We are happy in drawing into our schools a large number of capable women—women who may not only be a gain as physicians, but who may exert a most beneficial influence on the profession itself, if they bring into it fresh and independent life.
It is much to be regretted that our students are now compelled to go abroad for the completion of their medical education, for methods of study injurious to morality are exaggerated abroad. The abuse of the poor as subjects of experimental investigation, in whose treatment all decent reserves of modesty are so often stripped away; the contempt felt for the mass of women where chastity is not recognised as an obligatory male virtue; the atrocious cruelty of their experiments on animals—all these results of active intellect, unguided by large morality, as seen in full force abroad, make me deplore the necessity which drives so many of our best but inexperienced students away, in search of more efficient training than they can obtain at home.
The two special dangers against which I would warn our students are:
First, the blind acceptance of what is called ‘authority’ in medicine.
Second, the narrow and superficial materialism which prevails so widely amongst scientific men.
In relation to the first point—viz., distrust of authority—although I fully recognise the respect which is always due to the position of the teacher, and the consideration to be shown to all who are called ‘heads of the profession,’—I would very strongly urge you to remember that medicine is necessarily an uncertain science.
Life in its essence we cannot grasp. We understand it only through its effects, and all human judgment is fallible. Careful and wise observation bring us ever nearer to a knowledge of the conditions which are necessary for human well-being; but experience compels us to recognise the constant failure of theory or dogmatism in dealing with any of the infinitely varied phases of life. In medicine, we are forced to recognise the errors in diagnosis committed even by distinguished men, and to suffer grievous disappointment from the failure of remedies supposed to cure the sick. We cannot fail to note the contradictory results of experiments, the same facts differing according to the observer—one fact upsetting another, and one theory driven out by a later one. This uncertainty resulting from experiment, is strikingly exemplified by the battle of experts about the effects of arsenic displayed in a late criminal trial. Or consider the frequent errors of statistics (a branch of knowledge that enters largely into medical science), owing to the imperfect data on which they are often based, important deductions being drawn from them which are logically indisputable, but entirely false, from the unsound premisses on which they rest. Thus, the death-rate of London, though commonly stated at 23 or 24 per 1,000, is really an unknown quantity, on account of the enormous influx of fresh life and the efflux of broken-down lives.
Our women students especially need caution as to the blind acceptance of authority. Young women come into such a new and stimulating intellectual atmosphere when entering upon medical study, that they breathe it with keen delight; they are inclined to accept with enthusiasm the brilliant theory or statement which the active intellect of a clever teacher lays before them. They are accustomed to accept the government and instruction of men as final, and it hardly occurs to them to question it. It is not the custom to realize the positive fact, that methods and conclusions formed by one-half of the race only, must necessarily require revision as the other half of humanity rises into conscious responsibility.
It is a difficult lesson also, fully to recognise the limitations of the human intellect, which recognition, nevertheless, is necessary before we can grasp this important and positive fact in human experience—viz., that the Moral must guide the Intellectual, or there is no halting-place in the rapid incline to error. The brilliant professor will always exercise an undue influence over the inexperienced student, and particularly over the woman student. I therefore strongly urge the necessity of cherishing a mild scepticism respecting the dicta of so-called medical science, during the period of student life—scepticism not in relation to truth—that noble object which we hope to approach even more nearly—but scepticism in relation to the imperfect or erroneous statement of what is often presented as truth.
Of this one guiding fact, as a basis of judgment, we may be quite sure—viz., that whatever revolts our moral sense as earnest women, is not in accordance with steady progress; it cannot be permanently true, and no amount of clever or logical sophistry can make it true. It will be a real service that we, as medical women, may render to the profession if we search out—calmly, patiently, but resolutely—why what revolts our enlightened sense of right and wrong is not true. We shall thus bring to light the profound reason why the moral faculties are antecedent or superior to the intellectual faculties, and why the sense of right and wrong must govern medical research and practice, as well as all other lines of human effort.