[34]. This sturdy woman lived to be eighty-seven years of age; an ironical comment on the theory of necessarily deficiency of endurance in the female sex.
[35]. “More than 150 years elapsed after the first settlement, before a single effort was made either by public authority or by the enterprise of individuals, for the education of physicians, or for improving the practice of medicine.... No medical journal was published in America, until toward the close of the 18th century.... The first anatomical dissection was made in New York, in 1750.—Thacher, Am. Med. Biog. 1828, p. 16.
[36]. “It would be shocking to humanity to relate the history of our general hospital in the years 1777 and 1778, when it swallowed up at least one half our army, ... by crowding and consequent infection.”... “At Bethlehem, out of 40 men who came sick from one regiment,—not three returned alive.”—Tilton on Military Hospitals (quoted by Tower, “Medical Men of the Revolution.” Address 1876, p. 77.)
[37]. “It was one of the first and happiest fruits of improved medical education in America, that females were excluded from practice; and this has only been effected by the united and persevering efforts of some of the most distinguished individuals of the profession.”—Remarks of a Boston physician, cited ut supra.
[38]. The suppression of midwives was more immediately due to the development of obstetrical science in England, whither the more ambitious among the colonial physicians were beginning to travel for instruction, and where their intellects were quickened by direct contact with the minds of men of genius. In 1752 Dr. James Lloyd, returning after two years’ study in England, began to practice obstetrics in Boston: In 1762, Dr. Shippen, similarly prepared, began to lecture on obstetrics in Philadelphia. (“Hist. of Art of Midwifery,” Lecture by Dr. Augustus Gardner, 1851). These actions sounded the professional death-knell of the poor midwives. Organized knowledge must invariably triumph over unorganized ignorance, even though tradition, decorum, and religion be all on the losing side.
[39]. “Man-midwifery Espoused and Corrected; or, The Employment of Men to attend Women in Childbirth, shown to be a modern innovation, unnecessary, unnatural, and injurious to the physical welfare of the Community, and pernicious in its influence on Professional and public Morality.” By Samuel Gregory, A.M., Lecturer on Physiology. Boston, 1848.
[40]. Is it possible not to seem to hear, from some quiet corner of dispassionate observation, the echo of the immortal “Fudge!” which so disturbed the complacency of the innocent Vicar of Wakefield?
[41]. “To Massachusetts is due the credit of establishing the first medical school for women in the world.”—Chadwick, “The Study and Practice of Medicine by Women,” International Review, October, 1879.
[42]. On two other occasions did these fortunes become associated with those of homœopaths. When in 1869 the State University of Michigan opened its medical department to women, the Legislature simultaneously ruled that two professors of homœopathic medicine must be appointed in the school. And when in 1886 the trustees of the Boston City Hospital inquired into the propriety of admitting female medical students, they reported at the same time upon the application of homœopathic physicians, to be appointed in the medical service of the wards. At this point, however, the fortunes of the two classes of applicants diverged: the first request was granted; the second refused.
The class of 1890 of the Boston University School only contains nine women.