FOREWORD
Viewed impersonally, this story of Marie E. Zakrzewska (Zak-shef’ska) is one more document testifying to the Humanity of Woman. The fact that the individual urge for the expression of this humanity found vent along the line of Medicine, is a detail. It is also a detail that the story is interwoven with an interesting transitional period in American history and with the evolution of the American woman physician.
The essential interest lies in the fundamental human instinct asserting itself through the individual woman, dominating her and driving her to reach out into the world until, after migrations over thousands of miles and through various phases of civilization, she at last found an environment favorable for the development which her spirit so ardently demanded.
Eventually stretching across the Atlantic Ocean, this Polish-German branch of the Human Tree pushed through first one crevice and then another, with here and there a struggling blossoming and leafage, to find at last its best efflorescence and fruitage in the favoring sun and air of America.
Transplanted here, as are all the nations of mankind, her life finally found fulfillment through the creation of the New England Hospital for Women and Children, and though the influence which she exerted upon the lives of the numbers of women medical students, women physicians, women surgeons, and women nurses who have there, in turn, been helped to develop and to express their Humanity.
Stopping on her way to help in the birth of the first true “Woman’s Hospital” in the history of the world (the New York Infirmary for Women and Children), to develop the short-lived second (Clinical Department of the New England Female Medical College), and to assist in the conception of the third (the Woman’s Hospital of Philadelphia), her life reached its fullest expression in the evolution of the fourth (the New England Hospital for Women and Children).
Thus in no ordinary sense do the life and personality of Doctor Zakrzewska endure in America, and especially in Boston. Thence the inspiration of her life has extended throughout New England; throughout the United States; back across the Atlantic to Europe; and across the Pacific to the Orient.
Is there, then, any part of the earth reached by educated medical women where her living spirit does not penetrate, that unconquerable spirit made manifest through her unchanging ideal—reasoned human standards for women as for men.
It is a common habit of our people to abbreviate long or unfamiliar words and the American populace so generally declined to apply itself to the complete pronunciation of the word Zakrzewska that the name was characteristically shortened to the first syllable. Hence, “Doctor Zak” became the more familiar title, first of convenience and then of that personal and unceremonious aptitude for appropriation which we as a people display toward those whom we regard with admiration and affection.
The material for this biography was given to the editor by Dr. Zakrzewska to prepare for publication with what might be called one condition, and this has now been fulfilled. Circumstances which the editor could not control, and which it is unnecessary to discuss here, have delayed its appearance until now. The earlier chapters are autobiographical and most of them were written in the form of a letter to Miss Mary L. Booth, of New York, and were published in 1860 by Mrs. Caroline H. Dall under the title of “A Practical Illustration of ‘Woman’s Right to Labor’; or A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D., late of Berlin, Prussia.”
Finally, the editor desires to express her appreciation of the assistance rendered by Miss Anne Sullivan, her secretary and synergetic critic.
Agnes C. Vietor