The house opened at St. Loup, under Pastor Germond, in 1842, takes charge of sick children. At Geneva, a deaconess has had charge for six years; through whom five hundred servants get their places, and with whom they find homes when out of health or work. In 1859, twenty-one were nursed in the institution.
A house in the Faubourg St. Antoine, Paris, was proposed by M. Vermeil, in 1830. In 1840, Mademoiselle Malvesin offered to conduct it; her letter to Vermeil, and his to her, crossing each other. Holland and Sweden have opened several of these schools. In our own country, the Rev. Mr. Passevant, a Lutheran minister of Pittsburg, Pa., is establishing hospitals in every State, under the care of women. They are supported by contributions in all the city churches, except the Catholic. These hospitals are under the care of a sisterhood, who cannot, as yet, compete with the Sisters of Charity. It seems to me, that Mr. Passevant has erred in a most noble work, by drawing his sisters from the uncultivated classes. Such a work should bear the right stamp in the beginning. In Western Pennsylvania, also, Bishop Kerfoot has begun the noble work of endowing his whole diocese with suitable high schools for girls, where they may obtain at home, for one hundred dollars annually, what it would cost five times as much to procure at a distance.
MEDICAL EDUCATION.
As regards medical education, we know of two colleges, or, rather, of one college and one hospital, in Boston, where education is given. There is one in Springfield, and one in Philadelphia. We should be glad to get more statistics of this kind; for Cleveland, where Dr. Zakrzewska took her degree, is no longer open to female students, and Geneva is contenting herself with the honor of having graduated Dr. Blackwell. Nine women were graduated at the New-York Medical School for Women, in February of this year. Professor Willis then stated that there are three hundred female physicians in the country, earning incomes of from ten to twenty thousand dollars.
There is a female medical society in London. This society wishes to open the way for thorough medical instruction, which will entitle its graduates to a degree from Apothecaries' Hall; and it offered lectures from competent persons, in 1864, upon obstetrics and general medical science. Madame Aillot's Hospital of the Maternity, in Paris, still offers its great advantages to women; of which two of our countrywomen, Miss Helen Morton and Miss Lucy E. Sewall, have taken creditable advantage. They are both of them Massachusetts girls. Miss Morton is retained in Paris, and Miss Sewall is the resident physician of the Hospital for Women and Children, in Boston.
At present, to obtain thorough instruction in any branch, women are obliged to pay exorbitant prices, and receive, as the results of their training, but half-wages. In Boston, Dr. Zakrzewska has again unsuccessfully asked permission to become a member of the Massachusetts Medical Society. Many physicians, however, extend the fellowship which the institution denies, and the "Medical Journal" expresses itself courteously on this point. Efforts, sustained by the influential name of the Hon. Charles G. Loring, are at this moment making to secure the advantages of the Harvard-College lectures to women intending to become physicians.[48]
In 1863, there existed in St. Petersburg a stringent regulation, which prohibited women from following the university courses. A Miss K., who had a decided taste for medicine, without the means to pay for instruction, applied for such instruction to the authorities of Orenburg. Orenburg is partly in Europe and partly in Asia, and its territory includes the Cossack races of the Ural. These people have a superstitious prejudice against male physicians, and are chiefly attended in illness by sorceresses. Miss K. offered to put her medical knowledge at the service of the Cossacks, and received permission to attend the Academy of Medicine. The Cossacks promised her an annual stipend of twenty-eight roubles; but, when she passed the half-yearly examination as well as the male students, they sent her three hundred roubles as a token of good-will!
In France, a Mademoiselle Reugger, from Algeria, lately passed a brilliant examination, and received the degree of Bachelor of Letters. She appealed to the Dean of the Faculty at Montpellier for permission to follow the regular course, and was refused on account of her sex. She then turned to the Minister of Public Instruction, who granted it, on condition that she should pledge herself to practise only in Algeria, where the Arabs, like the Cossacks, refuse the attendance of male physicians. Unlike our Russian friend, she refused to give the pledge. She threw herself upon her rights, and appealed in person to the emperor. This was in December last, and I have not been able to find his decision. It was doubtless given in her behalf; for Louis Napoleon will always yield, as a favor, what he would stubbornly refuse as a right.
A female medical mission is to be despatched to Delhi, for the same reason. The physicians sent out are,—