Elizabeth Blackwell

“ Let us give all due weight to sympathy, and never dispense with it in the true physician; but it is knowledge, not sympathy which can administer the right medicine; it is observation and comprehension, not sympathy, which will discover the kind of disease; and though warm sympathetic natures, with knowledge, would make the best of all physicians, without sound scientific knowledge, they would be most unreliable and dangerous guides. ”

“ We feel, therefore, that it would be a much easier and more practicable thing to organize good instruction for nurses, after we have formed a medical school, and have drawn together intelligent women, students and assistants, than to form the school for nurses with the hope that the medical school would follow. In fact, we need the higher class to educate the lower, and without them it seems to us impossible to accomplish the work satisfactorily. ”

“ It shows that women can practise medicine in some fashion—they have the head to do it;—that there is nothing in the work itself, to hinder them from doing so—they have the health to do it—; it shows that women will employ them; that imperfect as their education is (as we shall presently see) , and with the distinct knowledge on the part of women, that these physicians have not the advantages of education which men enjoy, they nevertheless employ them widely and increasingly. ”

“ Examinations in diagnosis, in the practical applications of every branch of medicine, are essential to judge of the qualifications of a physician. This plan of examinations differs in kind as well as degree, from the system now adopted for women. Of course it is much more troublesome, requires a much larger expenditure of time and thought, but we believe that too much labour cannot be expended on examinations, that they are of the very highest importance in securing a class of reliable women physicians. ”

“ I think it will be felt by any one, however little acquainted with medical matters, that for women students, laboring under these numerous disadvantages of position and mental discipline, excluded from existing institutions, unprepared for scientific study, with no pecuniary resources—a medical education complying with the barest terms of legal requisition, and modelled after the very lowest type of male medical education, is entirely insufficient. ”

“ It is obvious that special arrangements must be made, in order to provide the thorough instruction contemplated for students placed at so great a disadvantage.
This, then, is the last distinctive feature of a good college for women; and these four points, viz., thorough examinations, complete education, friendly relations with the profession, and a substantial foundation, are the improvements which women need, and which the public has a right to demand.
We believe that the time has come to form a really good school of medicine for women. ”

“ Any attempt to commence such a college without means, relying on the fees of students, the self-denial of the teachers, and accidental subscriptions, must result in a very inferior system of instruction.
In undertaking to found a medical college for women, we do not stand in the same position as an ordinary college. The class must necessarily be smaller and poorer. We have not the great incidental assistance which all male colleges have, from the fact that public hospitals and dispensaries are freely at their command. They have the whole influence of the profession to aid them ”

“ The result of our experience has been to strengthen our long-entertained conviction, that there must be women physicians to raise up the class of nurses the public require. It is the doctor who must train the nurse; and we have found that men, with the best intentions, find it very difficult to adapt themselves to their instruction; and moreover, that though feeling strongly the necessity, they do not take the same interest in instructing nurses that they do in teaching students. ”

“ In 1852, when establishing myself in New York there was the utmost difficulty in finding a boarding-house where the simple name, as physician could be placed; ladies would not reside in a house so marked, and expressed the utmost astonishment that it should be allowed in a respectable establishment. ”

“ There is a natural tendency to acquire information vaguely and imperfectly they need to be stimulated, directed, called to account; they need to be shown how to study. General instruction en masse is insufficient, individual instruction is needed; and sub-division into small classes for individual drill should be an essential part of college arrangement for women. The student should be constantly called upon to communicate as well as receive knowledge. The knowledge is not her own until she has used it ”

“ The tests now laid down for women medical students are altogether insufficient. To question twenty pupils, or even one pupil during half an hour or an hour on the substance of a hundred lectures, will very imperfectly ascertain even the theoretical knowledge of the pupil on the one special branch, much less will it show her ability to detect disease and control a sick room. ”

“ Consider how women stand in this matter; how alone, how unsupported; no libraries, museums, hospitals, dispensaries, clinics; no endowments, scholarships, professorships, prizes, to stimulate and reward study; no time-honored institutions and customs, no recognized position; no societies, meetings, and professional companionship; all these things men have, none of them are open to women. One can hardly conceive a more complete isolation. ”

“ Some are assistant physicians in the various water-cure and other private establishments, scattered so plentifully through the country; some are employed in large girls' schools, as teachers of physiology, and physicians to the young ladies; some travel from place to place as lecturers on physiological and medical subjects to women, supporting themselves, year after year, in this way; still more are practising as physicians, either alone or in partnership with father or husband. ”

“ It is the young man of some means, who is apt to enter upon the expensive study of medicine, whose father is able to assist him during the years which must necessarily elapse, before he gains a remunerative practice; but experience has already shown, that they are the young women without means, who endeavour to become physicians. They come from a class notoriously poor, viz teachers; out of nineteen young ladies who have resided in the N. Y. Infirmary as students of medicine, eighteen had been teachers. We have found these students eager to learn ”

“ In the same way the student must be taught to apply the knowledge gained in the lecture-room, and from books, to the practical duties of the physician. She must be taught how to practice medicine; and the care of the sick under supervision should be an essential part of the future physician's training. (Of course I include in the term medicine, the prevention of disease; the knowledge and application of hygienic law is essential to the education of a woman physician.) ”

“ I shall take it for granted, therefore, that those present approve of the study of Medicine by Women—either upon the general ground of widening their occupations—or from the feeling that in special departments of medicine, there would be an obvious advantage in being able to consult women—or that they would be valuable as teachers to diffuse sound hygienic knowledge. ”

“ In every part of the Northern and Western States we know of such physicians, who are supporting themselves, and sometimes their families—whose pecuniary receipts vary from a simple living to a handsome income.
Now all will agree that pecuniary success is a very convincing thing! We may deplore the low state of society, which will measure truth by dollars; but nevertheless we cannot shut our eyes to the fact, that the mass of mankind do judge by a low standard. ”

“ At five different times, women have been admitted (as exceptions) to our large New-York hospitals to follow the visits of physicians as students, the medical faculties having given their consent in these cases. One of the largest dispensaries in the city, has during the last six years, allowed a little group of respectable female students to continue their daily attendance. The school of Pharmacy has also opened its doors to women as students. ”

“ As a general rule, women are poorer than men, and in addition to this fact of greater relative poverty, it will for a long time, be a relatively poorer class, of women than men who will study medicine. ”

“ There are many difficulties to be met, in opening to all, facilities which were established with reference to men only, and it should be one great end of special Institutions for women to assist in meeting such difficulties, and forming links with the profession. ”

“ Each pupil should be carefully examined not only in all essential theoretical points in the lecture-room or professor's study, but in the still more vital subjects that can only be tested in the hospital by the sick bed, in the surgical and anatomical rooms, by manipulation and demonstrations, and in the laboratory by familiarity with medicines. ”

“ The hospital organization, under the title of the N. Y. Infirmary for Women and Children, has been preparing the way for such a school for nearly ten years, and its working has been watched by the profession even more than by the community during that time. Many of the best men of the medical profession in New York are now prepared to encourage the formation of a medical school for women, in connexion with it. The Trustees of the Infirmary entered into negotiations this spring with the leading medical colleges of New York, to obtain their counsel in this matter. ”

“ There was a blank wall of social and professional antagonism, facing the woman physician, that formed a situation of singular and painful loneliness, leaving her without support, respect, or professional counsel. ”

“ This want of mental discipline is then a very serious difficulty which women have to contend with in any scientific study, and is an evident and potent reason whey they need, not less, but much more careful training than men, in any such study. ”