If women are to practise as physicians, some means should be taken to protect society against those who are imperfectly educated. What a degree means will always be doubtful, until men and women receive their degrees in the same way and from the same hands. America stands greatly in need of this protection. Crowds of unauthorized, half-educated women, some of whom have not been ashamed to cross the Atlantic, and have attracted such sympathy abroad as only a different class of students deserve, are thronging the valley of the Mississippi, as well as haunting with their empirical pretensions the purlieus of the seaboard cities. If men had received properly trained women into their colleges and medical societies, this would not have happened. Cannot such physicians as Dr. Zakrzewska, Dr. Blackwell, Dr. Sewall, Dr. Tyng, and Dr. Ross of Milwaukie, unite to organize a Woman's Medical Society, with an examining board whose diploma shall attest the character of the member? Dr. Storer's admirable pamphlet entitled "Why not?" points out an evil, which will never be remedied by thrusting empirical women into the positions now held by unscrupulous men.[5]
And what have we to say of our own country? Has the American standard reached a safe altitude, or must we admit that it has the same limitations? A popular width of view we have certainly gained in the last half-century; but have we made secure progress in the right direction? Some eighty years ago, John Adams wrote of his wife, "This lady was more beautiful than Lady Russell, had a brighter genius, more information, and more refined taste, and was at least her equal in virtues of the heart, in fortitude and firmness of character, in resignation to the will of Heaven, and in all the virtues and graces of the Christian life. Like Lady Russell, she never discouraged her husband from running all hazards for the salvation of his country's liberties; she was willing to share with me, and that her children should share with us both, in all the dangerous consequences we had to hazard."
Will America ever offer to the world a nobler picture? Is it at this moment above or below our average ideal? "With such a mother," said John Quincy Adams, in Boston, less than twenty years ago, "with such a mother, it has been the perpetual instruction of my life to love and reverence the female sex; but I have been taught also—and the lesson is still more deeply impressed—I have been taught not to flatter them." Noble words! Gentlemen to whom it falls to deliver annually Normal-school addresses would do well to take a lesson from them. They would wince a little, could they hear the criticisms of the indignant girls upon their actual advice and praise. How would these men have liked it, if at fifteen they had been addressed as fathers of an unborn generation, whose especial duty it was to adapt themselves to this sphere? And why should men complain, that women look to marriage, and marriage only, as salvation, if the whole tenor of their own influence is used to emphasize it as woman's "manifest destiny"? "Are there not two married, and where is the one?" What propriety is there in assuming, in advance, that the sphere which married life opens has a stronger hold on one sex than the other?
We have said enough to show, that in Germany, France, England, and America, the ideal standard of education was sufficiently high over a century ago. Why has not such actual progress been made as might have been expected?
Because public opinion has constantly thwarted the ideal growth. Educated women have, for the most part, wanted courage to do what is right, unless sustained by men. In education, for the duties of which they are acknowledged to be superior, they have never insisted on the changes they knew to be necessary, but have uniformly succumbed to the masculine idea. Shall we blame them? Is a conflict in the heart of a family a pleasant thing? Certainly, the hand which the magnanimous sympathy of men has set free cannot cast the first stone. The slowness and faithlessness of men too often paralyzes the best efforts of women. The faith which Isabella showed Columbus, would be, at this moment, a grateful return from them. Charles Lamb has shown us how valueless to the working woman the support of delicate sentiment may be. The ringing of the glasses round a table dulled his exquisite ear to the fine spheral harmonies it had once caught. He broke, in an after-dinner tilt, the very lance with which he had pierced to the heart of the enemy's shield. If the ideal standard makes no headway against public opinion, what encouragement to our hopes does common life offer?
As exquisite beauty of water, hill, and dale lies hidden in many a country hamlet, unheeded by the guidebook, unsuspected by the traveller on the turnpike road; so, in society, self-sacrifice, noble daring, and saintly perseverance, nestle behind the prominent failure. We find them everywhere, except where we should most naturally look for them.
There is in England a Society for the Promotion of Female Education in the East. It undertakes to do abroad precisely the work that its individual members refuse to assist the community to do at home. Consequently, their printed schemes read like satires on their individual convictions. In the year 1835, Miss Alice Holliday called the attention of this society to the condition of women in Egypt and Abyssinia. She asked their sanction to her attempt to educate the women of Egypt, with an ultimate view to those of Abyssinia, whose condition chiefly interested her. She had pursued a severe course of study, unfriended and alone, before she asked this help. She had studied the severe sciences, the antiquities and customs of the countries themselves, and the Arabic and Coptic languages. She was fortunate also in stirring the enthusiasm of a certain Miss Rogers, who, unable to teach, was yet willing to accompany her friend, and devote her fortune to their mutual support. As these ladies wanted no money from the society they consulted, they were received as agents without difficulty, and reached Alexandria in the autumn of 1836. At this time Miss Holliday wrote: "The condition of the Coptic women is truly lamentable. Their abodes are like the filthiest holes in London; yet their persons are decked out in the most costly apparel. I have seen ladies sitting at their latticed windows, their heads and necks adorned with pearls and diamonds of the highest value, their bodies covered with the richest silks and velvets, while the room they occupied was the most disgusting scene you can imagine. Smoking and sleeping occupy their time. Female schools have never had an existence, and the prejudice against them is very strong."
We can recall the argument used in those Eastern lands, and the answer which civilization offered. "I am afraid to teach my women," said the Turk: "they are already crafty and impure. To gather them into public places is to offer a premium on immodesty, and a temptation to misconduct." The Christian answered proudly, "We can trust our women; yes, even in Paris and London."