Thus even at this date all over the world large numbers of women continued to practice obstetrics, largely as “midwives.” But a considerable number of women also practiced general medicine, especially where they did not come in conflict with medical or civil laws, which were designed to exclude all except the practitioners of the dominant medical group. The passage of laws regulating the practice of medicine is undoubtedly actuated by a sincere desire to raise the standard of medical practice throughout the community, but only too frequently these laws give power to a group of medical oligarchs, a fact which I was many times to observe later.
The best known of the last class of women just described is Dr. Harriot K. Hunt, who was at this date preparing for publication her autobiography which appeared under the title of Glances and Glimpses.
Dr. Blackwell was graduated from the Geneva (New York) Medical College, in 1849, and she then went to Europe to obtain the clinical experience which was denied to women in America, returning to see her sister Emily also become a regular M.D. (1854).
The two sisters procured a charter from the New York Legislature to establish the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children, both feeling the absolute necessity for continued clinical experience before offering their services to suffering humanity at large. Dr. Emily then went to Europe for special clinical study and she was still there. Dr. Blackwell said to me, “My sister has just gone to Europe to finish what she began here, and you have come here to finish what you began in Europe.”
And here I am obliged to give a short statement of the mode of study in the medical profession at that time.
The young student had to find a “preceptor,” a physician of good standing, with whom he studied the preliminaries necessary for entering a medical college or school. He also visited patients with this preceptor and assisted the latter in every way possible. The student thus became familiar with the details of practice even before matriculating regularly in a medical college. I have met young men who had been for years such assistants to physicians, and who later entered college merely to become legally qualified.
Any student who could bring certificates from an acceptable preceptor could easily procure a diploma by attending the medical school of any college for two short successive winter sessions, often of only sixteen weeks’ duration.
This method of clinical experience in private practice made hospital attendance by the student seem almost unnecessary. Even opportunities for attendance at dispensaries, when such existed in the larger cities, were not much sought after by the young men, they feeling that they could gain all the required knowledge by attaching themselves to preceptors.
Society, and indeed civilization in general, was in a primitive stage of development, in spite of material elegance, yes, even of luxury and refined manners. It would take a long time to describe the great change which has taken place in the educational and intellectual development of the people in the United States and the increased facilities which they have for the higher and deeper studies.
The time which it would take with a monarchically limited people to advance any social improvement or reform would require generations, while under free, unlimited social laws, months instead of years will serve to bring about the desired evolution.