Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1889-12-20
FRIDAY MORNING. DEC. 20, 1889.

ment of one female physician in each of the
lunatic asylums of the State, calling this "a
Yankee innovation that old Virginia is not
likely to adopt yet awhile at least" We
agree with the VINDICAToR, however, that
the dictates of humanity call for female
physician. Our Staunton contemporary sums
up the reasons to our satisfaction when it
saws "There is delicacy in the minds OF
women often intensified and made morbid by |
insanity, which constitutes an impossible bar
rier between the male physician and the patti
ent, and prevents his obtaining information
that to render aid he should have. The more
knowledge the public gets in this matter the
more insistent will be the demand that there
shall be some one of their own sex who shall
be on their own side of this impossible barri-
Ell and with whom insane women will freely
communicate. "-Ricltmond State.
Our contemporary will be glad to learn
that the Board of Directors of the W. L.
Asylum here, with spirit OF progress and
humanity much to be commended, and
which will be appreciated all over the State,
have taken the first step towards supplying
this vital help to the insane women in the
institution under their charge. They have
appointed as committee. on the motion OF
Col. Samuel Coleman Of Cumberland two
gentlemen fully in sympathy with the
step, Messrs. w. NJ. McAllister of Bath,
and John W. Todd of Augusta, to report
on the expediency of adding a female phys
ician to the staff and to ascertain suitable
candidates for the position-their report to
be made to the January meeting of the
Board.
The further we examine the subject, the
more we are convinced of the success at
tending the employment of female physi-
clans for the insane. Of the propriety, the
necessity we have long been convinced.
They are successfully engaged in insane
asylums in the very centres of medical learn
ing where thousands Of Southern physicians
got their final lessons in surgery and medi-
cine. And they are employed in the very
largest institutions. At the NorriStoWn,
Pa, Asylum, DR.. Alice Bennett has been
Superintendent of the female department
for ten years, with Drs. Harriet B. Lewis
and Ida Y. Reel as Assistant Physicians,
and under their sole charge-for there are
ment of that Asylum-are eight hundred
patients, At the Asylum near Harrisburg,
Pa, female physician has been employed
for eight years; at that at Athens, Ohio,
one has been employed for eight years. In
addition to these they are employed at the
State Insane Asylums at Mt. Pleasant,
Iowa; Harrisburg, Philadelphia, Dansville
and Warren, Pennsylvania; Danvers, Wor-
cester, Taunton and Northampton, Massa-
chusetts; Blackwell's Island and the Will
lard Asylum, New Y DIRK; Lincoln, Nebraska,
and Weston. w. Va. These are only por-
ton Of the Asylums that we have been able
to get information from. We hope in time
to give much larger list, for we believe,
that as matter of fact, there is not an
Asylum West OF North of Virginia, where
both sexes are represented, that has not a
female physician. We have been unable to
learn of single point at which they have
once been employed where their services
have ever been discontinued.
We have inquired into the history of the
results of employing a female physician at
the State nearest to us, West Virginia, and
where the people are also Virginians, and
find they have been excellent. The same
sort of hesitation prevailed in the minds Of
some of the members of the Board there
about electing a female physician, as now
does in the minds ofsome of our Board here
1t was anovel step in a Virginia Asylum and
there was faint apprehension that there
was a Dr.. Mary Walker flavor about all
such innovations as female physicians.
When first elected, the female physician
DR.. Hattie B. Jones, did not receive the
full vote of the Board though she got a
majority and was chosen. When tie next
election came around she was elected unani-
mOusly, so successful had proved the new
plan. When we say that on that Board
are such men as Dr.. Mayer Of Charleston,
Jno A. Preston of LeWisburg, and Geo. Z.
Sturgis of Morgantown, and that Capt. J. J.
Chipley of Moorfield is it's President, the
statement carries with it the conviction
that the wisdom of the step had been fully
Vindicated.
There are other reasons for the presence
of a female physician in an asylum than
that to which QUIZ contemporary refers as
convincing. One-and very important
one in a public institution to which are
committed helpless women secluded from
the world as by stone wallis that it ends
forever all chance of scandal, well or i'll
founded. 1t is rendered impossible for the
enemies of the administration of an insane
institution to mjure it by scandals. An
other reason is that it is impossible for
male physician to know the minds of insane
women as well as female physician, and he
cannot cater to their amusementS and en-
pigments things so important in an Asy-
1um-as woman can. There are other
reasons even more imperative, which can
not be discussed in a newspaper, which de-
mand in the name of Humanity and Decen-
cy, that insane women shall be treated by
physicians of their own sex. The nearest
we can come to making it plain, is to say
that female physician is just as impor-
tant in the female department of an insane
asylum, as a male physician is in the male
department.
Those members of the legislature who
feel any impulse towards wild legislation
arising arising out of the belief that the
overwhelming Damocratic maioTitv in tha+