Marie E. Zakrzewska

“ I am often in despair about the helplessness of women, and the readiness of men to let them earn money in abundance by shame, while they grind them down to the merest pittance for honorable work. Shame on society, that women are forced to surrender themselves to an abandoned life and death, when so many are enjoying wealth and luxury in extravagance! ”

“ It is not because I do not think well enough of women that I entertain these doubts, but rather, I suspect because I think too well of them, to be willing they should go through with a medical education, or endure a medical practice. I have put it to myself whether I could be willing that one of my daughters should go through the discipline and lead the life that I have done myself. The idea is intolerable. That you have accomplished what you have with success and honor does not satisfy my doubts—how few of either sex could do the same. ”

“ I had obtained what others only could obtain after the protracted labor of half a lifetime; and already I saw myself in imagination occupying the place of Dr. Schmidt's aspirations,--that of a German La Chapelle. No one, that has not passed at the same age through the same excitement, can ever comprehend the fulness of my rejoicing, which was not wholly selfish; for I knew that nothing in the world would please Dr. Schmidt so much as this victory. The wildest joy of an accepted suitor is a farce compared to my feelings on the morning of that 15th of May. ”

“ By this I mean correctness in listening to every word spoken, accuracy of observation, and logical deduction. Every faculty must be, as it were, on the alert and yet kept under the control of judgment.
Yet there may be sound health, good education, and carefully trained faculties, and still a something lacking for success in life as physician. I call it a power of adaptation to the various temperaments and conditions of humanity; a moral courage; an ability to step forward and seek opportunities for practice; a kind of self-confidence and fearlessness in entering every class of life. ”

“ What woman refuses to buy every article of her apparel from the hands of a man, or to let the woman's tailor or shoemaker take the measure of her waist or foot; try on and approve her coiffure or bernouse?
What are we to think, then, of the delicacy which shrinks from the reading-room frequented by men; which discovers so suddenly that magazines are more embarrassing than mazourkas; that to read in a cloak and hat before a man is more indelicate than to waltz in his presence half denuded by fashion? ”

“ On our delightful long walks she was the speaker, and her reasoning was so sound, her determination so firm, her love for humanity so true, that she seemed to me a prophet of no ordinary insight and foresight. Even now, when doubts arise [Pg 188] in me whether women will develop fully all the chances provided for their higher scientific education, I recall her words and quiet my doubts, remembering that what one woman has done, thousands can do and will do. To me she was, and is, not preëminently the physician but the philanthropic philosopher, the standard bearer of a higher womanhood. ”

“ Schmidt had left so many places vacant that some fifty persons were struggling to obtain some one of his offices. The eagerness, servility, and meanness which these educated men displayed in striving to conquer their rivals was more than disgusting. The serpents that lie in wait for their prey are endurable; for we know that it is their nature to be cunning and relentless: but to see men of intellect and education sly and snaky, ferocious, yet servile to the utmost, makes one almost believe in total depravity. ”

“ We only know that great and good men and women have always lived and worked for an idea which favored progress. And so I have honestly tried to live out my nature—not actuated by an ambition to be somebody or to be remembered especially, but because I could not help it.
The pressure which in head and heart compelled me to see and to think ahead, compelled me to love to work for the benefit of womankind in general, irrespective of country or of race. ”

“ How many women marry only for a shelter or a home! How often have I been the confidante of girls, who the day before, arrayed in satin, had given their hands to rich men before the altar, while their hearts were breaking with suppressed agony! and this, too, among Americans, this great, free nation, who, notwithstanding, let their women starve. ”

“ This is no exaggerated statement; it is a fact that women of education and of high standing speak of a certain class of women as if there were a third sex—a creature resembling woman in all outward appearance but sterile in propagation, sterile in morals, and sterile in intellectual capacity, a slave to men, and a creature of contempt in the eyes of women. ”

“ Think of this accomplished woman, able to earn no more than thirty-six cents a day,--a day sixteen hours long, which finished a dozen caps at three cents each! What, then, must become of clumsy and inferior work-women? Think of it long and patiently, till you come to see, as she bids you, the true relation between the idleness of women and money in the Fifth Avenue and the hunted squalor of women without money at the Five Points. Women of Boston, the parallel stands good for you. ”

“ I do not wish the rich to divide their estates with the poor—I am no friend to communism in any form. I only wish institutions that shall give to women an education from childhood that will enable them, like young men, to earn their livelihood. These weak women are the last to come forth to aid in their emancipation from inefficient education. ”

“ My young friends were not great geniuses: they were ordinary women, who should enter the ordinary walks of life with the ordinary steadfastness and devotion of men in the same paths; nothing more. What I wanted was an example,--not too stilted to be useful,--a life flowing out of circumstances not dissimilar to their own, but marked by a steady will, an unswerving purpose. ”

