. After a short deliberation, they considered it best for me to inform the patient. I did so. A few moments of silence ensued, and then came the response, “Where can it be done? Will you do it?” Answering the latter question in the negative and the former by proposing our Hospital, she replied, “Well, take me there and I will have it done to-morrow.”
We did take her there, but the case was too grave for an operation on the morrow as important preparations were necessary. But in a few months the patient left the Hospital well, and when a half year later she came into my office, I did not recognize the changed woman.
Such cases are not infrequent now, and the gratitude of many a mother, wife, and daughter spreads throughout our land the fame of our Hospital, the skill of our surgeons, and the kindness of our nurses. The number of women surgeons is but few as yet, but I do not care to compete numerically with men. I simply repeat the claim which I made thirty-five years ago when pleading the cause of women physicians, namely, give to women whose qualifications and tastes lead them to study the healing art, the opportunity to develop such talents to the utmost on an equality with men.
It is due to the perseverance of woman’s nature and to the freedom of this country that such comparatively great results have been achieved in so few years. I, who saw at most a possibility in the dim future, am permitted to behold an idea realized—an idea for the materialization of which I expected simply to plow the ground before I passed away from this life, leaving it for others to cultivate. But see! Already, under the sunshine of free institutions and the favoring breezes of universal progress, we reap the fruits of our labor.
In June, 1892, a new Maternity Building was completed and dedicated. It was named the Sewall Maternity, in memory of that early and devoted friend of Dr. Zakrzewska and the Hospital, Hon. Samuel E. Sewall, and of his daughter, Dr. Lucy E. Sewall, who was, successively, Dr. Zakrzewska’s first student, assistant, and staff colleague.
The old Maternity was renovated and transformed into a home for the nurses, and it served this purpose until replaced by a new building in 1909. It was named the Goddard Home for Nurses in honor of the Goddard family—Miss Lucy Goddard, one of the incorporators of the Hospital and first president of the board of directors; George A. Goddard, for many years the devoted treasurer of the Hospital; and his mother, Mrs. M. Le B. Goddard, one of the earlier directors.
Some years later (1906), a wing was added to the Sewall Maternity, the Helen Morton Wing. This was named in honor of Dr. Helen Morton, classmate of Dr. Sewall and Dr. Zakrzewska’s second student, assistant, and staff colleague.
In the midst of the congratulations and rejoicings which followed the opening to women of the Johns Hopkins Medical School, the distrust which Dr. Zakrzewska had already voiced was, in 1893, given another justification by the action of the Columbian University of Georgetown, D. C. (now the George Washington University Medical School), which decided to close the doors that it had opened to women.
For at least ten years the medical department had been graduating women on equal terms with men. But there had always been three members of the faculty who were bitterly opposed to allowing women to study medicine on any terms. These three professors made the path of the women students as rough and stony as possible; and the male students, taking the cue from these professors, added discourtesies and affronts to hostility.
Finally, in the dissecting room, some of these students so debased themselves by offering insult, not only to the women medical students but also to the helpless bodies of their fellow beings who had been given to them for scientific study, that the faculty and trustees were obliged to take official notice of the occurrence.
Now, mark the administration of justice. The male students committed the offense which no one attempted to condone. Were the offenders punished? No. Neither were the innocent victims of the offense, the women medical students. But the whole sex of the innocent victims was selected to make vicarious atonement. The verdict was that the women then in the Medical School should be permitted to complete their course, but after that no more women should be admitted to the school.
After this demonstration can any one doubt that the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden has biologic foundation and, as the good old books say, “is in the nature of man.” But we can rejoice that this is a nature which man is steadily moving upward to modify and correct, hence the increasing number of men who are willing to do justice to women.
It remains to add that the trustees were said to have been almost unanimous in their opposition to the exclusion of women but to have been overborne by the financial control exerted by the three professors mentioned.
The indignation of a large portion of the lay community was aroused by the injustice thus done to women, and an appeal for advice was made to Dr. Zakrzewska, whose views on such a situation have already been stated. Fortunately, the Johns Hopkins Medical School is not far removed from Washington.
The era of the “emancipation” of woman as an all-inclusive phrase had not yet passed, though it was approaching its eclipse by more specific terms. Using it as an antithesis of “oppression,” Dr. Zakrzewska writes in The Open Court, June 21, 1894, on “The Emancipation of Woman: Will it be a Success?”
This article was in reply to one on “The Oppression of Woman,” evidently written by a man who voiced his protest against the subjection from which women have suffered for so many centuries, and who claimed for women freedom to develop along their own lines. His plea was apparently similar to Tennyson’s when the latter sings:
... “Leave her space to burgeon out of all Within her—let her make herself her own To give or keep, to live and learn and be All that not harms distinctive womanhood. For woman is not undevelopt man, But diverse.”
