"Above all, see to it, gentlemen, in your practice that you have thorough, well trained, kind-hearted, characterful female nurses. Without them, all your sacrifices of time and effort are idle."
In the September, 1892, issue of the "German Review", Prof. Virchow thus expressed himself in favor of female nurses:
"That the post of real responsibility at the sick-bed shall fall to woman is, in my opinion, a principle that should be enforced in all our hospitals. In the hands of a cultivated, womanly, trained person the care of even a sick man is safer than in those of a man."
If woman is fit for the extraordinarily difficult service of nurse, a service that places a heavy strain upon patience and self-sacrifice, why should she not be also fit for a physician?
Above all, the idea must be resisted that women shall be educated for physicians by separate courses of study, i. e., separated from the male students,—a plan that Frau Mathilde Weber of Tübingen has declared herself satisfied with.[147] If the purpose be to degrade the female physicians, from the start, to the level of physicians of second or third rank, and to lower them in the eyes of their male colleagues, then, indeed, that is the best method. If it is no violation of "ethics" and "morality" that female nurses assist in the presence of male physicians at the performance of all possible operations upon male and female subjects, and on such occasions render most useful service; if it is "ethically" and "morally" permissible that dozens of young men, as students and for the sake of their studies, stand as observers at the bed of a woman in travail, or assist at the performance of operations on female patients, then it is absurd and laughable to deny such rights to female students.
Such prudery in natural things is the rage, particularly in Germany, this big children's play-room. The English, discredited by reason of the same qualities, may, nevertheless, be our teachers in the treatment of natural things.
In this direction, it is the United States, in particular, that furnish the example most worthy of imitation. There, and to the utter horror of our learned and unlearned old fogies of both sexes, High Schools have existed for decades, at which both sexes are educated in common. Let us hear with what result. President White of the University of Michigan declared as early as the middle of the seventies: "The best pupil in Greek, for several years, among 1,300 students, has been a young lady; the best pupil in mathematics in one of the strongest classes of our Institute is, likewise, a young lady; and several among the best pupils in natural science and the sciences in general are likewise young ladies." Dr. Fairchild, President of Oberlin College in Ohio, where over a thousand students of both sexes are instructed in common, said at about the same time: "During my incumbency of eight years as professor of ancient languages—Latin, Greek, and Hebrew—also in the ethical and philosophic studies, and during my incumbency of eleven years in abstract and applied mathematics, I have never noticed any difference in the two sexes except in the manner of reciting." Edward H. Machill, President of Swarthmore College in Delaware County, Pa., and author of a pamphlet,[148] from which these facts are taken, says that, after an experience of four years, he had arrived at the conclusion that, with an eye to both manners and morals, the education of the two sexes in common had given the best results. Many a pig-tail has yet to be cut off in Germany before common sense shall have broken its way through here.
More recently, lively controversies have arisen in the literature of almost all countries of civilization on the question whether woman could achieve intellectually as much as man. While some, by dint of great acumen and with the aid of facts supposed to be proofs, deny that such is possible, others maintain that, on many fields, it undoubtedly is the case. It is claimed that, generally speaking, woman is endowed with qualities that man is deficient in, and vice versa: the male method of reasoning is reflective and vigorous, woman's, on the contrary, distinguishes itself by swiftness of perception and quickness of execution. Certain it is that woman finds her way more quickly in complicated situations, and has more tact than man. Ellis, who gathered vast materials upon this question, turned to a series of persons, who had male and female students under their guidance for many years, and questioned them on their opinion and experience. McBendrick of Glasgow answered him: "After having taught female students for twenty years, I would sum up my observations with the statement that many women accomplish as much as men in general, and that many men do not accomplish as much as the female average." Other opinions in Ellis' book are less favorable, but none is unfavorable. According to the Yearbook of Berlin for 1870, pp. 69-77, investigation showed girls to be stronger in the sense of space, boys at figures; the girls excelled in the telling of stories, the boys in the explaining of religious principles. Whatever the way these questions may be turned and twisted, the fact appears that the two sexes supplement each other; the one is superior on one, the other on some other field, while on a number of others there is no difference in point of sex, but only in point of individual.
It follows, furthermore, that there is no reason for confining one sex to a certain field, and prescribing to it the course of development that it shall pursue, nor that, based on differences in natural bent, in advantages and in defects, which mutually equalize themselves, privileges may be deducted for one sex, hindrances for another. Consequently—equality for all, and a free field for each, with a full swing according to their capacity and ability.
Based upon the experience made during the last decades in the higher studies of woman, there is no longer any valid reason against the same. The teacher can do much, by the manner in which he teaches, to affect the attitude of his male and female pupils. Women, who devote themselves to a science, are often animated with an earnestness and will-power in which they excel most other students. The zeal of the female students is, on an average, greater than that of the male.