No woman student of medicine can safely ignore this subject. It is a vital one for us, and only a true answer to it will make our entrance into the profession a marked advance in social progress.
I do not attempt to disguise the difficulty of laying down the law of right and wrong in medicine; not only because medicine, as every other part of social life, is subject to the growth of evolution, but because in a state of society that has not yet succeeded in moulding itself on the fundamental principles of Christianity, we are involved in faulty social conditions which prevent us from embodying our moral perceptions in every phase of practical life. But, remember, thought and endeavour may live a righteous life, no matter what faulty conditions surround us. When we have a clear view of right and wrong, we can mentally repudiate whatever appears to violate the moral law. We can strenuously resist the deadening force of habitual wrong-doing, and never cease the effort to find some way of shaping our mental protest into practical opposition to all forms of immorality.
You will see in the course of your medical studies—particularly if you study abroad—much to shock your enlightened intellect and revolt your moral sense. In practice also you will be subjected to strong temptations of the most varied character. But just for the reason that as women we ought to see more clearly the broken bridge or approaching danger, in the onward rush of the male intellect, I now dwell on our special responsibility, and shall endeavour to give the reasons for it.
My object is not to limit, but to enlarge our work in medicine, when I seek to define our ideal. It is true that the great object of this human life of ours is essentially one for every human being, man or woman, barbarous or civilized. It is to become a nobler creature, and to help all others to a higher human status during this brief span of earthly life. But as variety in unity is a law of creation, so there are infinite methods of progress, producing harmony instead of monotony, when the individual or classes of individuals are true to the guiding principles of their own nature.
For the ideal of every creature must be found in the relation of its own nature to the universe around it. Right and wrong are based upon the sound understanding of this positive foundation. It is this fact of variety in unity, in the progress of the race, which justifies the hope that the entrance of women into the medical profession will advance that profession.
In order to carry out this noble aspiration, we must understand what the special contribution is, that women may make to medicine, what the aspect of morality which they are called upon to emphasize.
It is not blind imitation of men, nor thoughtless acceptance of whatever may be taught by them that is required, for this would be to endorse the widespread error that the race is men. Our duty is loyalty to right and opposition to wrong, in accordance with the essential principles of our own nature.
Now, the great essential fact of woman’s nature is the spiritual power of maternity.
We should do miserable injustice to this great fact if, looking at it with semiblind eyes, we only see the shallow material aspect of this remarkable speciality. It is the great spiritual life underlying the physical which gives us our true womanly ideal.
What are the spiritual principles necessarily involved in this special creation of one-half the race—principles which lie within the material facts of gestation and the care of infancy and childhood, which constitute the distinctive material domain of women?