Dr. Raymond's report at the end of the first year seems to have been printed in pamphlet form and issued to the world at large. Again press notices abound, all generally with appreciative comment.
The "Round Table," an ambitious weekly, 1863-1869, saw fit to be funny and I give a few paragraphs in illustration:
"We confess to an unfavorable impression by the style in which the Report is made. It is in bad taste, florid, turgid and pedantic. The author has written it on the back of Pegasus and the winged horse does not bound beneath him…. This modern system of female education has grown out of the miserable philosophic dogma of the mental equality of the sexes, the offspring of the combined weakness of the weaker sex and the greater weakness of the stronger sex. Woman is not the equal of man. She is immeasurably his superior…. In her appointed sphere woman walks a queen, but she claims neither the prerogatives of man nor the ability to use them. Drag not the young girl into the wide orbit of Jupiter, but lead her in the narrower and more befitting sphere in which moves the silvery car of Venus. Banish the barbarous curriculum proposed by your committee! Let not the time be ruinously spent in the attempt to master the dead languages, the higher mathematics, metaphysics, political economy and similar studies. The rudiments of these branches might be taught, but for them we would have no "chairs." The belles lettres department is the appropriate field for the well educated woman…. Having thus put out of the college door four out of the nine chairs—and very deferentially and respectfully we have done it—we have a word to say regarding the occupancy of the remaining ones. We strongly object to having men seated in them. The Report does indeed speak of lady assistants, but we insist on a reversal. The ladies should be the principals and the gentlemen the assistants. The proper educator of woman is woman. Vassar Female College is the sphere of Venus and no Jupiter has any business there. Who but Flora should preside in her own garden where the rosebuds and young lilies grow, inviting her choice still in their culture."
This is quite enough and unbelievable now, but absurd as it is, it voiced a large part of popular opinion then existing.
Another vexed question in the earliest days was that of health,—that women were unfitted to take the higher education and that their health would be undermined in consequence. The speakers on our commencement stage afforded convincing argument by their looks of the falsity of the argument. I remember hearing one June an enthusiastic person in the audience say of an "honor girl," of exceptionally attractive personality and vigorous health, as she left the platform,—"She had a capital essay and delivered it well, but if she had done nothing more than stand up there and let the people look at her for five or ten minutes, it would have paid, and buried this health discussion forever."
Dr. Avery.
Among those who contributed so much to the early life of the college and its success, the name of Alida C. Avery cannot afford to be overlooked. She came in 1865 as the resident physician, was a strong member of the Faculty, high in the confidence and trust of Dr. Raymond and Miss Lyman and sharing with them the responsibility of that important formative period. So close were the friendly and confidential relations among these three "powers that be"—hardly ever one appearing without the other—that some irreverent students dubbed them "The Trinity."
DR. ALIDA C. AVERY
1865
It was a good deal to organize and maintain such a department as hers in the face of popular opinion at that time, and I think much of her stiff professional etiquette resulted from the idea of upholding the equality of women physicians with men in the same calling, and being over sensitive to indifference and snubs. The early women pioneers in medical work did not find it a bed of roses, but they persevered. When the Boston Medical College for women was started in 1858, there was not a single graduated woman physician in the country. In 1863 there were two hundred and fifty.