Woman's Profession as Mother and Educator, with Views in Opposition to Woman Suffrage

by Catharine Esther Beecher

I have since found that there was more truth in the remark then I was then willing to admit. Still, I cannot help thinking that we should have such Lectures in every medical school, if for no other purpose but to enable its graduates to heal the sick—confident that more can be gained in this way by a thorough knowledge of Hygiene, than by any other means whatever. No drug or medicine is as powerful for good in disease as a wise advantage of Nature's laws.

We spent in one Session over three weeks in the study of Mercury, its different preparations, effects, etc.; not one hour in learning the value of Light, Air, Sleep, Food, and Clothing. The result was we know much about Calomel, and literally nothing about the Laws of Health; so we sat, something over four hundred students, for five or six hours

daily, in a room—an amphitheatre—the seats extending from the floor to the ceiling—so small, that another hundred could not possibly be packed into it—and not a window opened all winter—no ventilation whatever—a regular "black hole of Calcutta"—the air heavy, foul, offensive with bad breaths—the odors of tobacco, liquor, onions—poisonous in the extreme—not a fresh cheek among the four hundred. Many of the students drank; most of them used tobacco, coffee, sausages, pork, in short lived like barbarians. A large proportion of them were ill all the time, and some died before the session closed, others soon after, and many since. The professors themselves were often ailing—not very healthy men. If any of my readers will step into any of the medical lectures in any of the colleges of this city, some winter afternoon, he will be able to verify the truth of this description. Their presiding genius seems to have no respect for fresh air, sunlight—in short for the laws of health. How then shall these schools inspire respect for these laws in others? How can they teach them when they know so little of them?

Dr. Willard Parker, of New York, in a recent public address also has lamented the fact that a Woman's Medical College should be the first one sustaining a Chair for instructing in Hygiene, as if it were a conceded fact that it is not the business of physicians to prevent disease in a community, but only to cure their patients with medicines.

Is it not a proper time and measure for the women of our country to ask for benefactions, both private and legislative, to secure equal advantage for their professional duty as health-keepers, such as have so long and so liberally been bestowed on men to train them for their professions?

Believing that such a measure would meet wide approval, the following form of petition is drawn up, which might be used in every State:

To the honorable members of the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of ——:

We the undersigned, ladies of the State of —— and gentlemen citizens of the same, respectfully petition that an appropriation be made to endow one department of a Woman's University under charge of the Trustees of —— Seminary; the object of which shall be to train school-teachers and house-keepers in all that relates to health in schools and families, and that this endowment be made equal to what has been or may be given to endow Scientific Schools for young men; and also that this be given on condition that the citizens of the place give an equal sum to promote the scientific and practical training of women for their distinctive professions.

It is believed that there is not a single state in the Union where such a petition signed by a large

portion of the intelligent women of the state, would fail. The difficulty is not that the fathers, husbands, and brothers are not ready to bestow all that such women would unite in asking, but rather that women do not so feel the importance of such measures as to unite in such a petition.