Thus ended the year 1859, and Christmas time was a rather triste one, especially as that cheerful festival was not then celebrated in New England, and schools and colleges continued in session as usual.
In looking back upon it, it seems to me that that year was one of the most delightful as well as the most tragic, and one of the most peaceful yet most conflicting, in emotion, in judgment and in making decisions.
Often have I meditated how differently would we act if we clearly saw events a little before they occurred. And how utterly tales of fiction fail when they describe how rightly instinctive wisdom decides at a moment when emotions and intelligence oppose each other, always leading the hero to do the right thing. The calm reasoning of the author knows what aim he has in view and what will be the end. In real life it is quite a different affair, and no one can judge the result when in a condition of conflict between heart and head.
CHAPTER XXV
As part of her struggle to elevate the College standards, she insists the students must be trained practically as well as theoretically—Confirmation of her views by experience of Dr. J. Marion Sims—Persistence in her convictions and refusal to pass students whose work is below her standards make many enemies for her—Private practice increases—She applies for admission to the Massachusetts Medical Society—Is refused because she is a woman—Militant ostracism of women by the Philadelphia County Medical Society—Sketch of the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania—Appalled by the death rate among babies, Dr. Zakrzewska establishes a temporary asylum for infants—Continuing unable to elevate the standards of the College, she decides to resign—Her resignation is accepted, with the request that she relinquish her last year’s salary—The occurrence causes a split in the College, many of the men professors and trustees also resigning—The hospital is discontinued, and its furniture is bought by friends of Dr. Zakrzewska. (Thirty-two years of age: 1860-1862.)
If the Christmastide were prosaic, the New Year’s Day (1860) was not the less so. Business went on everywhere just the same, only that every one shouted to each other without any kind of feeling, “Happy New Year!”
As the year progressed, lectures and dispensary work, as well as the hospital department, went on; private practice increased, adding to my income, which was small. As professor, I received three hundred dollars, and as superintendent of the clinical department, an additional three hundred dollars. Each of the gentlemen professors also received three hundred dollars while the lady professor of physiology had the benefit of an endowment of that chair and received five hundred dollars. From this it must be admitted that it was not money that induced these people to work hard every day, five times weekly, to instruct the students, but a real interest in the cause of educating professional women.
Had the originator of the school (Samuel Gregory), an ambitious man, originally a missionary, been a man of higher education and broader views, the school might have been taken up by the men standing highest in the profession. The prevailing sentiment among these men seemed to be that if women wanted to become physicians, the trial should be made by giving them the same advantages as were offered to men students.
But in a monograph which had been published by this originator to promote his plans, under the title of Man-Midwifery, he not only challenged the prevailing method of practice but abused even the best of physicians by intimating the grossest indelicacy, yes, even criminality, in their relations with their patients. This was the reason why no physician in Boston would openly acknowledge me as long as I remained in connection with the New England Female Medical College.
Besides this handicap, the non-professional portion of the trustees exercised a very fatal policy in trying to increase the number of students regardless of their preparatory education, so that there existed a great contrast among the students. Some had the best of education, while others fell far below a proper standard in their preparatory studies, to say nothing of the age of some of them. Thus, we had a number of students over forty—one was fifty-six years old.