When our students expressed their surprise that no books of patients were kept in these large and rich institutions, no records of cases or prescriptions retained, in fact, that no methodical system was followed, these men inquired into our doings and came and looked through our system, by means of which every patient could be traced—the name, residence, diagnosis, treatment and subsequent course. This was a revelation to them; as it was further when I told them that I never allowed in out-door practice any student to give a prescription without signing her name to it. Thus, in case of any question being raised as to mistake in the prescription or mistake by the druggist (who was by no means in those years always a professional person in that line, but often a mere business man who opened an apothecary store), this signature would always tell where to place the responsibility for the writing of the prescription.
At that time I did not realize, as I do now, that these men, like all those whose position is fully established both professionally and financially, could afford to step outside the pale of professional custom and take up what was not recognized in the strict sense of common daily life.
It is the insecure, struggling physician who is hostile to the woman innovator, actually fearing for his bread and butter much more than for any alleged inferiority of intellect or of professional skill in the woman, although these latter have always been used as the war cry against women doctors.
The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Feb. 16, 1853, expresses this point of view in an editorial on female physicians, apropos of Dr. Hunt’s receiving an honorary degree of M.D. from the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania. It says:
It is not a matter to be laughed down as readily as was at first anticipated. The serious inroads made by female physicians in obstetrical business, one of the essential branches of income to a majority of well-established practitioners, makes it natural enough to inquire what course it is best to pursue.
Among the young men at that time, Dr. J. Marion Sims played such a peculiar rôle and one which is so characteristic that I must relate it here. Dr. Sims had come from the South to New York in 1853, poor and unknown. He had perfected an important operation which was based on a German theory, but for which no material to practice on could be found either in Europe or America, until he was able to utilize the negro slave women. Dr. Sims quotes “the great Würtzer, of Germany”; and he told me by word of mouth that he had operated one hundred and eleven times before he had the first success. This first success followed the performance of the thirtieth operation upon one of the six or seven slave women upon whom he had unlimited freedom for experimentation.
As it happened, Dr. Sims was introduced into the same social circle in which we were acquainted, and learning from certain members that they were enthusiastically interested in women physicians, he advanced in a year’s time in such a friendly manner that he had hard work to live down his friendly advances when he later learned from his professional brethren, as well as from a wider public, that women physicians were by no means popular and could in no way forward his plans. However, he remained outwardly polite to the Drs. Blackwell and myself, inviting us to his operations in the then small beginning of the Woman’s Hospital, but excusing himself from further assistance to medical women as a hindrance to the philanthropic enterprise of enlarging the above-mentioned institution.
Dr. Sims stood on common ground with the women physicians in that he also found the medical profession unfriendly, and realized that his only hope of establishing himself was to open a hospital for himself. He says in his autobiography, which was published under the title of The Story of My Life, “I said to myself, ‘I am a lost man unless I can get somebody to create a place in which I can show the world what I am capable of doing.’ This was the inception of the idea of a woman’s hospital.... If the profession had received me kindly in New York and had acted honorably and gentlemanly and generously towards me, I would not have thought of building a woman’s hospital.... When I left Alabama for New York, I had no idea of the sort in the world. I came simply for a purpose the most unselfish in the world—that of prolonging my life.”
While no more fortunate than the women physicians in enlisting the coöperation of the medical profession, Dr. Sims had greater success with some prominent and wealthy women, who eventually established the hospital for him. The work of Dr. Blackwell and the movement in favor of women physicians had evidently made an impression upon these women also, because they adopted a by-law providing that “the assistant surgeon should be a woman”; and Dr. Blackwell and her sister, Dr. Emily, both well-qualified by their added clinical training in Europe, were the logical candidates for this position.
Dr. Sims cynically refers to this by-law as follows: “One clause of the by-laws provided that the assistant surgeon should be a woman. I appointed Mrs. Browne, a widowed sister of my friend, Henri L. Stuart, who had been so efficient in organizing the hospital. She was matron and general superintendent.”