[NOTE C], [p. 46].
The statement in the text was made the subject of a newspaper controversy; and I append the following very valuable evidence which was thus elicited in support of my assertion:—
“Sir,—Permit me to bear my testimony to the state of the facts on this question as far as English convents are concerned. I was for some years medical attendant to a Franciscan convent, and was frequently consulted by the nuns. They were examined and treated like other patients, except where certain maladies were concerned, and then they suffered in silence, or with such relief as could be given by medicines, after a diagnosis founded on questions and general symptoms only. I especially remember two cases.... In neither of these any examination was permitted, or any surgical treatment regarded as a possibility, in spite of all the representations I could make, and although, I believe, I possessed the full confidence of the patients and of the Superior. Whether a female surgeon would have been allowed to examine and operate I cannot say.—I am, Sir, yours, &c., F.R.C.S.”
Lancet, May 18, 1872.
“Sir,—Kindly permit me to say a few words with regard to Miss Jex-Blake’s statement, that very many women, and in particular, nuns, would certainly show a preference for the medical and surgical aid of one of their own sex, were any choice possible to them. As being myself a Catholic, and having many near relatives nuns, I can most confidently confirm this assertion. “I have known, for many years, and in the closest intimacy, ladies, members of various religious orders, in this country and in France, and I am quite aware that recourse to male medical advice, in peculiar cases, is looked upon in religious houses as something much more painful than any physical suffering, or even death.
“My father was medical attendant to a convent of English nuns, and I think I may safely say that any advice given to nuns in such cases was entirely at second hand, the doctor’s wife being the favourite resource in these emergencies....
“Then, again, how can any man, medical or not, know what agonies of shame and outraged modesty women can and do undergo, when submitting to male medical and surgical treatment? How many women cannot overcome their repugnance, and die with their special ailments unsuspected, or discovered too late? On the other hand, how many women are at great pains to conceal the shrinking which they feel when exposing their peculiar ailments to even a long-known and valued medical man? Why should we have these added to our other unavoidable sufferings? The reality of these feelings is, I am certain, within the personal knowledge of every one of your female readers. No one wishes to deny modesty to the stronger sex; but let us suppose them compelled to reveal all their physical ills to women—how would they feel?—I am, &c., A Catholic Wife and Mother.”
Scotsman, May 27, 1872.
[NOTE D], [p. 49].
While reviewing the above for the press (May 1872), the following lines came under my notice, and I think them the more suitable to quote as they are from the pen of a woman who has never herself shown the least inclination for the study of medicine, and who, therefore, speaks entirely from the abstract point of view:—
“Nothing will ever make me believe that God meant men to be the ordinary physicians of women and babies. A few masculine experts might be tolerated in special institutions, so that cases of peculiar danger and difficulty might not be left, as they are now, to the necessarily one-sided treatment of a single sex; but, in general, if ever a created being was conspicuously and intolerably out of his natural sphere, it is in my opinion, the male doctor in the apartment of the lying-in woman; and I think our sex is really guilty, in the first place, that it ever allowed man to appear there; and, in the second, that it does not insist upon educating women of character and intelligence and social position for that post.
“Indeed, common delicacy would seem to demand that all the special diseases of women should be treated principally by women; but this aside, and speaking from common sense only, men may be as scientific as they please,—it is plain that thoroughly to know the women’s organism, what is good for it and what evil, and how it can best be cured when it is disordered, one must be one’s self a woman. It only proves how much unworthy passion and prejudice the great doctors allow to intrude into their adoration of ‘pure science’ and boasted love of humanity, that, instead of being eager to enlist the feminine intuitions and investigations in this great cause, as their best chance of arriving at truth, they are actually enacting the ignoble part of churls and misers, if not of quacks. For are they not well enough aware that often their women patients are so utterly beyond them that they do not know what to do with them! The diseases of the age are nervous diseases, and women are growing more nervously high-strung and uncontrollable every day, yet the doctors stand helplessly by and cannot stop it. When, however, there shall be a school of doctresses of high culture and thorough medical education going in and out among the sex with the proper medical authority, they will see, and will be able to prevent, much of the moral and physical neglect and imprudence which, now unchecked in school and home, make such havoc of the vital forces of the present generation.”
“Co-operative Housekeeping,” by Mrs C. F. Pierce.