Medical Women: Two Essays

by Sophia Jex-Blake

In a country where precedent has so much weight as in England, it doubly behoves us to make the distinction, and, while gratefully accepting the safeguard offered against inconsiderate and precipitate change, to beware that old custom is not suffered permanently to hide from our eyes any truth which may be struggling into the light. I suppose that no thinking man will pretend that the world has now reached the zenith of truth and knowledge, and that no further upward progress is possible; on the contrary, we must surely believe that each year will bring with it its new lesson; fresh lights will constantly be dawning above the horizon, and perhaps still oftener discoveries will be re-discovered, truths once acknowledged but gradually obscured or forgotten will emerge again into day, and a constantly recurring duty will lie before every one who believes in life as a responsible time of action, and not as a period of mere vegetative existence, to “prove all things, and hold fast that which is good.”

The above considerations arise naturally in connexion with the subject of this paper, which is too often set aside by the general public, who, perhaps, hardly appreciate its scope, and are not yet fully aroused to the importance of the questions involved in the general issue. We are told so often that nature and custom have alike decided against the admission of women to the Medical Profession, and that there is in such admission something repugnant to the right order of things, that when we see growing evidences of a different opinion among a minority perhaps, but a minority which already includes many of our most earnest thinkers of both sexes, and increases daily, it surely becomes a duty for all who do not, in the quaint language of Sharpe, “have their thinking, like their washing, done out,” to test these statements by the above principles, and to see how far their truth is supported by evidence.

In the first place, let us take the testimony of Nature in the matter. If we go back to primeval times, and try to imagine the first sickness or the first injury suffered by humanity, does one instinctively feel that it must have been the man’s business to seek means of healing, to try the virtues of various herbs, or to apply such rude remedies as might occur to one unused to the strange spectacle of human suffering? I think that few would maintain that such ministration would come most naturally to the man, and be instinctively avoided by the woman; indeed, I fancy that the presumption would be rather in the other direction. And what is such ministration but the germ of the future profession of medicine?

Nor, I think, would the inference be different if we appealed to the actual daily experience of domestic life. If a child falls down stairs, and is more or less seriously hurt, is it the father or the mother (where both are without medical training) who is most equal to the emergency, and who applies the needful remedies in the first instance? Or again, in the heart of the country, where no doctor is readily accessible, is it the squire and the parson, or their respective wives, who are usually consulted about the ailments of half the parish? Of course it may be said that such practice is by no means scientific, but merely empirical, and this I readily allow; but that fact in no way affects my argument that women are naturally inclined and fitted for medical practice. And if this be so, I do not know who has the right to say that they shall not be allowed to make their work scientific when they desire it, but shall be limited to merely the mechanical details and wearisome routine of nursing, while to men is reserved all intelligent knowledge of disease, and all study of the laws by which health may be preserved or restored.

Again, imagine if you can that the world has reached its present standing point, that society exists as now in every respect but this,—that the art of healing has never been conceived as a separate profession, that no persons have been set apart to receive special education for it, and that in fact empirical “domestic medicine,” in the strictest sense, is the only thing of the kind existing. Suppose now that society suddenly awoke to the great want so long unnoticed, that it was recognized by all that a scientific knowledge of the human frame in health and in disease, and a study of the remedies of various kinds which might be employed as curative agents, would greatly lessen human suffering, and that it was therefore resolved at once to set apart some persons who should acquire such knowledge, and devote their lives to using it for the benefit of the rest of the race. In such case, would the natural idea be that members of each sex should be so set apart for the benefit of their own sex respectively,—that men should fit themselves to minister to the maladies of men, and women to those of women,—or that one sex only should undertake the care of the health of all, under all circumstances? For myself, I have no hesitation in saying that the former seems to me the natural course, and that to civilized society, if unaccustomed to the idea, the proposal that persons of one sex should in every case be consulted about every disease incident to those of the other, would be very repugnant; nay, that were every other condition of society the same as now, it would probably be held wholly inadmissable. I maintain that not only is there nothing strange or unnatural in the idea that women are the fit physicians for women, and men for men; but on the contrary, that it is only custom and habit which blind society to the extreme strangeness and incongruity of any other notion.

I am indeed far from pretending, as some have done, that it is morally wrong for men to be the medical attendants of women, and that grave mischiefs are the frequent and natural results of their being placed in that position. I believe that these statements not only materially injure the cause they profess to serve, but that they are in themselves false. In my own experience as a medical student, I have had far too much reason to acknowledge the honour and delicacy of feeling habitually shown by the gentlemen of the medical profession, not to protest warmly against any such injurious imputation. I am very sure that in the vast majority of cases, the motives and conduct of medical men in this respect are altogether above question, and that every physician who is also a gentleman is thoroughly able, when consulted by a patient in any case whatever, to remember only the human suffering brought before him and the scientific bearing of its details; for as was said not very long ago by a most eminent London surgeon, “Whoever is not able, in the course of practice, to put the idea of sex out of his mind, is not fit for the medical profession at all.” It will, however, occur to most people that the medical man is only one of the parties concerned, and that it is possible that a difficulty which may be of no importance from his scientific standpoint, may yet be very formidable indeed to the far more sensitive and delicately organized feelings of his patient, who has no such armour of proof as his own, and whose very condition of suffering may entail an even exaggerated condition of nervous susceptibility on such points.[1] At any rate, when we hear so many assertions about natural instincts and social propriety, I cannot but assert that their evidence, such as it is, is wholly for, and not against, the cause of women as physicians for their own sex.

If we take next the ground of custom, I think the position of those who would oppose the medical education of women is far less tenable than is generally supposed; indeed, that a recent writer stated no more than the truth when he asserted that “the obloquy which attends innovation belongs to the men who exclude women from a profession in which they once had a recognised place.”[2] I believe that few people who have not carefully considered the question from an historical point of view have any idea of the amount of evidence that may be brought to support this view of the case.[3]

Referring to the earliest classical times, we find distinct mention in the Iliad of a woman skilled in the science of medicine,[4] and a similar reference occurs also in the Odyssey.[5] Euripides is no less valuable a witness on this point. He describes Queen Phædra[6] as disturbed in mind and out of health, and represents the nurse as thus addressing her: “If thy complaint be anything of the more secret kind, here are women at hand to compose the disease. But if thy distress is such as may be told to men, tell it, that it may be reported to the physicians;” thus indicating a prevailing public opinion that there were natural and rigid limits to the medical attendance of men and women, and that therefore some women were specially trained to do what the regular physicians must leave undone. It is at least remarkable to find such evidence of general feeling on this matter in a state of society supposed to possess much less delicacy and refinement than our own.

We find records of several Grecian women who were renowned for their medical skill, among whom may be instanced Olympias of Thebes, whose medical learning is said to be mentioned by Pliny; and Aspasia, from whose writings on the diseases of women, quotations are preserved in the works of Aëtius, a Mesopotamian physician.[7] On the authority of Hyginus rests the history of Agnodice, the Athenian maiden whose skill and success in medicine was the cause of the legal opening of the medical profession to all the free-born women of the State.[8]