The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-01-10

nize this sort Of prurient prudery, for an
artist knows no squeamishness of sex in
the acquisition of the details of pro-
fessional knowledge obtained by the
study of the nude human figure.
Nobody ever heard of an art
school in Europe under great master
that hesitated to teach all that was neces-
sary to mastery of the profession with
ont thought as to the sex of the seeker
after art knowledge. The curious thing
is that while the foes of women as ply
sicians see no occasion for feelings of deli
caey, either on part of physician or pa
tient, in the practice of male doctors at
tending women and girls in diseases pecu-
liar to their sex. they yet object
to any professional consideration
or discussion of the same matters
by . mixed medical school of men and
women as highly indiscrete and improper.
There is no force in this objection today.
for every medical school in the country
has a training school for professional
nurses, where large number of most re-
spectacle women attend the clinics and
assist at the most delicate operations. If
respectable woman may nurse patient
of either sex for pay, she may just as
properly act as physician or surgeon.
The objection that 'only an inferior
order Of women would enter the profess
sion" was stupid position, since to say
that the profession, most nearly related to
humanity, would win the attention OF
only IAN inferior style of women" could
only be true on the assumption that men
had degraded the moral grandeur of a great
calling so low as to bring it into disrepute
with persons of such philanthropic sensi-
bility as women desiring 70 be doctors
presumably would be. The fact that q
woman aspired and labored to qualify
herself to be a doctor, subject to the same
test of scientific learning and skill re-
CURED Of male medical students, would
be on its face proof that while she might
not make . famous doctor, she certainly
was not "an inferior style" of woman,
since ambition to succeed in a most
exacting and humane calling is an
ocpiIatiOn tudt uO etSlc VA
woman feels, for an inferior woman
will prefer to dodge the schools and play
quack just as the 'inferior style" of men
do. Women physicians have already
been appointed to responsible positions in
the prisons and public hospitals of Massa-
chusetts. DR.. Mary Putnam jacob, as a
member in good standing of the New York
Medical Society, was esteemed in her
speciality of the diseases of children, quite
as valuable member of the profession
as her husband, the late DR.. jacob. But
suppose she was not her husbands equal;
suppose she was simply a person of aver
age medical skill and knowledge impaired
by the scientific schools. why should she
be rated as only an inferior style" of
woman because she wanted to be doctor.
Is a man inferentially an 'inferior order
of animal" because he has elected to be q
doctor? This is the answer that the
friends of woman physicians make for
them, and it seems to Us that it is con-
elusive with every just, not to say generous
mind. A woman who can endure the
same severity of medical examinations as
to her science and skill that would be
exacted of her brother at any regular
medical school of good standing, probably
has not mistaken her calling.
You can't cover a continent with q coffee
cup, and you can't by artificial pressure
suppress women doctors; they represent
public desire, if not a public want: they
s--rl IL
ing to the old harsh law of success or fall
ure; if they are fit for work they will find
work enough, and will not be snuffed out
by sneers. If the theoretical objections
had been found real in practice the woman
physician experiment would have met an
early death, but it has really fed and
grown fat on ill-bred action and argument.