"But," says some watchful woman, "has not Miss Garrett taken her degree from Apothecaries' Hall? and have not a few women at least been trained as sick nurses?"
There is still no institution for the training of sick nurses, as the text asserts. Some few have been trained in hospitals and the like, on conditions of service, or to supply the need of such institutions themselves. How does the matter stand with Miss Garrett? The press has made the most of her success: it lies with us to exhibit the naked truth. After applying in vain to the various medical colleges, Miss Garrett went to Apothecaries' Hall. Here they refused her; but she looked up their charter. She found the word indicating to whom degrees should be granted indeterminate, with no character of sex attached to it. Lawyers told her the hall must grant her a degree, or surrender its charter. She was wealthy, and in earnest. She pushed her advantage. "The Apothecaries' Hall" prescribed certain courses of instruction to be pursued and certified before the degree could be granted. These she pursued in private, paying the most exorbitant rates for her instruction. In one instance, for a course of lectures, to which a man's fee would have been five guineas, she paid fifty; and I am credibly informed that the round cost of these preparatory steps must have amounted to two thousand pounds. All honor to Miss Garrett! Should her genius as a physician equal her energy and her wealth, she may gain something for the cause she has espoused, by the honor and consideration she will win for her sex. Apart from this, it will be seen, she has gained nothing. Bribery is not possible to ordinary mortals; and the conditions of the degree, in the present state of public feeling, would make it wholly impracticable.
The case, as it has been stated to us, is an exemplification, on a gigantic scale, of all that we complain of; and proves our statement, that women have not won an education for themselves, till they win with it its legitimate results. For their opportunities as things now stand, all over the world, women pay a premium on the terms offered to men. Let them take these opportunities as tools, and try to win their bread with them, and the wages offered are, as a rule, a large discount on those offered to men. Political economy has nothing to do with the exceptional cases in which this is most evident,—only the common, habitual idea, that the wages of women must be kept down; and that, to do it, the value of superior labor must not be recognized, as in the case of the female teacher quoted in the text.
In the Report of St. Mary's Dispensary for Women and Children, in Marylebone, I find Miss Elizabeth Garrett mentioned as the General Medical Attendant. The Devonshire-square Nursing Institute, established, I think, by Mrs. Fry, twenty years ago, sends out nurses on the request of clergymen. Several sisters give their whole time to it.
King's College pays one thousand pounds annually for nurses to St. John's Home.
St. Thomas's Hospital, where nurses are being trained by the Nightingale fund, rejected fifty applications in six months.
The excitement in England has had a wholesome effect upon colonial action. The East-Indian Government has lately given Lady Canning twenty thousand rupees, to assist in building a home for the Calcutta Nurses' Institute; and a movement is making in India to educate native women as physicians. See, in the Appendix, the account of Miss Nightingale's School for Nurses in Liverpool.
Since the above was written, in January, 1867, three ladies have taken their degrees at Apothecaries' Hall, having passed a good examination, in Euclid, arithmetic, English history, and Latin. The cost of these degrees has not transpired.
[6] See Appendix.
[7] Manners and Customs of Greece, vol. i. p. 337.