The Chilhowee echo. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1899-19??, 1900-01-13

! F6Seut all duNduCeu peIlOtl VI uue Cell-
fury, on the borderland of which stand
the authorities just quoted, an incon-
grous group, in advance of their gen.
GRAFTON and prophecying the possibil-
tiles of the nineteenth century, just as
we, on our new borderland, while gath
ering up our actual surroundings, cast
ever and anon furtive glance and spec
ulate what may be in store for us dur
ing the twentieth. We have, at all
events, something more tangible than
our predecessors had to work upon in
the shape of facts; while the cui bono
of woman's work had passed out from
the realm of speculation into that of
solid fact
AS for women making nothing by her
wits, we have thousands of young wo-
men, thoroughly educated and with all
their wits about them, working as
post-office, savings bank and insurance
clerks; and even so keen a critic as Mr..
Fawcett felt impressed to say, 'They
make excellent civil servants, and" he
added with considerable naivete, their
salaries are about one-third of what is
paid to men for similar work.
Be l right or be wrong, am dis
posed to look upon the educational
phase as the most important and cru
cial one in this multiform question; and
it is no small encouragement to find so
excellent an authority as Sidney Smith,
supported seventy years after writing
by the Edinburgh reviewer, posting
this very principle. The twelve-year-
old-boy woman of 1910, was supposed
to have nothing to do, no livelihood to
gain, and no powers of gaining it, if she
had. What use, then, to educate so in
capable and superauous creature?
By-and-by it dawned upon the wisdom
of our forefathers that the absence of
education might possibly account for
the incapability, real or assumed, and
that there might be sphere of wo-
mans works if the right woman could
be found for the right place. AS it was,
the situation formed only feminine
variant of that so admirably sketched
by the same master hand, where the
round person always got into the square
! hole, a,sa Cha saaas q person into tao
round one.
To my thinking the most obvious en-
ployment for the duly qualified woman
next, if ever subordinate, to her undis-
puted vocation as a teacher is in the
capacity of physician We have slowly
CROPPED during our modern Dark Ages
to the conviction that sanitary science
is part of medicine proper. The pre-
vention of disease has been promoted to
something like equal rank with its cure;
and for each of these spheres, woman
appears to be gifted with special
adaptation. Of course may be wrong.
| cannot hope to write dispassionately,
but advancing intelligence has done a
good deal to indorse my opinion, during
what suppose | may still call the cur
rent century.
Why, at the beginning of the century,
a person who called in lady doctor,
would have been suspected of trying
to sign the patients death warrant.
He would have been regarded in the
same light as we regard the Peculiar
People of the Christian Scientists,
whilst at the close OF the century, no.
body,s sanity or sincerity would be
called in question, if he preferred DR..
Elizabeth Blank before DR.. John Blank
as his regular medical attendant
But that was not all. There are doc
tors of philosophy and logic, bachelors
of art, science, music and of law in the
world of women.
There is one question looming, so to
say, on the horizon of my subject, which
| shall only glance at and then leave,
flying off scared at my own temerity.
Should women preachY That question
has formed the title of book Why
should they not? Might girl be a
curate? To me there seems fitness of
things in the arrangement. But ! am
not expressing views. | am recording
facts. In the waning months of 1899,
Mile. Adrienne Veigele preached with
much acceptance at suburban church.
The thin end of the wedge is inserted.
How long before the girl curate and
the lady rector complete the trio of the
learned professions? Law and physics,
as we have seen, are represented in the
rank of women. Why should theology
wait? Is it only waiting for the ar
rival of the new century?
To return to less perilous topics.
spoke of the close connection between
medicine proper and hygiene-between
medicine curative and medicine pre-
ventive, that is. In 1892, two women
were appointed sanitary inspectors in
London, and two years afterwards their
work was reported as very successful.
OF course, this subject is one on
which am inclined to expatiate; and