| Show WOMEN physicians you are 4 aware ware my dear sir air says bays clifford in Haw hawthorne house of the seven gables that all human progress gre is in a circle or to use a more accurate and beautiful figure in the ascending spiral curve while we faucy fancy ourselves going straight forward and attaining at every step an entirely now new position of affairs we vre do actually return to something long ago tried am aau abandoned but which we now find ethe realized refined and perfected to its ideal the post past is but a coarse and sensual prophesy of the present and the future it is hardly necessary to say that we find exemplification of these striking words on almost every page of the deverr worlds history the t dizzy I 1 izzy flight ot of time bearing us ever ou onward duwart wart we cm cin scarce tell whither does not as an we are apt to imagine carry us quite away from every memory of the past again and again we are forced back upon the experiences of our eur fathers father again anti and again we find bad ourselves tak ing up their traditions again and again some sudden swirl of circumstances sweep us around to an ancient landmark which as we had supposed had long been left behind the more we study the course of human development the more we learn to realize the truth of the wise in ams ina saying that there is no new thing under the sun I 1 paraphrased by the modern french man inan in the characteristic aphorism that there la is ahkung nw but that which has baa been forgotten we are led into observations of this kind when with the modern movement for the free admission of 0 women into the medical profession prof easlon gaining ever increasing favor we turn bachand read what the annuals of our race have to tell us of the women physicians of bygone by gone days the lady doctor so far from being a W many imagine a unique product of ous our revolution revolutionizing ng age is a figure which has been sufficiently familiar during many epoch of the worlds history the mythology of ancient greece so go far as it throws any light at all upon the matter seems to imply that medicine was occasionally practiced by women in the very earliest days special powers of howing were assigned to juno anti and the daughter of the centaur Jo eiron and medea and sud circe were said to posies a knowledge of medicinal herbs we are generally irene rally safe in assuming that the pantheon reflected the actual condition of things on earth and it is therefore probable that the immoral beings bangs thus men tinned had bad kneir counterpart in this respect among the mortal females of the time but when we enter the historic peri od we find bud that for a long time women along with slaves were specifically i prohibited by the laws of athens from studying medicine why and when this prohibition was finally abolished abolish is a mattar of dispute though a pretty story is told in connection with the matter which if true would seem to st it at rest A young woman of the city Ag nodice by name was while quite young seized with an uncontrollable desire for knowledge wid and by disguising herself in mile attire found means to attena the let kertu res of a 14 physician named subsequently quent ly still retaining her disguise she devoted herself to a physicians physician Is career with such remarkable success that the other doctors of the city became jealous of her and did their best beet to ruin her professional reputation by trumping tramping trum ping up ridiculous charges against her personal character cited before the in consequence Agnot Ag nodice lice found it needful in the assertion of her innocence to make public the secret of sex upon this she was wag at once put on trial for infringing tile the statute excluding women f grorud in profession protes sion and would doubty doubtless lw suffered punishment accordingly 1 not the wives of the leading eillie been unanimously in her favor ob 0 not only her acquittal but also the instant alteration ot of the obnoxious law unfortunately it has haa to be admitted that charming as the story is it rests alao like most of the very charming stories in hist history oryl upon very insecure foundations tind its main value here is to show as true or false it certainly does that hat women physicians were not unknown among the ancient greeks ROMAN restriction in rome too there were laws which aimed at closing the profession to women but they were not always entirely successful in their some few names of female ere have been handed down to us ns notably that of fabiola Fa bisla bials a splendid forerunner of that long line or of brave and self sacrificing women who in hospital or on battlefield battle field have devoted themselves to the alleviation of the sufferings of their kind she may be particularly remembered today for her connection with tile the hof hospitals founded by the emperor julian called the apostate but tile the part played by women as surgeons and doctors during classic times was small indeed compared with that which they filled during the middle ages agee throughout the long ages of feudal feudalism ibm and chivalry the exercise of the heating beating art was indeed left largely in their hands nuns as a well as monks were a accustomed to tend the sick and care for the wounded as a part of the ordinary duties of their pious calling and thus when we find mention made of the fact that at the instigation of abelard the nun of the paraclete Paro clete under heloise paid much attention to surgical duties when we read that hildegarde