The ancient standard of Italy was very high, even in the fifteenth century, if we consider only the literary skill or mathematical culture frequently desired and attained; but Anna Maria Mozzoni may congratulate herself on having given a moral and social impetus to it, which it has never before received. Her wise, considerate, philosophical suggestions will meet the cordial welcome of all right-minded women. If followed out, they will create nobler women than Tambroni or Laura Veratti.[3]
There was no institution in England for the proper training of sick nurses, when Florence Nightingale went to Kaiserworth, a small town near Düsseldorf, on the Rhine, to prepare herself to take charge of the Female Sanitorium. In Great Britain, at this moment, the excess of the female population over the male amounts to five hundred thousand souls; and from all directions we hear the cry, that men need educated assistants. What is the country doing to answer this cry, to educate her five hundred thousand women? In 1825 Dr. Gooch made a noble appeal to the English public, in behalf of educating women to be nurses; but there was no response. When the first school of design was started, a petition was drawn up and signed, praying that women might not be taught, at the expense of the Government, arts which would interfere with the employment of men, and "take the bread out of their mouths"!
Here was an absurd interference with the right of feeding, on the part of these petitioners! As if women did not want bread as well as men; and being, according to authority, the less intelligent and weaker sex, one would suppose that to help them to find it might be a part of that protection to which the Government stands pledged, and for which their property is taxed.
"But," says Mrs. Jameson, "if a petition were drawn up, and handed to medical men, praying that women should not be trained as nurses, nor taught the laws of health, I am afraid there are well-intentioned men, who would, at the time, be induced to sign it; but I believe that twenty, nay, even ten years hence, they would look back upon their signatures with as much disgust and amazement as is now excited by the attempt to explode and sneer down the school at Marlborough House."
Another noble English woman, Mrs. Barbara Leigh Bodichon, in a recent pamphlet called "Woman and Work," gives us the correspondence between Jessie Meriton White and the various medical schools to which she applied for admission. This lady had for several years had charge of two little lame children, one of them her own nephew. The latter, on account of some structural defect, had broken his leg sixteen times. Once, when suitable attendance was not to be had, his aunt set and splintered it herself. The physician who examined it advised her to apply for instruction. She applied to fourteen medical institutions in the city of London, asking sometimes for private anatomical instruction. The correspondence with four colleges in the year 1856 is given,—from the St. George's, the Royal College of Surgeons, St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and the University of London. It amply bears out her assertion, that she was nowhere met with solid objections, or with sensible and logical replies. Sometimes she was told of the indelicacy of her request! The University of London, which was legally bound by its charter to receive her, treated her as coolly as the rest; and in no case was any individual regret expressed for the official decision.
Indelicacy, forsooth! Where can we find it, if not in the impure nature which raises the objection, and the low manner of thinking in general society which consents to receive it? May not the mother, who receives her naked new-born child from the hand of God, fitly ask to understand the liabilities of its little frame? May not the wife, called in seasons of sickness to the most delicate and trying duties, modestly ask for that thorough culture which alone can make those duties easy? And who make this objection? Men who go shuddering and half-drunken into the dissecting room, to scatter vile jests above that prostrate temple of the Holy Ghost! Men who see nothing in the exquisite development of God's creation, but the reflection of their own obscene lives! Students who know no better way to steel their courage to the use of the scalpel than to play at foot-ball on the college green with a human skull, holding its dignity to the level of their own honor![4]
The best hope that Jessie Meriton White has for England is, that some of the most distinguished professors shall consent in time to take classes of female students.
The office of the physician is as holy as that of the priest: formerly they were one; now, at least, the physician should be priest-like. Irreverence and impurity should be banished from medical ranks. The science of medicine stands in great need of the intuitive genius of woman. In pursuing it, she will need the steady caution of man. In this country and in France, earnest and devoted students of both sexes have stood in the dissecting room to the benefit of both. So let them continue to stand, till the spirit is known by its fruits. An impure man is no better than an impure woman; but impurity among men may be concealed. Let it come between the two sexes, and it will be brought at once into antagonism with society, and will meet its true desert. The objection reveals the secrets of the medical college, and is the strongest argument ever offered for the medical education of women.