The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-03-16
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16, 1870.
FEMALE PHYSICIANS.

the bottom of all the agitation with regard
to woman's rights, and that gives the agita-
tors any hold whatever upon the regards OF
the public In spite of the many absurdities
. by which the would-be reformers make them
selves and their cause ridiculous, they have
undoubtedly done much good if only by
directing attention to this point. Those who
have dispassionately considered the subject,
however, have almost unanimously come to
the opinion that the disabilities of women
under the law are few and unimportant, and
that if any reform is effected, or the status of
women improved, it must be by their own
practical and earnest labors to prove that they
are capable of conducting successfully those
employments that have hitherto been monopo-
lized by men, and in this manner bringing
about such changes in public opinion that
they will receive the hearty cooperation of all
candid and fair-minded men and disarm the
prejudices of those conservatives who are 50
allied to old forms that they are unable to see
any good whatever in novelty, no matter what
claims it may have in right and justice, Such
prejudices as these women who wish to COM
pete with men in the higher professions must
expect to meet. 1t may be that we are
prejudiced when we esteem the vituperative
stump speeches of such women as Mrs. Cady
Stanton and Susan Anthony, and their execra-
tions of the whole masculine sex for con-
spring to deprive women of their natural
rights, as a peculiarly feminine waste of
energy, but we confess that our regards are
rather with those women who resolutely go to
work, and fit themselves to fight the battle
with the world just as men are compelled to
do if they expect to succeed, and then Garry
on the business they take in hand with full
intention to succeed, if knowledge, energy,
and industry can compass success.
For many branches of medicine women are
peculiarly fitted, and, in spite of prejudices
and opposition, they have succeeded and
won for themselves the cordial recognition Of
impartial persons of both sexes. They have
proved that in some very important specialties
they are fully equal to the male practitioners,
while it cannot be disputed that, so far as
their own sex is concerned, they are in the
great majority of cases to be preferred as
attendants beside sick bed before physicians
of the other sex. 1t is to the credit of the
women who have devoted themselves to the
study of medicine that as a general rule they
have combated the prejudices of society, not
by loud-mouthed assertions of their rights,
but by steadily attending.to their business,
and proving in the actual practice of their
profession that they are qualified for all they
attempt.
After the TRADES of the womans rights agj-
tators, it is refreshing to read such clear,
practical, and eloquent address as that of
Professor Ann Preston, at the eighteenth com-
mencement of the Woman's Medical College
on Saturday last. This lady insisted on one
point that needs to be particularly impressed
upon the minds of women who have need or
ambition to enlarge their sphere of action
beyond the needlework and shopkeeping that
bound the energies of many who ought to be
capable of better things, and that is the i'm
portance of nice, conscientious observation and
Investigations by which alone the great truths
of science can be elected. She looks upon
woman physicians, and we think justly, as
the proper reformers of many of the frivoli-
ties of education, manners, and dress that
make the sex so often the objects of offensive
criticism. She repudiates the morbid ideas
of such writer's as Michelet, that feeble wo-
manhood is the necessary result of advanced
civilization and contends that it is not to a
high civilization but the failure to reach ii
that this is due. ''The higher civilization,
she rightly says, 'will be in harmony with
nature, health, and with the moral and divine
law. 1t will drive out follies as well as fevers
it will foster pure, simple tastes; and it will
find its model of beauty in form and drapery,
not in the vulgar devices by which fashion
able mantua-making distorts and bur
lesques human proportions, but il
the grace and fitness of artistic
nature, and the corresponding fitness of
clothing" These are the ideas that lie al
the very foundation Of any reform that may
be attempted in the condition of women, and
they are as far removed from an endorsement
of the hideousness that some female reform
ers affect in their semi masculine costume q,
they are of the Irrational" dress of the cir
of the period, that is properly an object OF
censure on aesthetic as we'll as on hyeienit
grounds. The address alludes in terms O
congratulation to the progress that womer
are making in the study and practice o
medical science in various parts of the world
and TO the fitness that many female physi
clans have shown for their calling. II re
minds women that in some parts of medicG
work they must expect to be surpassed b
men, while in others they have qualification
that ought to give them pre-eminence.
insists upon the systemat
business habits and the Importance of ment
culture, not only in matters of science br
Ia1n