Personal hygiene and physical training for women

by Anna M. Galbraith

To two men belong the great credit and honor of conceiving the idea of a liberal college education, and a medical college training, for women in this country.

In 1865 Mathew Vassar, “having recognized in woman the same intellectual constitution as in man,” founded a college for women only, and thus gave women the opportunity for the same education that young men enjoyed at their colleges.

In 1850 the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania was incorporated. The idea of establishing a college for the medical education of women originated with Dr. Bartholomew Fussel, of Chester County. The query arose in his mind, “Why should women not have the same opportunities in life as men?”

Just how strong the public sentiment was against these movements, and the leaders of the opposition comprised the most prominent educators and physicians of the day, and what impediments they placed in the way, it is now difficult to realize.

The opponents of the higher education of women urged three final objections: First, women were mentally incapable of receiving the same kind of intellectual education as was given to young men at college. Second, they lacked the physical endurance to bear the strain of mental work. And, third, such an education would render the young woman masculine—she would no longer be willing to look after the ways of her house, her natural affections and power to love would vanish, she would become unwilling to marry and bear children.

Ex-President Eliot, of Harvard University, who has so long been the great educational leader in this country, in his paper on “The Higher Education of Women,” says: “During the past thirty-five years three distinct apprehensions concerning the effect of the higher education of women seem to me to have been removed. In the first place, there was a perfectly sincere doubt (because there was little experience to go upon) whether young women were so capable as young men of receiving what was then called the higher education; or, in other words, whether the young woman had the capacity to master by study the traditional subjects of the higher education. That doubt has been completely removed.

“Secondly, it was feared that if the young women studied in the colleges three or four years, beginning at about eighteen years of age, that such study would have serious effect on their health and on their fitness for their natural functions in after-life. This apprehension was felt by many physicians and was warmly expressed. For a whole generation we have been trying the experiment, and the result is perfectly clear. These apprehensions have not been justified. It is apparent that young women can do much mental work for three or four years between the age of eighteen and twenty-two, not only without impairing their physical vigor, but all the time improving it, if they live wisely and under right conditions.

“And thirdly, there was the strong apprehension felt by many excellent people, lest in the process of the higher education young women would be denatured. They admitted that young men were not denatured in any way by the higher education at college, but they thought that there was a serious chance that young women would be altered in their feminine nature by the process of education. It has turned out that a young woman who studies in college, from the age of eighteen to twenty-two, is no more altered in her nature than a young man is who goes through a similar process. It takes a great deal more than that to alter the nature of a woman.

“I suppose that this apprehension was based on the fact that women seem, to men at least, more tender, fragile, and delicate than men, and, therefore, more liable to be bruised or coarsened than men; it was feared that the kind of public life, so to speak, in large groups would have some tendency to deprive them of their natural delicacy, refinement, and tenderness. It has not turned out so, and everybody recognizes that it has not turned out so.”

When higher education, the professions, and industrial pursuits are all unquestioningly thrown open to women, then it can be reasonably supposed that they will come to possess those traits of mind—judicial, logical, creative, etc., now generally considered as masculine traits, and they will not only be more attractive and companionable for their husbands, but will be far more competent teachers for their children, their enlarged range of thought and vision inspiring greater confidence in their sons, and stimulating higher ideals in both sons and daughters.