Having during the past year been granted access to the clinical advantages of the Massachusetts General Hospital, but finding it impossible anywhere in New England to obtain adequate theoretical instruction in Medicine, we now earnestly entreat you to reconsider the subject of the admission of women to the lectures at Harvard Medical School,—such admission being, as we understand, forbidden by no past or present statute of the University.
We do not wish to enter on the vexed question of the capability or non-capability of women for the practice of Medicine, as we believe that time and experience only can furnish its true answer, but we now present our urgent petition that some opportunity may be afforded us for the thorough study of the medical science and art, that we may be granted at least some of the advantages that are not denied to every man, and allowed to show whether we are or are not worthy to make use of them.
We are willing, Gentlemen, to submit to any required examination, to qualify ourselves according to any given standard, to furnish any personal references, and to abide by any restrictions and regulations which may seem proper to the Corporation or to the Faculty.
Several of the Professors having expressed their personal willingness to allow us to attend their lectures, we earnestly request that the Corporation will authorize our admission to those classes into which the respective Professors do not object to receive us, and that, in any case where the Professors does so object, we may be allowed to receive private instruction from some medical gentleman approved by the Faculty, whose lectures shall in our case be held equivalent to those given to the College classes in the same subject.”
“Fighting on for Harvard with a sort of dull persistency,” she records in her diary in March 1868, “expecting another answer from the Corporation on the 11th.
Well, having been in Mass. Hospital for 8 months is something. With all my dull atheism, I do believe somehow the Best will be,—if not this, another. ‘And so far have brought me—to put me to shame’?”
Many entries in the diary about this time prove that she was passing through that veritable “dark night of the soul” that has lain in the path of so many bright spirits of her generation.
“I suppose it isn’t till the whole world—and oneself—breaks away under one that one does know what rubbish one is made of,—‘dust and ashes.... And what fine things I started with! Sir Launfal[[45]] and gilded armour, etc. To conquer all the giants and beam Christian charity everywhere.
I believe old folks do ‘know young folks to be fools.’
A nice result at near 28—Chaos!—with a possible sawbones in futuro!”