While this act may have involved no betrayal of trust in a legal sense on the part of the trustees, it certainly was an indefensible breach of trust toward those who had contributed funds to enable women to obtain a medical education in accordance with the tenets of the regular school.
During the three years of my life in Boston, from June, 1859, to 1862, it was necessary to educate the laity to consider a woman doctor a necessity in family life; to teach it that a woman can have the endurance and fortitude of body and mind to meet the demands of the profession, night or day, winter or summer, rain or shine. Also, to get the profession accustomed to the thought that women will study and practice medicine honorably and systematically. The attainment of these ends was the real satisfaction of these first years.
Fortunately, the eyes of the laity were fully upon us and criticism was not wanting. With watchful eagerness to grasp at the least mistake or failure, this kind public kept us at the work.
PART II
(1862-1902)
CHAPTER XXVI
A third American beginning—Founding of the New England Hospital for Women and Children—Incorporation for threefold object, to aid women as physicians, nurses and patients—Dr. Zakrzewska is resident, attending and dispensary physician, and in charge of the out-practice—Later, with the aid of paying guests, she is able to establish her home separate from the Hospital—The charitable policy of the Hospital. (1862-1863.)
The quest approaches its goal. But the seeker knew it not, for she writes:
In 1862, after disconnecting myself from the New England Female Medical College in Boston, I stood alone once more, now for the third time, and still at the beginning of my life’s work, as it appeared to me. I was no longer needed in New York, yet nothing could I show as the result of my eight years’ labor.
Standing there alone as she felt herself, her soul filled only with the vision and her movements directed only towards following the gleam, she was all unknowingly already bound to Boston by constraining bands, the weaving of which she had shared with Clotho who spins, and with Lachesis who allots. And around her was gathering the atmosphere towards which her spirit had been yearning, an atmosphere made by kindred souls who needed her for their life’s satisfaction as she needed them for hers.
Many men and women had upheld the New England Female Medical College because they felt called to assist in the evolution of medicine as a field for human endeavor rather than one forbidden to all but male workers. When Marie E. Zakrzewska appeared, some of these men and women realized that they had mistaken the light of the torchbearers for the chariot radiance, and when she concluded to leave the college they decided to go with her and to uphold the determination which she expressed when she said: