“The bare thought of married females engaging in the medical profession is palpably absurd. It carries with it a sense of shame, vulgarity, and disgust. Nature is responsible for my unqualified opposition to educating females for the medical profession.”—Dissert. on Female Phys. by N. Williams, M.D., read before a N. Y. Med. Soc., June 6, 1850.
“Females are ambitious to dabble in medicine as in other matters, with a view to reorganizing society.”—Edit. Boston Med. and Surg. Jour., 1852, p. 106.
“The serious inroads made by female physicians in obstetrical business, one of the essential branches of income to a majority of well established practitioners, make it natural enough to inquire what course to pursue.”—Ibid., Feb. 1853.
These parallel columns might be extended much further, did our space permit. We cannot, however, pass by the following gem of eloquence from an English source, but quoted in the Cincinnati Lancet and Clinic for 1881. It is from the address at the British Medical Association by the President of that year:
“I am not over-squeamish, nor am I over-sensitive, but I almost shudder when I hear of things that ladies now do or attempt to do. One can but blush, and feel that modesty, once inherent in the fairest of God’s creation, is fast fading away. You gentlemen, who know the delicacy of women’s organization,—you must know that constitutionally they are unfit for many of the duties of either doctor or nurse.
“May not habit so change that fine organization, that sensitive nature of women, as to render her dead to those higher feelings of love and sympathy which now make our homes so happy, so blessed?
“Will not England’s glory fade without its modest sympathizing women, and its race of stalwart youths and blooming maidens?
“You now, gentlemen, know my views as to the propriety of ladies becoming doctors or nurses.”[[40]]
The Fourth period of woman’s medical history was initiated when Mr. Gregory, supported by the popular enthusiasm he had aroused, succeeded in opening a School of Medicine (so called) for women, in Nov. 1848.[[41]] The first term lasted three months: a second term began the following April, 1849;—and with the announcement for the second year it was declared that the twenty pioneer pupils had not only followed the lectures, but “had attended above 300 midwifery cases with the most satisfactory success.”
In the prospectus issued for the second year of the school, Mr. Gregory brought forward a new set of arguments in its support, in addition to those previously adduced. There was then (1849) in New England, a surplus female population of 20,000 persons,—and “hundreds of these would be willing to devote any necessary length of time to qualify themselves for a useful, honorable, and remunerative occupation.” They could afford, moreover, to give their services at a much cheaper rate than men, charging about a third the ordinary fees,—thus $5 instead of $15 for attendance on a confinement case.