The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1903-07-12
WOMEN AND MEDICINE
THE CHARACTER OF THE WORN IN
A WOMAN's MEDICAL COLLEGE.
A Pbysician's Story of Her Ex-
perienccs-Pleasant AMI I'm
pleasant Features.
New York Evening Post.

New York Evening Post.
When nineteen years old, after having
had two years of practical work in a man
ual training school. L offered my credentials
as TO character and general knowledge TO
a woman's medical college of the regular
school, was accepted and matriculated.
of course had only vague ideas of the
work before me. / knew L should have TO
face the anatomical work Of the dissecting
room, and having always had a great aver
sion to anything OF the kind, Hooked upon
this par of the life as very much to be
dreaded. The dissectinG. while not unpleas-
ant TO many of the students, l found very
trying. and when my apprenticeship as a
dissector was over, / made up my mind
that anatomy, and in fact, surgery, ex-
cept in d very small way, was not the field
for me. l never outgrew my dislike of the
work, and 1 would watch with wonder
those students who couldn't have been
dragged away from their subject" with a
derrick. 1t was simply then their having
the ability 10 put the grewsome phase of
the work aside and have before them con-
stantly the fact that anatomy could be
studied properly in no other way.
To Offset this unpleasant side of the first
year came quizzes and laboratory work in
chemistry-physiology and organic, n
with a woman as professor who had the
keen mental equipment and broadness of a
man and all the kindness and intuition of
a woman. the hours spent at the work were
far too short.
A course in histology. the study micro
scopically OF the normal tissues or the body,
which started in the second half of the
year, and was interesting as preparing us
for the study Of the diseased tissues in our
next year.
AS the year neared its close and the ex-
aminations doomed up ahead of me, L had
qualms-but I had to face the ordeal. and
when it was over it did not SEEM such a
fearful thing. Then came four months OF
rest and good times after hearing | had be-
come a second-year student. These passed
rapidly, and October l saw me back at the
college. starting with tn. last of anatomy
and finding myself working In histology
and pathology. This work put me in a fair
way to understand the condition of the
tissues of the body in health and disease,
and thus enable me TO fight them. This,
with a little quizzing in surgery, took me
through the second year and after the ex-
aminations in June had another play
spell, leaving medicine behind.
THE TYPES REPRESENTED.
BY this time / knew something about the
| students and their lives. The majority Of
them, living at a distance from town, took
up their abodes in boarding houses or
stayed with friends. One type was repre-
scented by women who took up medicine as
part of their training as missionaries. These
were given one-half of their tuition. They
formed a Young Woman's Christian Asso-
citation, which met once a week soon after
the noon hour.
Our faculty was about equally divided be-
tween the sexes. My criticism of some of
the teachers was that If you, as a student,
| were ever seen enjoying yourself, or dipping
into something outside OF medicine during
your course, they thought you certainly
would never amount to "A row of pins as a
physician. Not until one had become dried
up in the practice of medicine should one
be allowed to enjoy life. Go out OF doors
by all means, but keep your mind on medi-
cine while out. Eat, yes. but with the pur-
pose of better enabling you to go on with
your continuous medical thought.
What our professors partly failed to do
was to impress us with the necessity for
becoming interested in people and things,
and making those outside the profession
feel we were not mere medical machines.
In large colleges the instructors have large
classes, and most of them are practicing
physicians or doing some form of research
work. There are fewer students in women's
medical colleges, and there Is a much
greater opportunity for a professor to help
them individually.
The third and fourth yearsswere taken UP
with the study of acknowledgements of
medicine and surgery-and my work was
largely in clinics, where l had a chance to
studying, to learn the treatment, hygienic
as well as therapeutic, and to do a good
deal of collateral reading. The patients We
saw were sent to the various clinics from a
nearby dispensary, and were, of course,
from the poorer class. Many were most
pitiful objects In the main, however, as I
have discovered since, they were better
than the people found in most of the large
dispensaries of the city. The ignorance of
these people can only be understood by
those who come in contact with them often.
AS an exanDle of their stupidity, one
mother came to a surgical clinic Will her
youngest child, a small boy. The laddie, a
mite seven or eight years Did: but looking
one foot. He had probably knocked the
skin off. Tn wound had not been kept
clean. and had been poisoned as the
mother said. There was a small abScess at
the point OF injury; 1t was opened, cleaned
and dressed, ard nothing more was heard
of the case for two weeks. Then the mother
with the lad appeared again at another
clinic, said the boys foot was well, but the
poison, savin' your presence, seems to hev
gone up thro' him to his head" His head
was discovered to be pretty we'll filled with
v~ermin-and the mother, having no COM
mon sense. and being ignorant and lazy,
had allowed the little fellow to suffer with
out offering to help him in any way. This
is a fair example of the stupidity of the
average dispensary patient.
OUT-PRACTICE WORK.
Connected with the fourth year we had
what was called "out-practice work. in
which two of the seniors-working together
were given cases from time to time that
they were to examine carefully, diagnose,
and follow out. outlining some course Of
treatment for the patient. These were re-
ported to the doctor in charge of that work
Mt some time she appointed to meet us at
the home of the patient. These cases all
were In the tenements. We were supposed