It seems unnecessary to comment on the fitness of woman for the platform. She has exhibited a singular adaptation to this, the most public of all possible lives, and knowing, as I do, personally, most of the female lecturers in the country, I would add, that the platform has not demoralized them. The leading female lecturers in America are among the most womanly women whom I have the honor to know. The field is immense, and would welcome many additions.
Lectures upon health to women, by women, are very useful, and have almost uniformly proved a success, pecuniarily and otherwise. I should be rejoiced to see many hundreds added to the corps of woman lecturers upon woman's health. It is a profession for which there are now abundant opportunities to prepare.
LIBRARIANS.
A very large part of the work and remuneration incidental to the management of libraries is in the hands of women. But many places are still occupied by men, who might be spared for more muscular forms of labor.
PHYSICIANS.
If I had been writing this work twenty years ago, it would have been necessary to argue the fitness and propriety of women doctors. Happily, such an argument is now unnecessary. All but such as live in darkness welcome women to the medical profession. Already they have become professors in medical colleges in this country, as they were for many hundred years in Europe.
Whether a woman has nerve enough to perform a grave surgical operation, I do not care to inquire.
No thoughtful man who has watched her in the character of nurse, even when she is uneducated, will entertain a doubt about her happy qualifications for the management of the sick.
The most important responsibilities of a physician have reference to ventilation, cleanliness, bathing, feeding,—in brief, to nursing; and no one but a stupid, obstinate man would suggest her inferiority for such services.
I have no doubt that, finally, the medical profession will fall almost exclusively into the hands of women, as its most important part, nursing, already has.