Suppose wives should come reeling home, night after night, with curses on their lips, to destroy the food, the dishes, the furniture for which husbands toiled; to abuse trembling children, making the home, from year to year, a pandemonium on earth—would the good men properly be called "nuisances," who should rise up and say this must end; we must protect our firesides, our children, ourselves, society at large? To have women even suggest such beneficent laws for the men of their families is called "a nuisance," while the whole barbarous code for women was declared by Lord Coke to be the "perfection of reason."
The prejudice against sex has been as bitter and unreasonable as against color, and far more reprehensible, because in too many cases it has been a contest between the inferior, with law on his side, and the superior, with law and custom against her, as the following facts in the Sunday Dispatch, by Anne E. McDowell, fully show:
The decision of the Court of Common Pleas in the case of Mrs. McManus, elected principal of the Mount Vernon Boys' Grammar School, is to the effect that, no rule being in existence prohibiting the exercise of the duties of such office by a woman, the resolution of the controllers against the exercise of the duties of that office by the lady was unjustifiable and illegal. Since the decision was pronounced the controllers have come up to the boundary of the principle held by the court, and a rule has been proposed that in future women shall be ineligible to be principals of boys' grammar schools—the case of Mrs. McManus being specially excepted. That lady, therefore, will be undisturbed. But she may be, like the celebrated "Lady Freemason." an exception to her sex. The controllers have not favored the public with their reasons for opposition to the employment of females in the higher positions of teaching. Women are good enough for inferior service about a boys' grammar-school, it seems, but they are not capable of superintending it. They may be, and are, teachers in all the classes in such schools, even to the highest; but when the question arises whether a woman, perfectly competent, shall be superintendent of all the classes—for a principal is little more—the controllers say no. If this action is influenced by a belief that women cannot control a school of boys, we hope that the experience in the case of Mrs. McManus will dispel the illusion, and the public can afford to await the result of the trial. But if it is caused by a regard to tradition or precedent, or because there never has yet been an instance of a woman being a principal of a boys' grammar-school before this case of Mrs. McManus, we hope that the controllers will soon see the error of their course. The complaints from the sections are to the effect that it is very difficult to get a competent male teacher to remain principal of a boys' grammar-school for any length of time. The salary attached to that position is inadequate, according to the increased cost of living of the times. Gentlemen who are competent to act as principals of the public schools find that they can make more money by establishing private schools; and hence they are uneasy and dissatisfied while in the public service. A woman able to take charge of a boys' grammar-school will be paid a more liberal salary (such is the injustice of our social system in relation to female labor) in that position than in any other connected with education that she can command, and she will therefore be likely to be better satisfied with the duties and to perform them more properly. That such advantage ought to be held out to ladies competent to be teachers of the highest grade, we firmly believe. The field of female avocations should be extended in every legitimate direction; and it seems to us, unless some reason can be given for the exception, which has not yet been presented in the case of Mrs. McManus, that the principalships of the boys' grammar-schools ought to be accessible to ladies of the proper character and qualification, without the imputation that by reason of their sex they must necessarily be unfitted for such duties.
In preparing themselves for the medical profession, for which the most conservative people now admit that women are peculiarly adapted, students have encountered years of opposition, ridicule and persecution. After a college for women was established in Philadelphia,[259] there was another long struggle before their right to attend the clinics in the hospitals was accorded. The faculty and students alike protested against the admission of women into mixed classes; but as there was no provision to give them the clinics alone, a protest against mixed classes was a protest against such advantages to women altogether. One would have supposed the men might have left the delicacy of the question to the decision of the women themselves. But in this struggle for education men have always been more concerned about the loss of modesty than the acquirement of knowledge and wisdom. From the opinions usually expressed by these self-constituted guardians of the feminine character, we might be led to infer that the virtues of women were not a part of the essential elements of their organization, but a sort of temporary scaffolding, erected by society to shield a naturally weak structure that any wind could readily demolish.
At a meeting convened November 15 at the University of Pennsylvania, to consider the subject of clinical instruction to mixed classes the following remonstrance was unanimously adopted:
The undersigned, professors in the University of Pennsylvania, professors in Jefferson Medical College, members of the medical staff of various hospitals of Philadelphia, and members of the medical profession in Philadelphia at large, out of respect for their profession, and for the interests of the public, do feel it to be their duty, at the present time, to express their convictions upon the subject of "clinical instruction to mixed classes of male and female students of medicine." They are induced to present their views on this question, which is of so grave importance to medical education, from the fact that it is misunderstood by the public, and because an attempt is now being made to force it before the community in a shape which they conceive to be injurious to the progress of medical science, and to the efficiency of clinical teaching. They have no hesitation in declaring that their deliberate conviction is adverse to conducting clinical instruction in the presence of students of both sexes. The judgment that has been arrived at is based upon the following considerations:
I. Clinical instruction in practical medicine demands an examination of all the organs and parts of the body, as far as practicable; hence, personal exposure becomes for this purpose often a matter of absolute necessity. It cannot be assumed, by any right-minded person, that male patients should be subjected to inspection before a class of females, although this inspection may, without impropriety, be submitted to before those of their own sex. A thorough investigation, as well as demonstration, in these cases—so necessary to render instruction complete and effective—is, by a mixed audience, precluded; while the clinical lecturer is restrained and embarrassed in his inquiries, and must therefore fall short in the conclusions which he may draw, and in the instruction which he communicates.
