Thus my resignation was finally accepted, with the request that I relinquish my last year’s salary of three hundred dollars, as the treasury was empty. I therefore became a benefactor to the college for that sum, though the treasurer did not acknowledge it in his report.
Besides this, an agreement was entered into between the college directors and my friends (who now more than ever wished to establish a hospital for women, managed by women physicians, and for the training of women as physicians and nurses) that all the furniture and fittings of the hospital department of the New England Female Medical College should become the property of these friends of mine for the sum of one hundred and fifty dollars.
[The Annual Reports of the New England Female Medical College during Dr. Zakrzewska’s connection with it, from September, 1860, to September, 1862, show total expenses for the Clinical Department of $5,362.97, and total receipts for the same department of $5,024.13, making a total deficit of $338.84. But it must be remembered that Dr. Zakrzewska’s connection with the department ended six months before the date of the last report.
Dr. Zakrzewska’s forced “donation” of her salary for her third and last year, of three hundred dollars, brought the deficit down to $38.84; and the receipt of one hundred and fifty dollars from her friends as purchase price of the furniture left a net profit in the hands of the college of $111.16.
The last Annual Report contains not only the interesting omission of acknowledgment of Dr. Zakrzewska’s donation of her three hundred dollars salary, but also the interesting acknowledgment of “donations” of one hundred dollars each from the two men professors who retired from the faculty at the same time.]
The whole occurrence brought about a split in the college and the most intelligent men, among whom was the Hon. S. E. Sewall and some of the men professors, also resigned. This was the beginning of the end of the college which, in 1874, was merged into the Boston University Medical College by an act of legislation which preserved to women as full rights as students as if they were in a college by themselves.
Thus it came about that Boston had a medical school for both sexes, though this then became a homeopathic school.
Dr. James R. Chadwick, in an article (“The Study and Practice of Medicine by Women”), in the International Review, October, 1879, states that
“in 1874, while the proposition to transfer the New England Female Medical College to Harvard University was under consideration by that corporation, the trustees suddenly merged the college in the School of Medicine of Boston University, which is under the exclusive control of homeopaths.”
And he adds the following comment: