The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1877-01-13
THE PRESS.
[From "a Woman Hater' in Harper's Magazi
A WOman's Battle.

me; l will give you his words. The unwrit-
ten law of every nation admits all mankind,
and not the male half only, to the study and
practice of medicine and the sale OF drugs.
In Great Britain this law is called the COM
mon law, and is deeply respected. Whatever
liberty it allows to men or women is held
sacred in our courts, until directly and ex-
picitly withdrawn by some act OF the Legis-
lature Under this ancient liberty women
have occasionally practiced general medicine
and surgery up to the year 1858. But, for
centuries, they monopolized, bv custom, ore
branch OF practice, the Obstetric, and that,
together with the occasional treatment of
children, and the nursing of both sexes,
which is sami-medical, and is their monopoly,
seems, on the whole, to have contented them,
till late years, when their views were enlarged
by wider education and other causes. But
their abstinence from general practice, like
their monopoly of obstetrics, lay with women
themselves, and not With the law OF England.
That law is the same in this respect as the
common law OF Italy and France; and the
constitution of Bologna, where so many doc
tresses have filled the chairs OF medicine and
other sciences, makes no more direct provls-
ion for female students than does the consti-
tuition of any Scotch or English university.
The whole thing lay with the woTeD them
selves, aud with local civilization. Years ago
Italy was far more civilized than England; so
Italian women took a large sphere. OF late
the Anglo-Saxon has gone in for civilization
with his usual energy, and is eclipsing Italy;
therefore his women aspire to larger spheres
OF intellect and action, beginning in the
States, because American women are better
educated than English. The advance OF
women in useful attainments is the most in
fallible sign in any country of advancing civil
ization. All this about civilization is my
observation, Sir, and not the lawyers. Now
for the lawyer again. Such being the law OF
England, the British Legislature passed an
Act in 1858, the real object Of which was to
protect the public against incapable doctors,
not against capable doctresses or doctors.
The Act excludes from medical practice all
persons whatever, male or female, unless reg
istered in certain register; and to get upon
that register, the person, male or female,
must produce license or diploma, granted
by one of the British examining boards speci-
fed in schedule attached to the Act.
''Now these examining boards were all
members of the leading medical schools. If
the Legislature had taken the usual precau-
ton, and had added clause compelling those
boards to examine worthy applicants, the
Act would have been sodnd public meas
ure; but for want OF that foresight-and
without foresight lawgiver is an impostor
and public pest-the state robbed women of
their old common law rights with one hand,
and with the other enabled respectable
trades-union to thrust them out Of their new
statutory rights. Unfortunately, the respect
able union, to whom the Legislature dele
gated an unconstitutional power they did net
claim themselves, Of excluding qualified per-
sons from examination, and so robbing them
of their license and their bread, had an over
powering interest to exclude qualified women
from medicine; they had the same interest as
the watch-makers' union, the printers, the
painters on china, the calico engravers', and
Others, have to exclude qualified women from
those branches, though peculiarly fitted for
them, but not more so than they are for the
practice of medicine, God having made them,
and not men, the medical, and unmusical,
sex.
wherever there's trades.union, the
weakest 60 to the wall. Those vulgar unions
l have mentioned exclude women from skilled
labor they excel in, by violence and conspir-
aey, though the law threatens them with i'm
prisonment for it; was it in nature, then,
that the medical union would be infinitely
forbearing when the Legislature went and
patted it Oh the back, and said, you can con-
spire with safety against your female rivals ?
vi course the clique were tempted, more
than any clique could bear, by the unwariness
OF the Legislature, and closed the doors of the
medical schools to female applicants. Against
unqualified female practitioners they never
acted with such zeal and consent; and why ?
the female quack is public pest, and a
good foil to the union; the qualified doctress
is public good, and blow to the union.
"The British medical union was now in a
fine attitude by Act of Parliament. 1t could
talk its contempt of medical women, and act
its terror of them, and keep both its feigned
contempt and its real alarm safe from the
test OF public examination crucble in
which cant, surmlse, and mendacity are soon
evaporated or precipated, and only the truth
stands firm.
"For all that, two female practitioners got
upon the register, and stand ont, living land
marks of experience and the truth. in the
dead wilderness OF surmise and prejudice.
II will tell you how they got in. The Act
OF Parliament makes two exceptions: first, it
lets in, without eXamination-and that is
very unwise-any foreign doctor who shall be
practicing in England at the date of the Act,
although, with equal incapacity, it omts to
provide that any future foreign doctor shall
be able to demand examination lin with the
old foreign fogies, blindf1ld, right or wrong;
out with the rising foreign luminaries of an
ever-advancing science. right or wrong); and
secondly, it lets in without examination, to
experiment on the vile body of the public,
any person, qualified or unqualified. who may
have been made doctor by very venerable
and equally irreveant functionary. Guess,
now, who it is that British Parliament sets
above the law, as Doctor maker for that
public it processes to love and protectw
"The Regius Professor OF Medcine?'
"No."
"Tyndall9"
'No'
"Huxley?"
"No."
"Then give it up"
''The Archbishop of Canterbury"
'Oh, come! a joke is JOKE"
"This is no joke. Bright monument of
British funkyism and imbecility, there stands
the clause setting that Reverend and irrele-
want Doctor maker above the law, which sets
his Grace's female relations below the law,
and in practice outlaws the whole female
population, starving those who desire to
practice medicine lea-nedly, and depressing
those who. out of modesty, not yet quite
smothered by custom and monopoly, desire
to consult learned female physician, in
stead of being driven like sheep, by iron tyr.
anny-in a country that babies Liberty
to male physician or female quack.
Well, Sir, in 1649 Miss Elizabeth Black
well fought the good fight in the United
OlaGeS, ana naQ ner troubles; because the
States were not so civilized then as now.
She graduated Doctor at Geneva, in the
State of New York.
She was practicing in England in 1858, and
demanded her place on the Register. She is
an Englishwoman by birth; but she is an
English M. D. only through America having
more brains than Britain. This one islander
sings Hail Columbian as often as God save
the QueenP reckon.
Miss Garrett, an enthusiastic student, tray
eled north, south, east and west and knocked
in vain at the doors of every great school and
university in Britain; but at last found
chink in the iron shutters of the London
Apothecaries. II seems Parliament was
wiser in 1915 than in 1858, for it inserted a
clause in the Apothecaries Act of 1915 COM
polling them to examine all persons who
should apply to them for examination after
proper courses of study. Their charter con-
tanned no loop-hole to evade the Act and SUBJ
stitute him for person. so they let Miss
Garrett in as astudent. Like all the students
she had to attend lectures on Chemistry,
Botany, Materia Medica, Zoology, Natural
Philosophy and Clinical Surgery. In the
collateral subjects they let her sit with the
male students; but in Anatomy and Surgery
she had TO attend the same lectures privately,
and pay for lectures all to herself. This cost
her enormous fees. However. it is only fair
to say that, if she had been one of dozen
fam 10 Gtudoptc foao mould bova boay,