II. In many operations upon male patients exposure of the body is inevitable, and demonstrations must be made which are unfitted for the observation of students of the opposite sex. These expositions, when made under the eye of such a conjoined assemblage, are shocking to the sense of decency, and entail the risk of unmanning the surgeon—of distracting his mind, and endangering the life of his patient. Besides this, a large class of surgical diseases of the male is of so delicate a nature as altogether to forbid inspection by female students. Yet a complete understanding of this particular class of diseases is of preëminent importance to the community. Moreover, such affections can be thoroughly studied only in the clinics of the large cities, and the opportunity for studying them, so far from being curtailed, should be extended to the utmost possible degree. To those who are familiar with such cases as are here alluded to, it is inconceivable that females should ever be called to their treatment.
III. By the joint participation, on the part of male and female students, in the instruction and in the demonstrations which properly belong to the clinical lecture-room, the barrier of respect is broken down, and that high estimation of womanly qualities, which should always be sustained and cherished, and which has its origin in domestic and social associations, is lost, by an inevitable and positive demoralization of the individuals concerned, thereby entailing most serious detriment to the morals of society. In view of the above considerations, the undersigned[260] do earnestly and solemnly protest against the admixture of the sexes at clinical instruction in medicine and surgery, and do respectfully lay these their views before the board of managers of the hospitals in Philadelphia.
November 15, 1869.
At meetings held at the University and Jefferson Medical Colleges, by the students, on Wednesday evening, the following preambles and resolutions were adopted:
Whereas, The managers of the Pennsylvania Hospital have seen fit to admit female students to the clinics of that establishment, thereby excluding from the lectures many cases, medical and surgical; and
Whereas, We consider that in our purchase of tickets of admission there was a tacit agreement that we should have the benefit of all cases which the medical and surgical staff of that hospital should deem fit for our instruction:
Resolved, That a respectful request be made to the managers of the Pennsylvania Hospital that we be informed as to whether the usual character of the clinics will be changed.
Resolved, That pending the action of the managers on this question, we as a class and individually absent ourselves from the clinical lectures. And
Whereas, The levity of a few thoughtless young men in the presence of the females at the hospital has caused the journals of this city to assume that the whole class of medical students are utterly devoid of all the attributes of gentlemen,
Resolved, That while we do not by any means concede that the published accounts of the affair are correct, we deplore the fact that any demonstration should have taken place; for although the female students may be considered by their presence at the hospital where male students are present, to have cast aside that delicacy and modesty which constitutes the ægis of their sex, they are women, and as such demand our forbearance, if not our respect.
Resolved, That these preambles and resolutions be published in some respectable journal of this city.[261]
On these remonstrances of the faculty and students, The Press, John W. Forney, editor, had many able editorials condemning the action of the medical fraternity. The leading journals throughout the country advocated the right of the women to enjoy the advantages of the hospital clinics. The Press, November 22, 1869, said:
The proceedings of the meeting held by the faculties of our two leading medical schools evince the disposition which lurks at the bottom of the movement against women as physicians. The hospital managers are to be browbeaten into the stand taken by the students, and now sanctioned by the professors. If the women are to be denied the privilege of clinical lectures, why do not learned professors, or students, or both, have the manliness to suggest and advocate some means of solving the difficulty so that the rights of neither sex shall be impaired? Would any professor agree to lecture to the women separately? Would any professor favor the admission of women into the female wards of the hospitals? Would any professor agree to propose anything, or do anything that would weaken the firm stand taken against the admission of women to professional privileges? If so, why not do it at once? Nothing else will make protestations of fairness appear at all genuine. Nothing else will remove the stigma of attempting to drag the hospitals into a support of this crusade against women. * * * How absurd the solemn declaration, "it cannot be assumed by any right-minded person that male patients should be subjected to inspection before a class of females, although this inspection may, without impropriety, be submitted to before those of their own sex." This cuts both ways. If it be improper for female students to be present when patients of the other sex are treated, is it proper for male students to witness the treatment of female patients?