Thus we see that the Boston Female Medical School aimed as high as any of the male medical schools of the day. Really, its aim was higher, in that from the beginning it planned to have a Hospital and to make “practical” instruction in obstetrics and the diseases of women an integral part of its course. In advocating this latter procedure, it claims superiority for itself, making the statement that “the Harvard Medical School furnishes no facilities in the way of ‘practice’ in a Maternity Hospital—the most important part of an obstetric education.”
But, presumably, this school found itself practically confined to the education of midwives and nurses—groups whose qualifications were apparently not regulated by strict legal enactment. Because, in 1856, an act of legislature was passed changing the name of the Female Medical Education Society to that of the New England Female Medical College, and giving this latter body power to “appoint Professors, who shall constitute a Medical Faculty; and to confer the usual degree of Doctor of Medicine,” provision for these latter legal necessities having evidently been overlooked in the earlier incorporation of 1850.
The New England Female Medical College says nothing in its reports about midwives, but speaks only of medical students, of nurses, of female physicians, and of its purpose to have “a part of the Faculty consist of female Professors.” But it lists its medical alumnæ from 1854.
Thus becoming acquainted during the summer with the new field for my activity, I found still an added difficulty among the few women who possessed a medical diploma, namely, that not being accustomed to work with one another on a common plane, they rather feared any one whose standpoint differed from their own and who brought new views of the subject in question.
“What is, or was, sufficient for me ought to be sufficient for all who come after me,” was the common human principle on which they based their indifference towards improving or enlarging their stock of knowledge. Medicine was then taught, even in the best of colleges, not as a scientific vocation but as a practical business.
For instance, after having been connected with the New England Female Medical College for a year, I ventured to express my surprise that no microscope was in the college, and to say that I wished for one because much that it was necessary to explain could only be done with such an instrument.
My petition for one was refused. And Mr. Sewall informed me that one of the gentlemen who was a leader in the college, after having listened to my written petition, said, “That is another one of those new-fangled European notions which she tries to introduce. It is my opinion that we need a doctor in our medical department who knows when a patient has fever, or what ails her, without a microscope. We need practical persons in our American life.” This man is long dead, yet I feel sorry that he could not have lived longer in order to see that we teach the new-fangled notion of the use of a microscope even in our public schools.
It can easily be understood that my position, both as professor of midwifery and as head of the clinical department, was not very agreeable, with such opponents among the directors of the school and having to meet the indifference of the established women doctors of Boston; and also, I am deeply sorry to say, receiving only limited support from the men physicians with whom I was associated in the college.
Although in favor of the school, the students were regarded by these physicians more in the light of trained nurses who were to become their handmaids in practice. This fact revealed itself to me when, feeling the need of consultants, I tried to reorganize the hospital staff. I found that none of the prominent Boston physicians was willing to give me his name, and the excuse was that the standard of the school was below par. On the other hand, the physicians connected with the school thought they were teaching all that a woman doctor ought to know.
Here I want to anticipate a little by telling of my first examination of students for the degree of M.D. This was to be carried on by the professors of the school, in the presence of a committee of three from the directors, but only one of the latter appeared. Several of the candidates who presented themselves for their examination were possessed of such elementary education that they had no other recommendation to the examiners than that they had attended two courses of medical lectures of twenty weeks each, and had studied with a preceptor to make up three years of reading medicine, but whom I had never seen in our clinical department.