[75]. “Every woman will be narrowly watched and severely criticised because she is a woman. If she bear not herself wisely and well, many will suffer for her sake. Gentleness of manner, the adornment of a quiet spirit, are as important to the physician as the woman.... I too have felt the hopes and the aspirations after a fuller and more satisfying life, which have arisen in the souls of some of you.... The office of healing is Christlike.... Your business is, not to war with words, but to make good your position by deeds of healing.... Probity, simplicity, modesty, hope, patience, benevolence, prudence,—are needed alike by the woman and the physician. All the brave, struggling women, who, in various walks of life, are laboring for small compensations, will be benefited by a movement which opens to women another department of remunerative and honorable activity.”
Contrast with these modest statements of the gentle Philadelphia Quakeress the aggressive self-consciousness of the emancipated French woman, who rushes into the arena, with a little red flag waving in every sentence: “À nos lectrices, à nos lecteurs, à nos collaborateurs, à nos amis connus et inconnus, à tous ceux qui s’interessent à notre entreprise. Salut!... Nous voyons tous les jours des professeurs qui ont étudié dans leurs moindres détails, tous les êtres organises qui forment la série zoologique, et qui semblent ignorer absolument ce qu’est cet être qui tient tant de place dans l’humanité, la femme. Faisons-nous connaître, et quand ils sauront ce que nous valons, ils nous apprecieront comme nous le meritons.”—Mme. C. Renooz, Revue Scientifique des femmes. Paris, Mai, 1888.
The Revue is already extinguished after a year’s existence. The college survives and prospers after forty years of struggle.
[76]. The celebrated Dr. Camman, who for many years held a clinic for heart and lung diseases at the Demilt, gave valuable instruction to the women students.
[77]. This innovation (for it was one) was effected during the residentship of Dr. Elizabeth Cushier, who has contributed immensely to the building up of the hospital.
[78]. This is an increase of 100 patients over the preceding year.
[79]. In the chapter on “Women in Hospitals,” in this volume, Mrs. Ednah Cheney gives the details of the early formation of the New England Hospital.—Ed.
[80]. “She was as fresh and girlish as if such qualities had never been pronounced incompatible with medical attainments. She had, indeed, a certain flower-like beauty, a peculiar softness and elegance of appearance and manner. I have wondered whether she did not resemble Angelica Kaufman. Underneath this softness, however, lay a decision of purpose, a Puritan austerity of character that made itself felt, though unseen. “She ruled the hospital like a little Napoleon,” said a lady who had been there.... Both the surgical talents and surgical training of Dr. Dimock are certainly at the present date (1875), exceptional among women. It is on this account that our loss is irreparable, for at this moment there seems to be no one to take her place. Many battles have been lost from such a cause. But although ours be ultimately won, we would not, if we could, grieve less loyally for this girl, so brilliant and so gentle, so single of purpose and so wide of aim, whose life had been thus ruthlessly uprooted and thrown upon the waves at the very moment it touched upon fruition.”—M. P. Jacobi in New York Medical Record, 1875.
Dr. Dimock, like so many of the early gynæcological surgeons of America, was a Southerner, born in North Carolina.
[81]. Nineteenth Annual Report Chicago Hospital for Women and Children, 1884.