Hll degarde abbess of the convent of ruppertsberg Rupert berg aberg near bingen on the rhine was waa specially distinguished for her medical learning which she embodied in a kind of material medica we know that these particular ansta ces cee are only examples of a very general rule in prance infranco at any rate where women surgeons went under the name of their position as practitioners seema to have been duly recognized by law for various ordinances speak of surgeons both in the masculine and in the feminine forms and provide that bem fem fedle ile operators as well as male should be made to paw pass a certain ox examination before entering upon the public exercise of their functions that full recognition was indeed given to women physicians is placed beyond question by the attitude adopted toward them by several of the great grea universities of the time at that of bologna where the anatomy of the human frame was first systematically studied women were admitted to the professional chairs and habitually followed the medical course and the same remarks apply to the famous rival establishment at padua but the most noted of all the medical schools of the medical age was the one at salerno here women were well to the front being engaged in the preparation of drags and in the practice of medicine among patients of both sexes one incident which stands recorded to in the steals a of the school is in itself suf 1 to show the position which then hen held A distinguished bot who had spent all his IM in i professional study and was deeply versed in nil all the medical wisdom of the day journeyed to salerno in 1059 for the express purpose of discussing scientific topics with the savants savanis there assembled he found it is said no one erudite enough to reply to ble bis propositions save a certain woman of great learning but to realize the extent to which the functions of the physician were then left to in feminine hands we must turn not to these great public establishments but to the domain of private life skilled professional advice was rare and difficult to obtain and the women of the household were therefore accustomed to combine the loles ioles of medical adviser and nurse the treating of disease according to the rough and oftentimes superstitious methods then in vogue was in fact regarded as one of the natural and proper duties of their sex and the education of girls always included a certain training in practical medicine and surgery particularly in that p part rt of surgery which dealt in the dressing of wounds their fathers brothers husbands were then constantly in warfare or in the scarcely less dangerous exercise of joust and tourney and it was impossible to tell when or how bow often the useful knowledge thus acquired might be ailed into request thus they had bad always to hold themselves ready for emergency and disaster and thil tb lives of those nearest and dearest to them often enough depended upon their presence of mind tact and skill the poets and romance writers of the time make such frequent mention of the employment of women in this way that we could not here find room for a hundredth part of the references which lie ready to our hands one or two instances will however serve our present end in one of the most popular of the knightly romances we read how gerard de nevers was waa wounded and carried into a castle then r h e says the old french narrative a maiden matt en of the household took him himin in charge and cared for him so eo well that in a short space he began greatly to mend before the month was out he was entirely cured similarly in the romance of elle aliede de saint giles the fair rosemonde Bose monde causes eliea ly wounded to be carried into her own chain chamber ber where she takes tabes JD in her fair white handa precious herbs from the coffer 1 1 and applies them to his wounds and once again in tile the famous and beautiful old story of au cassin and nicolette we find the foj fo owing account nicolette Nl colette alarmed alarmed P inquired of him concerning the cause of bis sufferings she probed the shoulder to f find nd out if it were dislocated and operated so w will 11 that she put it again in place her hande afterwards after applied to the wound certain flowers and sanitary herbs the virtues whereof were known to her it was the gradual development and C consolidation of a specialized medical profession and the changed social conditions which which were initiated at the dawn of the modern era which were principally operative in bringing about the disappearance of the women physicians of the earlier do dys ye Itis it is indeed true that long after europe bad passed butof out of the darkness of the middle ages into that morning twilight which heralded the coming of the day women were still occasionally to be found devoting themselves to medicine or to other branches of intellectual activity then almost monopolized by men italy produced several famous women doctors during the eighteenth century and england and germany have continued to furnish casual examples down to quite recent times but these were only exceptions noticeable for the very reason of their rarity it has been left for the present generation to take up the ancient traditions of which we have spoken by its demand that women should be admitted to medical practice on an equal footing with men a demand which dr olcutt has well said will result not in the introduction of a new order of things but rather in the restoration of a lost privilege de free pre press |
