Woman: Man's Equal

by Thomas Webster

The Society of Friends, upon examination, becoming convinced of the falsity of the reasoning, assumed to be predicated upon the Word of God, that there was inferiority between the sexes, and not believing that the assumption was borne out by a careful perusal of the Scriptures, granted perfect equality to men and women in the exercise of religious services. Having been the foremost religious body of modern times in granting liberty of speech to Christian women, they have been more highly honored than most other denominations in the number of gifted speakers among their women.

In the early days of Methodism, too, women were allowed to exercise the talent for public speaking, with which God had endowed them; and Dinah Evans and Mrs. Fletcher—the one in the humbler walks of life, the other a lady of position, education, and refinement—stand forth conspicuously upon the pages of history, giving evidence that the ministry of Christian women was honored by God in leading the wicked to forsake their unrighteous ways. As Methodism became older, like the primitive Church, it departed from the first usage, and as a consequence, like it, it lost for the time a powerful agency for doing good. Latterly, however, women, especially in the United States, are breaking through the fetters—ecclesiastical as well as civil—which have so long bound them. In a measure, at least, their day of civil and religious slavery is drawing to a close. They now very frequently preside and speak at public religious meetings, and are admitted by candid, well-informed men to be quite as competent to discharge the duties of a presiding officer, or to present the ideas they wish to convey in a clear and logical manner, as any of the learned clergymen or clear-headed laymen in the same meeting. Some of the most eloquent public advocates of the missionary enterprise in the United States are earnest Christian women.

In the halcyon days of Queen Victoria, before the sad bereavement came upon her which has darkened her latter years and caused her to retire as much as possible from public view—at the time when she read her own speeches from the throne—she was pronounced, by competent critics, to be unsurpassed, as a reader, by any elocutionist in Europe.

A thoroughly liberal education, and the practice of conversing with persons of intelligence, renders material assistance to both men and women, by enabling them to express their thoughts in the clearest and most forcible language possible; and the same thing may be remarked of declamation. In social circles, where men and women of average mental culture meet together, there is no perceptible difference between the conversational powers of the sexes. Let the facilities for the education of men and women once be made equal throughout the civilized world, and the hackneyed cry of her mental inferiority will be heard of no more, excepting when mentioned among the other exploded theories of the Dark Ages and of barbaric times. The cramping of the mental powers of women, or the attempting to cramp them, lest they might claim equal advantages with the other half of the race, will be classed—and justly so—with the cramping of women's feet by the Chinese, lest they might claim and exercise the liberty of walking the streets at pleasure, as their husbands do. A woman will be no more expected to give credence to every thing her husband believes, no matter how absurd the belief may be, at his dictation, because he is her husband, or to yield implicit obedience to his commands, no matter how tyrannical, than she will be to follow him to the funeral pyre.

Already ladies, by dint of untiring industry and perseverance, have mounted to honorable positions, and have acquired meritorious fame as artists, both in painting and in sculpture. Who, in our times, stands higher on the list of artists than Rosa Bonheur or Miss Hosmer? In the study of medicine, women have been met by the most scandalous opposition and insult by those conservators of good morals, male medical students. Yet, believing that women were as capable of acquiring skill in the healing art as men, and that, where the peculiar diseases of women were concerned, they were better adapted to it, and that there was less impropriety in their attending their own sex than in men doing so, they persevered, and have won for themselves honorable distinction. That women have, for years, distinguished themselves in connection with medical science, may be seen from the following interesting historical facts presented by Caroline H. Ball:

Madame Francoise, the midwife of Catharine de Medici, lectured ably to students of both sexes. James Guillemeau was a French surgeon of great eminence, who died in 1813; but the obstetrical observations which gave value to his books were contributed by Madame Veronne. It was to the Countess of Cinchon, and the influence which she used at every court in Europe, and finally at the Court of Rome, that the world owed the use of Peruvian bark, and consequently of quinine. Its early name, "Jesuit's Bark," showed one step of her process. (See "Anastasis Corticis Peruviani, Seu China Defensis.") Madame Breton patented a system of artificial nourishment for infants, in use in France as late as 1830.

At the age of twenty-four, in the year 1736, Elizabeth Blackwell, of London, published a work on Medical Botany. It was in three volumes, folio, well illustrated, and was the first of its kind in any country. Madame Ducoudray, born in Paris, 1712, was the first lecturer who used a manikin, which she herself invented and perfected. Physicians persist in ignoring this fact, although it was publicly approved by the French Academy of Surgeons, December 1, 1758.

Morandi, born in Bologna in 1716, and Beheron, born at Paris in 1730, invented and perfected the use of wax preparations to represent diseases. Beheron's collection was purchased by Catharine II, of Russia, and went to St. Petersburg. Hunter acknowledged his obligations to her. Morandi's collection, at Bologna, was visited and purchased by Joseph II. She was Professor of Anatomy at the university. Lady Mary Wortley Montague introduced inoculation into Europe; and the intelligent observation of a farmer's wife led Dr. Jenner to his experiments with vaccine matter.

The services of regularly qualified lady physicians are now eagerly sought, not only in the United States, where they in later times first proved their capability, but also in foreign countries. Medical universities, the sage faculties of which once frowned with scorn upon "women who would be guilty of the indelicacy of pushing themselves into the medical profession," now gladly open their doors to them; the more candid of the professors admitting that the "indelicacy," not to say indecency, is upon the side of men who would push themselves into the sick-chamber of a woman, and make inquiries of her concerning symptoms peculiar to her sex, when there are women who are competent to attend to her case.

Little by little the mists of superstition and error, incident to barbaric times, are being dispelled by the genial light of a brighter day. Even now, genteel ignorance is not esteemed the acme of feminine perfection, except by those theorists who would degrade woman mentally, that they themselves may thus acquire so much a higher elevation—at least in their own imaginations—as to stand to them in God's stead, or, at the very least, to be a semi-deity whose superior wisdom is to be worshiped.