Notwithstanding the warm championship of many of the debaters, including the venerable president, the distinguished Dr. Stillé, Dr. Hartshorne’s motion was lost, and the whole subject laid on the table without a vote. This, however, seems to have been the last occasion on which the matter was discussed. For in 1876, when the Association met in Philadelphia, Dr. Marion Sims being president, a woman delegate appeared, sent by the Illinois State Medical Society, Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson, of Chicago. Dr. Brodie, of Detroit, moved that hers, “and all such names, be referred to the Judicial Council.” A motion that this resolution be laid upon the table was carried by a large vote, amid considerable applause. The president asked if this vote was intended to recognize Dr. Stevenson’s right to a seat. Loud cries of yes, and cheers, emphatically answered the question.[[104]] Thus this mighty question, which had disturbed the scientific calm of so many medical meetings, was at last settled by acclamation. The following year at Chicago, Dr. Bowditch of Boston, being president, congratulated the Association in his inaugural address that women physicians had been invited to assist at the deliberations.
The State Medical Society of Pennsylvania, where the discussion originated, did not really wait for the action of the National Association to rescind its original resolution of 1860. This did not refer to the admission of women as members, that was not even considered, but forbade “professional intercourse with the professors or graduates of female medical colleges.” In 1871, when the Society met at Williamsport, Dr. Traill Green moved to rescind this resolution, and, “amid intense but quiet excitement,” the motion was carried by a vote of 55 yeas to 45 nays.
“Thus,” writes the now venerable champion of the women, Dr. Hiram Corson, “ended successfully the movement originated by Montgomery County, to blot from the transactions of the State Society a selfish, odious resolution adopted eleven years before.... This report gives but the faintest idea of the bitterness of the contest, of the scorn with which the proceedings of the Montgomery County were received, and the unkindness manifested against all who from year to year asked for justice to women physicians.... What would now be their status, had not the blunder of the Philadelphia Medical Society been committed?”[[105]] In 1881, the first woman delegate was admitted as member of the State Society; and in 1888, the Philadelphia County Society also yielded, and admitted its first woman member, Dr. Mary Willets.[[106]]
Pennsylvania was not the first State to admit women to medical societies. It has been mentioned that the American Association, at its Centennial year meeting, received Dr. Sarah Stevenson from the Illinois State Medical Society. But, earlier than this, women had been received in New York State and city. The very first occasion was 1869, when the Drs. Blackwell were accepted as members of a voluntary “Medical Library and Journal Association,” which held monthly meetings for hearing papers on medical subjects read by its members.[[107]] In 1872, a paper was read before this society by a young lady who had just returned from France with a medical diploma, the first ever granted to an American woman from the Paris École de Médecine.[[108]] In 1873, Dr. Putnam was admitted without discussion to the Medical Society of New York county, at the suggestion of Dr. Jacobi the president, whom she married a few months later. In 1874 she was sent as a delegate from the County Society to the State Medical Society, at its annual meeting at Albany. She also became a member of the Pathological, Neurological and Therapeutical societies, but was excluded from the Obstetrical Society by means of blackballs, although her paper as candidate was accepted by the committee on membership, and she received a majority vote. Finally, and a few years later, she was elected, though by the close majority of one, to membership in the New York Academy of Medicine.
The facile admission of Dr. Putnam to these various privileges, in New York, at a time that the propriety of female “recognition” was still being so hotly disputed in other cities, was due partly to the previously acquired honor of the Paris diploma;[[109]] partly to the influence of Dr. Jacobi. This physician may be said to have accomplished for women in New York what was done in Philadelphia by Drs. Hartshorne, Atlee, Stillé, and Thomas; in Boston by Drs. Bowditch, Cabot, Putnam, and Chadwick; in Chicago by Dr. Byford. The door was opened, other women entered without difficulty. The County Medical Society was expected to register all regular and reputable practitioners in the city, and at the present date contains the names of 48 regular physicians.
Four other women became members of the Pathological Society,[[110]] two of the Neurological Society,[[111]] one of the Neurological Association,[[112]] and two of the Academy of Medicine.[[113]] No new application has been made to the Obstetrical Society, a private club. But the obstetrical section of the Academy contains one female member.[[114]]
In Boston the “admission” of women was debated in three directions: to the Harvard Medical School, to the Massachusetts State Medical Society, and to the Boston City Hospital. The application of Miss Hunt to the Harvard Medical School in 1847 and 1850 have already been described. After the final discomfiture of this first applicant, no other attempt to open the college doors was made until 1879,[[115]] when a Boston lady, Miss Marian Hovey, offered to give $10,000 toward the new building the college was about to erect on condition that it should receive women among its students. A committee was appointed from among the overseers of the university to consider the proposition;[[116]] and after a year’s consideration reported, with one dissenting voice, in favor of accepting the conditions. The committee outlined a plan for medical co-education, substantially like that already adopted at the Michigan University, where certain parts of the instruction should be given to both sexes in common; for others, where embarrassment might occur, the instructions should be duplicated. The one dissenting voice, that of Le Baron Russell, disapproved of co-education in any shape, but urged that Harvard University should charge itself with providing a suitable independent school for women.
The majority report expressly advised against the establishment of a separate school for women because “A considerable number of the most highly cultivated women physicians of the country state that the same intellectual standard cannot be maintained in a school devoted to women alone, and that the intellectual stimulus obtained by female students from their association with men is an all-important element of success.”[[117]]
To guide its deliberations the committee had sent questions to 1300 members of the State Medical Society, to which 712 answers were received; of these 550 were in favor either of admitting women to the school, or of providing in some way for their education and recognition. These answers helped to decide the affirmative character of the majority report. Upon its reception, the Board of Overseers recommended the Medical Faculty to accept Miss Hovey’s $10,000 and admit women to the school. But of the 21 members of the Medical Faculty, seven were strongly opposed to the admission of women, six were in favor of admitting them under certain restrictions, eight were more or less opposed but were willing to try the experiment. It was generally considered too rash an experiment to be tried, at the moment that the school was already embarked on certain improvements in its course of education, which threatened to cause a falling off in the number of its students. So the proposition was finally rejected by a vote of 14 to 4. The overseers of the university, having no actual control over the decisions of the Medical Faculty, were therefore compelled to decline Miss Hovey’s offer. But, in doing so, they strongly recommended as expedient that, “under suitable restrictions, women should be instructed in medicine by Harvard University.”
The defeat at Harvard in May was, however, followed by a triumph in another direction in October of the same year. On Oct. 9, 1879, an editorial in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal says: “We regret to be obliged to announce that, at a meeting of the councilors held Oct. 1, it was voted to admit women to the Massachusetts Medical Society.”