Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1897-09-09

Medical college, DR.. Byron Robinson
responded to the toast "Women in
Medicine" as follows:
The advancement of any nations
civilization may be judged by the rights
accorded to woman and the state Of its
penal code. All human beings are, or
should be, born equally free and inde-
pendent, with equal rights to liberty
and the pursuit of happiness. All in
reference of these inalienable rights
are pure assumptions on the part of
man. Sexual morals in any country
may be judged by the rights accorded
woman. The less rights accorded to
woman, the more degraded are sexual
morals. In fact in countries in which
women have no legal rights, sexual
morals are mere matter of commerce
and do not enter into the fields of prin-
ciple, or that of right or wrong. The
harem rests on financial ability to sup
port it, and the number of wives in
crease with the bank account. Woman
should be an equal partner with man in
human progress. But before woman
can make human progress she must be
emancipated from the presumptive
chains forged on her by man. The last
and greatest step toward woman's pro-
gress was financial emancipation, when
she could make and pay her own debts.
This step becoming partially realized,
she became factor in the progress of
human affairs. However, human pro-
gress is q very slow matter. Even in
the most enlightened nations of the
10Th century, people are SO blinded by
tradition and ill-founded sentiment that
they are still unable to eliminate sex
from science and art. 1t has taken
long time to convince even few per-
sons that there is no sex in medicine.
Students do not go to medical college
to study sex, but they 90 to study the
great medical science. To show that
blind tradition and biased sentiment
still prevail even among so-called edu-
Gated people. we need but report the
remarks of a theologian who has occu-
pied a prominent Chicago pulpit for
score Of years, in which he says, "Wo-
men and men should not attend clinics
together, as woman should not lose ali
her modesty." 1t might be stated that
all the modesty lost at clinics has had
very shallow roots. Modesty resides
neither in clinics nor skirts but in the
Uranium.
Woman can never completely show
her merit in medicine until she is edu-
Gated with men through the entire med
ical course. All the medical depart
ments should be studied co-education-
ally. The reason for this is evident.
After graduating, woman is compelled
to compete with man in medical prac-
tice and to demonstrate her fitness, she
should have the same training and
equipments. Facts and figures will bear
out the statement that the average
woman is as successful as the average
man in medicine, though man has had
many centuries of medically educated
progenitors with all its white washed
tradition to influence opinion in his
favor. The following report will speak
for itself: At the new Hospital for Wo-
men, i'll London, all the doctors are
women. Out of ninety major opera
tions, there have been but two deaths.
This would seem to indicate that women
may be competent in surgery as in med
icine and nursing. What man surgeon
does not boast when he has only % per
cent. mortality in major operations. l
know one woman surgeon who did nine
teen consecutive abdominal sections
without death and without suppura-
ton; not every man surgeon can dupli-
cate it.
The following report sent to me by
DR.. Lucy Waite while on her trip of
inspections of hospitals of Italy, Tur-
key, Greece and Russia, by special IN
vitation of DR.. Sem, speaks for itself in
regard to the state of civilization. There
is one woman physician in Athens, one
in Constantinople for the unspeakable
Turk, and one in Budapest. The woman
physician in Constantinople, though ed
ucated in the best medical schools of
Europe, cannot practice only under
special permit of the prime minister,
and dare not do surgical operation, as
she has no one to help her whom she
can trust. Here i'll cruel, treacherous
Turkey women physicians, like Mark
Twain in the rain-storm. travel under
difficulties.
The effect of the presence of women
among any classes of men, especially
the medical class, is highly moral and
particularly restraining One of the
most distinguished surgeons of Chicago
remarked to me but few months ago,
that he was pleased to have women
physicians present at his clinics because
their presence had good moral effect
on the medical students.
Early medical teaching in this coun-
try savored not infrcquently of vulgar
stories, which the presence of women
would certainly prohibit. 1t surely
will not for one moment be claimed
that the vulgar stories had an ennobling
moral effect on the medical students.
No one doubts that woman in medicine
has checked these stories of the medi-
cal teachers and substituted for them
more dignitied facts and respectful re-