Then later came, last but not least, the temptation to go as missionary to the Cherokee Indians. I have not a doubt that in that direction I could have developed my independence and have been extremely useful, had I not been influenced by people in whose judgment I had full confidence—a rare thing in young, impulsive, enthusiastic natures, to accept the advice of others. I was bridled and held in check, not by a clear vision but by influences which overpowered me as the magnet does the iron which it attracts.
Also, do I consider it fair and right and not out of place to speak of the lecturers and teachers connected with the medical department of the Western Reserve College. At the time as well as in the following years, I often heard depreciatory remarks about our professors and their methods of instruction.
There was no doubt that a very few of the students in attendance had a collegiate education superior to that which some of the professors might have had in their younger days, for instance, Dr. John J. Delamater, then over seventy years old, and Dr. J. B. Kirtland, not far from seventy, both of them the kindest of men, true philanthropists and men of a natural genius who had attained a high position among their fellow men.
They had had, perhaps, less advantages in booklearning when young, yet they had the power of inspiring youth to a higher and more thorough study, and their influence in developing the thinking powers of the students was something remarkable. Originality of thought, reasoning and deduction was the example given to us by them. And the form of their teachings was not so much memorizing prescribed methods as the teaching of the students how to observe closely all the phenomena of the case of illness in question and how to study the smallest details, physical, mental and moral, in order to find the primary cause. Such instruction can never be gained from books, although medical literature has now begun to attempt it. Many of the students ridiculed the hints and directions given, while to others they were the inspiration for deeper study even after the degree was obtained.
I know it was so in my case, and works like Kölliker’s Comparative Anatomy, later Virchow’s Cellular Pathology, and works on biology, embryology and histology became really the foundation upon which I built my practice, taking little heed of recommendations of how to treat cases or how to administer doses of this or that old or new remedy or system of remedies. I did my own reasoning, I made my own deductions, in as logical a method as possible as the cases revealed themselves to my understanding through physical or psychical symptoms. Originality and spontaneity of mental action are injured by unthinking cramming of mind and memory with booklearning.
It is for these reasons that I love to think, with gratitude and a deep feeling of honor, of the men who then constituted the medical faculty, although two of them were greatly annoyed by the presence of the four women students and did not hesitate to manifest their feelings in word and deed, without being offensive.
Indeed, even this feeling that our presence was objectionable was of use in our training, as it gave us a strong foretaste of the prejudice which we were to meet in our professional lives. And it helped us in many ways to develop the courage which we were to need in meeting the offensive behavior of many physicians and students with whom we were obliged to come in contact when trying to seek fellowship in private practice, or to increase our knowledge, or to gain admittance to public institutions.
CHAPTER XVIII
Returns to New York to begin practice as an M.D.—Insuperable difficulties encountered by a woman physician in finding an office to rent in New York—Dr. Zakrzewska opens her office in one of Dr. Blackwell’s parlors—No admission for women to dispensaries or hospitals—Infirmary remains closed for lack of money—Dr. Zakrzewska meets Mary L. Booth who informs the newspapers and social circles of the medical women—In desperation, she goes to Boston to visit Mrs. Severance and to seek contributions for the Infirmary—Meets Mr. Samuel E. Sewall and his daughter Lucy—Her campaign in Boston is successful—Its extension to Portland, Maine, is unsuccessful—She goes to Philadelphia for the same purpose but succeeds only in convincing the Female Medical College there that it must build a hospital for itself—A second visit to Boston to ask help for the long-delayed Infirmary Fair—Meets Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney—Extends campaign to smaller towns around Boston with no success. (Twenty-six years of age: 1856.)
With regret, I made ready to depart from Cleveland. I dreaded the obstacles which I saw and felt were before me and which I must conquer. I fully felt the isolated social position which we four women medical students had occupied in Cleveland. My three companions, belonging to the orthodox church and disapproving of each and every subject discussed in Mr. Mayo’s congregation, had absolutely no outside recreation, “even of the body,” and were shunned even in the boarding house by the inmates there, where we had found an otherwise comfortable home during the first winter, in 1854.