It grieves me much to know of these constantly recurring illnesses, crippling so valuable a life. What a satire it is to call our science ‘The Art of Healing’!
My provincial trip has been very interesting to me, as bringing me into contact with a great number of people in different classes of society, showing me everywhere a great want and an eager reception of what I have to give. From Leeds, Nottingham, and Edinburgh came earnest invitations to lecture. A message sent to my sister from Edinburgh stated a total revolution in womanly sentiment, and that her reception would now be as hearty as it was formerly hostile. A student from Cambridge told me the young men were warmly in our favour.
Mothers beg me for instruction in health. Young ladies listen eagerly to the idea of work. Three desired to become medical students. Wise old physicians ask me to ‘break up’ certain fashionable London practices by substituting our own practice. Thus from many different points of view a deep interest awakens, but everywhere the London experience was repeated—viz. conversion; women thinking themselves hostile, but receiving the idea when they knew what it really meant. But the sympathy is necessarily intellectual only—practical reception and familiarity with the new position of women must necessarily be of slow growth. It must be, in fact, a life work. The children of the present generation will grow up accustomed to women doctors, respecting and trusting them, but the large majority of the adults will only hold a half-faith, and this will be a gradual growth. I am convinced that there would not be a rapidly brilliant success in England, such as some enthusiastic friends dream of.
There is a call for the work, an admirable field, but the work itself is a very slow one, the steady conquest of innumerable difficulties—a creation, in fact. The hospital scheme I think premature.
I had promised to bring it forward, and have done so, but I believe, to be successful, it must spring, as in America, out of private practice. I have no faith in its rapid success.
My own opinions and plans, then, may be briefly summed up.
There is a valuable and much-needed work to be done in England. Slow, uphill work, not remunerative (my tour was an expense to me); a repetition, to a great extent, of our last seven years’ work. It would need us both to do it well; and so greatly does England want just our experience that, were it possible, I should counsel the transference of our work to this side of the water. But this we cannot do, and I shall therefore endeavour to prepare others for English work by receiving and educating students in America. In America, as here, it is a life work. I shall go back to create the institutions of which we have planted only the little germ. In ten years’ time we may hope for permanent institutions there, worthy of their object, but we can during that time efficiently aid earnest young Englishwomen for their work here. Mrs. Bracebridge, who is much interested in this plan, is coming to London in Trinity Week for the special purpose of becoming acquainted with Mrs. Gurney and Mrs. Battin. They will form a committee for appointing and testing students. There will be a good deal of work connected with these arrangements, but directly it is completed I leave, as I am much wanted across the water.
I shall see you, my dear friend, before I leave (about June 25). I shall be sad to say good-bye, but I know that distance will not necessarily part us.
73 Gloucester Terrace, London: June 17, 1859.
Dear E.,—I have only one piece of information to send, but that is of the highest importance—viz. that the Medical Council has registered me as physician! I have just learned the news from my lawyer, Mr. Shaen, who made the application, and at once forwarded the necessary fees, that I may be published in the first register. This will be of immeasurable value to the future of medical women in England....