“A woman’s intellectual incapacity and her physical weakness will ever disqualify her for the duties of the medical profession,” wrote Dr. ——, of Pennsylvania.
Edward H. Dixon, M. D., of New York, in an article published in the “Scalpel” shows, by uncontroverted arguments and facts, that the male child, at birth, “in original organic strength,” holds only an equal chance with the female; that “the chances of health for the two sexes at the outset are equal, and so continue till the period when they first attain the full use of their legs.”
Ask the mother of a family if the labor pains show any respect of sex.
Does not the female show as strong lungs as the male in its earliest disapprobation of this unceremonious world? How about the comparative strength exhibited in the demonstrations of each when the lacteal fluid is not forthcoming in proportion to the appetite?
Let us consult Dr. Dixon further,—and charge it to the females!
“We give the girl two years’ start of the boy,—we shall see why as we proceed. Both have endured the torture of bandaging, pinning (pricking), and tight dressing; both have been rocked, jounced on the knee, papped, laudanumed, paregoricked, castor oiled, suffocated with blankets over the head, sweltered with cap and feather bed, roasted at a fire of anthracite, dosed according to the formula of some superannuated doctor or ‘experienced nurse,’ or both, for these people usually hunt in couples, and are very gracious to each other. We give the girl the start to make up for the benefit the boy has derived from chasing the cat, rolling on the floor, or sliding down the balustrade, and the torture she had endured from her sampler, and being compelled to ‘sit up straight, and not be hoidenish.’”
“POH! YOU’RE A GIRL.”
“Well, they are off to school. Observe how circumspectly our little miss must walk, chiding her brother for being ‘too rude.’ He, nothing daunted, (with a ‘Poh! you’re a girl’), starts full tilt after an unlucky pig or a stray dog. If he tumbles into the mud and soils his clothes the result is soon visible in increase of lungs and ruddy cheeks.”
“In school the boy has the advantage. The girl ‘mustn’t loll,’ must sit up erect, the limbs hanging down, her feet probably not reaching the floor, and the spinal column must bear the main support for three to six hours! The boy gets relief in ‘shying’ an occasional paper ball across the room, hitching about, and drawing his legs up on the seat, or sticking a pin in his neighbor, and a good run and jump at recess, changing the monotony of the recreation by an occasional fight after school. At dinner the girl has had no exercise to create an appetite, and her meal is made up of pastry and dessert. ‘Remember that her muscles move the limbs, and are composed chiefly of azote, and it is the red meat, or muscle of beef or mutton, that she would eat if she had any appetite for it, that is to say, if her stomach and blood-vessels would endure it. The fact is, the child has fever and loathes meat.’”