The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1874-10-09
Women as Medical Practitioners.

1t is remarkable that in the somewhat
warm discussions of the last few years
as to the fitness, claims and prOpriety of
the special education of women for the
various offices of medical ministratiOn,
at least to their own sex, so little refer
ence has been had to past usages and
experience in that matter. Batting the
fact, that il is only within the last two
centuries that anything worthy of being
called a medical education, anything
better than a merely tentative and en-
pirical initiation into the blind and su-
perficial methods of established practi-
TONERS, was offered to students even Of
the male sex, no claim has recently been
advanced i'm behalf of female physicians,
which would demand more of actual
professional service for them than has
been in their unchallenged possession at
many periods in our present civilization,
and in some of the most advanced re-
gions, relatively, of ChristendOm. The
fullest admission of the rights and func-
tions now urged for women would be
only q recurrence to the usages of the
past.
ANY one who should take the pains
curiously to investigate the teachings of
history and of social customs in this re-
spect might readily trace an unbrOken
series of female physicians in high re-
pute, and follow the ministratiOns of
/ thousands of canny and skillful women,
/ whose names have not got into the pub
lie annals, but who served their genera
tiOns in every rude hamlet Of Christen-
dom.
This research would begin and would
be most highly rewarded in the local
gleanings from Egyptian, Roman and
Greciau history. True, more emphasis
/ IF fat,na hos haar Iaf t,rOu la
names and deeds of women in classic
times whose skill lay in the eOncOction
of poisons and love philters, and who
began the dark doings which mOnopO-
liZed the application of the wOri witch
to the female sex. But it might be sue
cessfully established that in classic
times full two-thirds Of all the medical
service rendered, direct and indirect,
was performed by wOmen-fOr the most
part, too, from their own wits and ex-
perience.
But chiefly would n minute search
| into the histories of the old hamlets and
! secinded villages of Germany, Scotland,
England and Ireland expose the almost
exclusive dependence of the simple pop
ulation, in their straits and diseases,
upon the skill and care of those too
/ lightly called cold women" Many
have been the places and occasions in
which a wise, gentle and conscientious
woman has been the ministering and
| healing blessing of a wide neighbOrhood,
in the prevalence of infantile, climatic
and epidemic disease, as well as specially
in the needs of maternity.
Every intelligent country physician
will tell US, in broad contrast with the
experience of cities in this respect, that
| the difficulty and expense of obtaining
/ the aid of professional doctors develops
/ in many women, in their remote homes,
a self-dependence, helped by a knowl-
edge of simples and the traditional fe-
male lore which supplies the place of his
presence and the resources of the apoth-
ecary shop.
The famous Mrs. Ann Hutchinson,
whose religious notions and teachings
caused such CONSERVATION and excite
ment in the infant settlement of Massa-
chusetts in 1888, became first known,
trusted and warmly loved here because
of her freely rendered offices of care and
skill to sick of her own sex.
In the western corner of the old burial
ground in Charleston is a solid and we'll
wrought slate monument, erected more
than q century and a half ago, to the
memory of notable woman "who was
ordained aud commissioned by the Lord
Bishop of London to act as midwife in
His Majesty's Province of Massachusetts
Bay" The original inscription probably
credited her with "130O' babies as the
trophies of her skill; but some rOugish
hand hid in the grass has interpolated
two ciphers in the broad spread charac-
ters of the inscription, so that 1t reads
10000 children"