Nearly (if not quite) two thirds of all our work is given in charity ... though we are slow to give charity indiscriminately but would have each one make some return, however small, for benefits received, thereby aiding her to keep her self-respect.
The treasurer’s report for the year of 1868 notes the receipt of one thousand dollars which was collected by Miss Sophia Jex-Blake for supporting four free beds. Sophia Jex-Blake came to this country as a student of Dr. Sewall and was a resident student at the Hospital. She went later to the newly opened Woman’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary, and still later she returned to Great Britain and became the leader in the struggle which attended the attempt to open to women the medical course at the University of Edinburgh—reference to which has been made by Dr. Zakrzewska in a previous chapter. The attempt failed and she went to Switzerland where the men students at the University of Berne seemed to find no difficulty in permitting women to study medicine with them.[14]
The year of 1869 was especially noteworthy for the burden which was lifted from Dr. Zakrzewska’s mind by the official return of Dr. Samuel Cabot to the consulting staff of the Hospital, though ever since his formal resignation in June, 1866, he had continued to advise the women who, against almost insurmountable obstacles, were struggling to give the surgical help called for by the increasing numbers of their patients.
If one requires expert teaching and constant practice to learn to diagnosticate and prescribe for medical ailments, it is much more difficult for one to learn to diagnosticate and prescribe for surgical ailments, since a surgical prescription demands trained skill of the hands as well as of the brain. And opportunities for acquiring this trained skill of the hands are at the best very limited in number and very expensive in detail, while they also require a very exacting environment and an entourage trained to the highest degree. And they are, further, beset on all sides by dangers which are momentous and immediate as well as more remote.
It is a fine index of the essential quality of these earlier women that they were not daunted by the difficulties of the situation, and that the conservative spirit of the sex was not too much affrighted by the dangers which on every hand confronted them and their patients.
Under the necessities of the situation, a friendly surgeon of the eminence of Dr. Samuel Cabot was a veritable tower of strength. Well might Dr. Zakrzewska, with gratitude that failed of words to express itself, say year after year in her annual report as attending physician, “To Dr. Samuel Cabot, we are again indebted for advice and instruction in all the important surgical cases which have occurred during the year.”
Dr. Anita E. Tyng who had spent her apprenticeship as assistant surgeon to the Hospital, had been obliged to resign her position there, but Dr. Zakrzewska and Dr. Sewall were ably assisted in this branch of practice by Dr. C. Annette Buckel who had been assistant physician for the past three years and who, having particular ability for surgery, desired to specialize in that direction. They were now aided also by Dr. Helen Morton[15] who had returned from Paris and had become connected with the Dispensary.
With the arrival of such capable assistants among the younger women who had all been her students, Dr. Zakrzewska felt justified in relinquishing some of her arduous duties. And now her leading assistant, Dr. Lucy E. Sewall, resigned as resident physician (a position which she had held since 1863) and was appointed second attending physician. She thus divided the Hospital service with Dr. Zakrzewska, each being on duty every alternate three months.
Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D.
(About 1870)