PECK'S SUNSHINE.
FEMALE DOCTORS WILL NEVER DO.
A St. Louis doctor factory recently turned out a dozen female doctors. As long as the female doctors were confined to one or two in the whole country, and these were experimental, the Sun held its peace, and did not complain; but now that the colleges are engaged in producing female doctors as a business, we must protest, and in so doing will give a few reasons why female doctors will not prove a paying branch of industry.
In the first place, if they doctor anybody it must be women, and three-fourths of the women had rather have a male doctor. Suppose these colleges turn out female doctors until there are as many of them as there are male doctors, what have they got to practice on?
A man, if there was nothing the matter with him, might call in a female doctor; but if he was sick as a horse—and when a man is sick he is sick as a horse—the last thing he would have around would be a female doctor. And why? Because when a man wants a female fumbling around him he wants to feel well. He don't want to be bilious, or feverish, with his mouth tasting like cheese, and his eyes bloodshot, when a female is looking over him and taking an account of stock.
Of course these female doctors are all young and good looking, and if one of them came into a sick room where a man was in bed, and he had chills, and was as cold as a wedge, and she should sit up close to the side of the bed, and take hold of his hand, his pulse would run up to a hundred and fifty and she would prescribe for a fever when he had chilblains. Then if he died she could be arrested for malpractice. O, you can't fool us on female doctors.
A man who has been sick and had male doctors, knows just how he would feel to have a female doctor come tripping in and throw her fur lined cloak over a chair, take off her hat and gloves, and throw them on a lounge, and come up to the bed with a pair of marine blue eyes, with a twinkle in the corner, and look him in the wild, changeable eyes, and ask him to run out his tongue. Suppose he knew his tongue was coated so it looked like a yellow Turkish towel, do you suppose he would want to run out five or six inches of the lower end of it, and let that female doctor put her finger on it, to see how it was furred? Not much! He would put that tongue up into his cheek, and wouldn't let her see it for twenty-five cents admission.
We have all seen doctors put their hands under the bed-clothes and feel a man's feet to see if they were cold. If a female doctor should do that, it would give a man cramps in the legs.