Also, my private practice had increased to such an extent that I was free from debt, having repaid all loans advanced to me during my studies save the two hundred dollars which the Cleveland society had expended towards my first year. This, I could not now repay as the society had dissolved. But I kept this amount to loan to poor students, without note or interest. Some repaid the loan of fifty dollars or one hundred dollars from time to time; others, not able perhaps to do so, are still holding it, and I am unable to say positively who they are as I did not record the names. I am only sure that these amounts, and some more, are in their hands. The first one to whom I loaned the whole two hundred dollars was Dr. Susan Dimock, when she was going to Europe to study, she repaying it before she made that fatal trip abroad in 1875.
All these considerations influenced me when Boston’s liberal friends of women, or of “the Cause,” as it was styled, offered me the position of organizer and head of the clinical department which they were ready to establish. And the directors of the medical college offered me the chair of obstetrics in that school, which being my specialty had great attraction for me.
After hesitating for a long time as to what course to pursue, I went to Boston in the spring to define in a public address my views and position in respect to the study of medicine. I found so great a desire prevailing for the elevation of the medical college for women to the standard of the male medical colleges and such enthusiasm in respect to the proposed hospital, that I felt a great desire to make the new hospital department as useful to the public and to the students as the New York Infirmary had become.
The chance of being able to carry out my own plans of work instead of being simply assistant to the Drs. Blackwell was a final temptation, and after inquiries and consultations with Dr. Emily I decided in May to accept the offered position and to remove at once to Boston. My decision was aided by two facts: the first, that Dr. Blackwell’s absence had proved that the Infirmary could be sustained by two doctors, not only without loss but with a continuance of its steady increase, this latter being the consequence of the good already done to the community through its ministrations. And the second was that my health was becoming uncertain under the strain of the work which, by virtue of necessity as well as of habit, would remain my share in New York.
Having fulfilled my promise of contribution to the Infirmary of two years’ gratuitous services and having put everything in order and divided the duties which I had been discharging, I left the Infirmary on June 1, 1859, taking a short vacation in New York but arriving in Boston on the sixth, as I found to my great disappointment that no short vacation would bring back the strength which I had wasted in my zeal to advance “the Cause” more rapidly than the law of evolution permits.
Thus ended my New York career. I left feeling that I could be spared, although the breaking up of several true friendships saddened the departure. Of all the friends, Mary L. Booth was the dearest to me. It is not through blood kinship that we feel the strongest; nay, we may even feel no affinity at all towards the sisters and brothers we so love, while the few kindred spirits we meet fill our souls with life and inspiration.
The few friends to whom I was thus sincerely attached remained such for life, and the professional affinities stand to-day in the same relation to me as when we were young, while a few non-professional New York friends find time and opportunity to meet me occasionally to exchange reminiscences of the golden days of our youth.
About this date, there were already a goodly number of women upon whom the degree of M.D. had been legally conferred, but the minds of those who understood the conditions which prevailed were far from being satisfied with results.
Recognition in the profession and opportunities for a good education for others who wished to cultivate this field of labor were our aims. And so we labored on, the Drs. Blackwell and myself in New York and Dr. Ann Preston in Philadelphia—the latter for the “college,” and all the former for the “hospital” education of female students.
Meanwhile, a number of spurious institutions proclaiming the same aim had sprung up like weeds which threatened to choke the wheat in the field. After the interest of a few high-minded male physicians had been secured, the battle with and against these institutions had to be fought—and it is still to be fought.