“ It is my honest and earnest conviction that the reason that men are unwilling for women to enter upon public or business life is not so much the fear of competition or the dread lest women should lose their gentleness, and thus deprive society of this peculiar charm, as the fact that they are ashamed of the foulness of life which exists outside of the house and home. The good man knows that it is difficult to purify it; the bad man does not wish to be disturbed in his prey upon society. ”

“ I look upon it as one of those half-measures which must be endured in the progress of any desired reform; and, while I wish the Cooper Institute and its reading-room God-speed with every fibre of my consciousness, I have no words with which to express my shame at the mingled hypocrisy and indelicacy of those who object to use it. What woman stays at home from a ball because she will meet men there? What woman refuses to walk Broadway in the presence of the stronger sex? ”

“ And it is for this reason, also, that I condemn the method of judging of the ability or competence of any student simply from questions and answers. So much knowledge can be acquired by storing the memory with all sorts of details, without making one’s self fit to digest what is learned and to assimilate even a part of it. But how necessary is this latter when one is called upon to help all sorts of conditions in people who seek advice for physical, mental or moral ailments. And a physician, in the full sense of the word, must be qualified to help human nature from these three points of view. ”

“ Are not these two terrible romances of New-York life? And many besides did I learn among these poor women; so many, indeed, that I forget the details of all. Stories of this kind are said to be without foundation: I say that there are more of them in our midst than it is possible to imagine. Women of good education, but without money, are forced to earn their living. They determine to leave their home, either because false pride preprevents their seeking work where they have been brought up as ladies, or because this work is so scarce that they cannot earn by it even a life of semi-starvation ”

“ The American people, both men and women, have to work out the different problems of advancing their interests without having them favored or opposed by a fixed social class whose prerogative it is to exercise a controlling influence on any standard set up.
The medical education of women must now take its chance for growth like all the other questions of woman’s rights, yes, even of men’s rights, politically speaking. We are, with all the rest, passing through the phase of crystallization, and only the merit or the capacity of the individual can act to bring about a good and lasting effect. ”

“ When it was found that no occasion offered to find fault with me, our administrative inspector was removed, and a surly old corporal put in his place, with the hint that the government of the hospital thought that the former inspector did not perform his duty rightly, since he never reported disturbance in a ward that had been notorious as being the most disorderly in former times. The truth was, that, in my innocence of heart, I had been striving to gain the respect and friendship of my enemies by doing my work better than any before me had done. ”

“ The poor are good judges of professional qualifications. Without the aid that money can buy, without the comforts that the wealthy hardly need, and without friends whose advice is prompted by intelligence, they must depend entirely upon the skill and humanity of those to whom they apply. Their life and happiness are placed in the hands of the physician and they jealously regard the one to whom they intrust them.
None but a good practitioner can gain fame and praise in this class, which is thought so easily satisfied. ”

“ There is no third sex; and we must see to it that this feeling—I cannot call it an opinion—that there exists a class of animal women, shall never take root in this country. In order to effect this, we must create a code of morals in accordance with our free institutions. Never should we look across the ocean for a guiding rod. Nowhere has woman been so poetized and so idealized, nowhere have music and the plastic arts so celebrated her as on the continent of Europe—yet everywhere there woman can be bought! ”

“ The grand-daughter of Krummacher marries a poor shoemaker to save herself from vice, and poor German Mary drowns herself in the Hudson because she feels herself a burden on a heartless brother. Better far to sink beneath its waves than beneath the more remorseless flood which sweeps over all great cities. ”

“ Nearly all the men who aided in promoting my wishes have passed away; and the only stimulus that now remains to revisit the home of my youth is the wish to wander about there with you, and perhaps two or three other of my American friends. Until this can be accomplished, I hope to continue my present work in the New-England Female Medical College, which, though by no means yet what we wish it to be, is deserving of every effort to raise it to the stand that it ought to take among the medical institutions of America. ”

“ We are an aggregate in a free country of many races and of many nations, a country where it is possible for the slave to step at once into self-sovereignty, or for the pauper from any foreign race to rise in a few years to the position of a well-to-do trader or merchant or artist, according to the intellectual capacity which he possesses. On the other hand, even with us these people may go down and form the center of a proletarianism unless they are prevented by education both of the intellect and of the morals. ”

“ The twenty months that I spent in Cleveland were chiefly devoted to the study of medicine in the English language; and in this I was assisted by most noble-hearted men. Dr. Delamater's office became a pleasant spot, and its occupants a necessity to me; and, on the days that I did not meet them, my spirits fell below zero. In spite of the pecuniary distress from which I constantly suffered, I was happier in Cleveland than ever before or since. I lived in my element; having a fixed purpose in view, and enjoying the warmest tokens of real friendship. I was liked in the college ”