Perhaps, as is so often the case, an undercurrent of masculine patronage had crept into the plea of the advocate. Or perhaps Dr. Zakrzewska merely felt the weariness that comes to all normal grown-up women when their normality and growth are commented upon as phenomena, instead of being accepted as the thing to be expected. On a very hot day, the chirr of even a friendly katydid may seem too obvious, repeating (what should be) “an undisputed thing in such a solemn way.” At any rate, she responds:
I admit that the writer of this article is right, positively right, logically right, sentimentally right, to the end of these reasonings which are lucid and clearly stated.
Then I ask, What is the value of this new point, this proving that the evolution of woman’s activity cannot be otherwise than feminine? If twice two make four, no exertion of either man or woman can make it five. Let us leave it as a positive fact, and not worry when we see any individual trying to prove that twice two make five.
Why are all these mental somersaults and caprioles in men’s writings needed? Will their attempts at prophesying or illustrating the future effects arising from the activity of a yet unknown quantity alter or check the present phenomenal awakening of woman’s ambition?
Allow me to elucidate my meaning by a true story of what happened in my native city, Berlin, about fifty years ago.
In a courtyard lived a poor family. The father was a locksmith by trade. His eldest son, a boy of twelve, bright, industrious and smart, spent all his time either in the schoolroom or in his father’s shop. Not even on Sundays could this poor family enjoy rest but worked in the dreary shop. The boy was very fond of eating string beans which the mother could seldom afford to buy.
He therefore decided to raise them in a box before his window. He used some old pieces of boards for the construction of his window-garden, and all the inmates of the front as well as of the rear houses became interested in his experiment, everybody feeling it to be his or her duty to express opinions on the subject.
Thus it came to pass that the boy was told that the beans planted would rot because the boards were not porous enough to allow air to pass; that the soil in the box could not be regulated as regarded the daily moisture needed; that the rain could not be discharged after flooding the window garden; that the heat of the sun reflected from the window glass would burn the tender growths; that not more than two stalks of beans could be raised if the seed turned out to be dwarf beans, and if pole beans, he could not fasten them high enough; that no good growth could be expected if there were not a flow of air all around to favor the plant; that the already dark room (this being the only window) would be darkened too much by the growing plants and thus the three children who slept in it would not awaken in time for school, which commenced at seven o’clock; that the health of the children would be injured by the exhalation of the plants and the moisture of the earth in the box; that his mother should be warned not to allow such an experiment as it would be a moral injury to the boy when he found himself disappointed in the success of his plan, as the most valuable of emotions—hope—would thus be destroyed; that the father ought to realize that he would lose at least half an hour daily of the boy’s help in the shop; in fact, all the arguments and all the prophesying were that a complete failure would be the result and that the boy would be crushed under the weight of it.
However, the boy prepared his box, took note of the many suggestions and obviated some of them, as by perforating his box with small holes, by opening the windows when the sun shone from ten in the morning to three in the afternoon, etc.
The twelve beans which he had planted grew and proved to be pole beans, so he tied strings for them to climb up on as high as the tenant above his room allowed him to do. He watered and nursed his plantation with care and love, and lo and behold, the beans flourished and blossomed and bore fruit relatively plentifully.
During this time of growth, an old and wise tenant of the front house, also a professor, joined the group who for eight weeks had watched and discussed in the yard this willful boy’s experiment. This critic remarked that he observed a new phase of which nobody had thus far taken notice and which might have both good and bad effects, namely, that a hailstorm might yet come and destroy this garden, although there might also be a good result as the plants would protect the window panes if the storm should occur when the windows were closed.
All admitted that this was true, and all admired the wisdom of the Herr Professor, and went to their respective abodes a little mortified that they had not thought before of this neglected point of the subject.
The boy had the satisfaction of gathering a mess of well-grown beans, sufficient for a hearty meal for the whole family. But while eating his favorite dish, he said, “Well, mother, I did succeed; but to tell the truth, the beans don’t taste so good as those which grow in the fields. So next year, I will not try again but I shall sow nasturtium seeds for you to enjoy.”
He did so, and his window was a perfect delight and source of cheer to him, to his mother, and to the tenants of the little court. He continued to do this until he had to enter the army, at eighteen years of age. His younger brothers (he had no sisters) followed in his footsteps, and when I left Berlin my last look was at the nasturtium window.
Let me ask, did it matter much which the boy raised, beans or nasturtiums? What use was it to him, or to his family, or to the tenants when the latter all joined in the chorus, “I thought so” or “I told him he could not raise beans”? Let each one try nature’s forces and take his chance! And twice two will always remain four.