[43]. Thus in France,—docteur en médecine, officier de santé, sage femme; in England,—physician, surgeon, apothecary. The midwife in England, was, until recently, assumed not to exist; but as she existed nevertheless, she became all the more dangerous because uncontrolled. “At present date, 60 per cent. of poor women are attended in their confinements by midwives, uninstructed and uncultivated,—probably 10,000 in number. The fatal results to both mothers and children arising from the ignorance of these midwives is notorious. They must either be annihilated or instructed.”—Dr. Aveling, writing to Gen. Med. Council, 1873.
The Obstetrical Society of London now undertakes to instruct and examine midwives.
[44]. Drs. Jacob Bigelow and James Jackson voted in the negative. The latter had been the physician to introduce into Boston the midwife, Mrs. Janet Alexander. So it would seem that his objection was not to women, but to educated women, who might aspire to rank among regularly educated men physicians.
[45]. The details of Miss Hunt’s application to Harvard are dispassionately related by Dr. Chadwick, loc. cit. When, in 1872, the London University, after a two years’ bitter controversy, declared women eligible to its degrees, the journals were flooded with letters from indignant physicians, who declared that by this action their own diplomas, previously obtained, had been lowered in value, their contracts violated, and their most sacred property rights invaded.
[46]. Address at Chickering Hall, New York, March 18, 1888, by Dr. Emily Blackwell.
[47]. Mt. Holyoke was founded by Mary Lyon in 1837.
[48]. Address of Emily Blackwell, cit. ut supra.
[49]. Elizabeth Blackwell, like Tennyson’s Princess,
“Shuddered but to dream that maids should ape
Those monstrous males that carve the living hound.”