The house at 14 Warren Street (changed to Warrenton Street the following year) was now used for the medical and surgical wards and for the offices of the assistant physician and the matron. Of the Pleasant Street houses, No. 13 was the house of the resident physician, No. 15 contained the Lying-in Wards, and No. 17 was given over to the Dispensary.

Once more the course of the Hospital becomes the uneventful one of quiet, continuous growth, and Dr. Zakrzewska as attending physician concludes her report for 1867-1868, as follows:

The Hospital and Dispensary are established; many physicians who a few years ago were opposed to female practitioners have not only become convinced of their professional capability, but several have been willing to give instruction and aid in any way possible.

The Massachusetts General Hospital has been admitting the few students whom we consider under our guidance and instruction. We have good reason to hope that this friendly relation will continue. Harvard College is still closed against us for theoretical instruction, but I do not think that free, liberal America will remain long behind another republic across the ocean—I mean Switzerland.

One of our students who made application to the University of Zurich, received the following reply:

Zurich, May 6, 1868.

Dear Madam:

I reply to your letter of March 17 which has just come to hand. I have the honor to inform you that there exists in this University no lawful impediment to the matriculation of female students, and that female students enjoy equal advantages with male students.

There is here full liberty, and every one may attend the lectures as long as he may desire. The majority of the students need from five to five and a half years’ course before taking their degree.

In answer to other questions of yours, I send you some printed regulations of the University.

I am, with great esteem,

Yours,

Biermer,
Professor and Dean of Medical Faculty.

The University of Zurich is known as one where only men of the highest standing in the profession are employed to instruct the students. Such names as Moleschott, Griesinger, Breslau, von Graefe, Horner, Mayer, and Billroth are familiar as authorities in the medical world, and these men have been, and still are, the most influential teachers there.

In Paris, also, women can have the same advantages as men. And in America the time is rapidly approaching when through the deeds and words of women the profession at large will be convinced of the wisdom of following the same course.

A breath of encouragement was at this time wafted from New York in a speech by Dr. Willard Parker, this noted physician saying at the opening of the Woman’s College of the New York Infirmary, which took place on November 2, 1868:

Woman has always been a helpmeet to man and to a great extent is a co-worker with him, and as such in medicine, I bid her Godspeed. If it is charged that women who study medicine are sometimes unfit for practice, I would answer—so are many men. A doctor is born, not made, and is, naturally, found in both sexes.

In the summer of 1868, Dr. Lucy E. Sewall, who was continuing as resident physician, took a vacation of three months in England and France for recreation and study. In a letter to her, dated July 16, Dr. Zakrzewska writing from her new address, No. 1041 Washington Street, says:

I have hardly anything to report except that we have had intensely hot weather since you left, such as I have not experienced since the first year of my arrival in America. The thermometer stood at ninety-six degrees in our parlor in Roxbury, and we felt that we were cooling ourselves when we entered there. Yesterday, it was one hundred and three in the shade out of doors.... I envied you very much when I read how cool you were in Halifax and thereabouts. I am sure I would have been very glad to play the lady with you. You will now understand how pleasant it is to be away from business for a while.

Dr. Buckel will write you all about the Hospital. You need not worry in the least as all is going on well. At our last Hospital meeting Mrs. Cheney reported, “I feared very much for the Hospital when I saw how heartbroken the patients were after Dr. Sewall’s departure. But a day after they sang the praises of Dr. Buckel as loudly as if they had never known Dr. Sewall.”

To this report I added, “It is the old story although a very unsatisfactory one. Our places are filled just as soon as we leave them. And we all have to learn that lesson and feel comforted by it because it is thus that the world does not get off its hinges.”

The day before yesterday, we had our housewarming—I missed you very much.... The heat has prevented me from going to Melrose [Dr. Sewall’s home] so far; all we can do is to live and to fan....

Within the two years just closing, the financial pressure began to be relieved and four free beds were established in the medical wards. About the same time, it was decided to charge at the Dispensary a fee of twenty-five cents to such of the patients as were able to pay this amount. The results exceeded all expectations. The patients acknowledged the fairness of the rule and yet the really poor were not shut out.

Nevertheless, it was at the close of this year, as already noted, that the Hospital was obliged to borrow money to meet its outstanding debts.

This was truly the darkest hour and it was followed by the dawn of which the proverb speaks. As the sunshine of help from the community grew stronger, it was possible steadily to extend the ministrations of the Hospital to the more dependent, so the report of 1898-1899 was able to state: