Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1870-05-24
THE HERALD.
Woman as a Physician--Her Sphere as
an Educator Of her Sex.
The catalogue of the Women's
=. \. r.V q ID -

The catalogue of the Women's
Medical College Of Pennsylvania
gives a. l.st Of fifty students who at
tsrIed the instruction during tho
season 81 1869 and 1870 These rep
resent thirteen States and Canada.
AL tle eighteenth annual commence.
mont, March l3, fourteen graduates
received the degree of NJ. d. The
valedictory address, delivered on
this occasion to the departing doc
tors by Ann Preston, M. D., Profess
or of Physiology and Hygiene, is
highly suggestive and eminently
adapted TO the sex Of the hearers
and the interest and application by
some arc by means limited to those
women who purpose practicing the
healing and preventive art on others.
When anxious fathers and mothers
bring you their beautiful daughters
from whose young faces and steps
the bloom and elasticity are depart
ing and ask your counsel, what shall
you do? You look at those girls and
at cnce take in their history kept
long ut school, and strained with
many lessons at an age when the
conditions OF healthful growth and
development were incompatible with
sedentary habits and severe mental
tasks their bodies SO tightly bound
with clothing that by no possibility
have the ever-moving vital organs
been able fully to perform their func-
tons; their extremities cold and
thinly clad and the weight of their
clothing supported, not by their
shoulders, made by God TO bear bur-
dens, but by parts totally untitled to
sustain them Released from school.
they have bent long in the same
posture over piano, fancy work or
exciting novel, instead of rejoicing
in the open air, or in active muscular
exercise; their homes, luxurious, it
may be, have yet been grudgingly
supplied with pure air and quicken
ing sunshine the passion for dress
and company has been fostered until
these have become the staples rather
than tho stimulants of their lives
while late hours, artificial lights and
continuous excitements have inter-
tered with the nutrition Of nerve
tissue, and perverted the distribution
OF nerve force. You know that quiet,
interesting, imperative Woodwork
for hands and for minds essential
to their health and as you sigh over
their wasted, suffering, unsatisfied
lives, you cannot be content with the
mockery Of merely prescribing
drugs, needful and benefcent as these
may often be. Some morbid Niche
let may speak Of this feeble woman
hood rs the necessary results of adj
vanced civilization, but il is very
clear to US that it is not high civil |
ization, but the failure to reach it. to
which this is due. The highest
civilization will surely be in harmony |
With nature, with bealth. with the |
moral and divine law. 1t will drive |
out follies as well as fevers it will |
foster pure quiet simple tastes, and |
will find the models OF beauty in form
and drapery, and not in the vulgar
devices by which fashionable man |
tua-making distorts and burlesq ues
human proportions, but in the grace
and freedom of artistic nature and
tho corresponding fitness of clothing.
The woman of q true civilization
will regard as pittuI and barbarous
thc idea that usolessness is elegance,
or that disease and languor are
womanly and she will surely escape
The emptiness and dissatisfaction
which Cypress every human being
'he proudost queen of fashion as well
as the lowliest child Of poverty-who
does not cultivate and direct to en-
pobling uses the powers and faculties
which are the glorious birthright Of
humanity