FEMALE M.D.'S.

 (FROM THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.)

The English world hardly knows as yet what to think of a feminine doctor—whether to believe or wag its head, to scandalize or to admire. We have had among us for some weeks Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D., the representative of a propagand already victorious in America. This lady has been heartily welcomed, and will probably triumph in her enterprise; but she has many difficulties to encounter, of which the most formidable may originate with her own sex. Women are not infrequently nervous to being led by one of themselves; their doubts are ambiguous; their approval is faint. Only the best cultured among them have freely acknowledged that good social service may be performed by Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman who ever took a medical degree, and by her sister, Dr. Emily. As for men, their first impulse is to laugh, quote Byron on blue-stockings, hint irreverently at Bloomerism, and anathematise " strong-mindedness." After the novelty has worn away, however, we believe that lady doctors will be much more in fashion than men-milliners ; so we cordially wish all prosperity to one who starts as the pioneer of a very necessary and important reform. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell is English, not American, as the public have been led to suppose ; but it was in the United States that she commenced her medical career. By 12 colleges her claim to admission was rejected; that of Geneva, in the State of New York, at length received her. She listened unflinchingly to the lectures, nor was it long before her diploma was conceded in the midst of a veritable ovation, and Elizabeth Blackwell became a registered Domina. Well, who are not going to write her biography. Suffice it to say, that she has come before us as a qualified female physician for women and children ; that her studies have been thorough ; that she has been met in consultation by men of high eminence in the profession ; and that her example has now begun to be extensively followed. Bigots and boobies, growling dowagers and simpering school-misses, may be shocked, amused, or confounded, as they please ; but such an institution as the New York Women's Hospital refutes the calumnious, and ought to silence the sarcastic.

Now, the conventional notion has hitherto been, that the powers of women are, or ought to be, exhausted by their family and domestic functions, as wives, mothers, and housekeepers. That is to say, half the human race has been pronounced incapable of more than the inspection of servants, the care of furniture, the training of children, the enlivening of drawing-rooms, and the contribution of so much chit-chat to the babble of society. Setting aside the general question, whether all women could not be educated to higher purposes, are there not some who, being neither wives, mothers, nor housekeepers, superior too to the necessity of menial service, yet not independent, gifted with talents, and inspired by ambition, might honorably and profitably imitate the admirable perseverance and courage of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell ? Must every one not born as a doll die as a drudge ? Drudges and dolls there will be, no doubt, so long as humanity continues unchanged ; but society, as if by tacit consent, has raised women above the rank they held when all were spinners, staining the fleece with purple, or tanning the sheepskin, twisting yarn, or grinding corn. We may not, it is true, have an abundance of De Staels or Sevignes ; but we have undoubtedly thousands who might, if the path were open, follow independent and even brilliant careers. If not, there would be little reason on our part for boasting that we are above the level of Sacs, Hottentots, or Esquimaux ; for it would be an humbling confession to insist that every female in a civilised country must either be maintained by her husband or friends, or receive the wages of servitude as a teacher, a governess, a servant, or a factory hand. To be the rare appendage of a household may suit some, but would be slavery to others. The same applies to spinning, weaving, bookbinding, shoe-making, map-coloring, and a hundred other forms of mechanical labor, no less than to trade, from apple-selling at a corner to the keeping of a lustrous shop that seems ready to burst with its opulence of ornament and vanity. But a woman may be rich, and yet need a vocation. "For her," says an American philosopher, " there is no profession left except marriage." Why, however, should she not develop her best capacities, act upon her rights and duties as a human being, pursue happiness in her own way, enjoy liberty in the sense in which she construes it, and compete in the great race of reputation? No one forbids her to be an artist, Rosa Bonheur is a universal favorite. Everybody admires woman as a poet—all nations have loved Sappho. Yet she may not possess literary or artistic genius— she may, in fact, be an Elizabeth Blackwell instead of an Elizabeth Barrett Browning; her capacities may be those of a physician, not of a painter or a lyrist. In that case, neither public opinion nor academic pedantry ought to oppose her wishes.

The hostile argument is, we know, that medical study must profane the purity of a feminine mind. We lay no stress upon reasoning of this character. What Elizabeth Blackwell proposes is to qualify women for treating their own sex and children. In that there can be no indelicacy, and not a tenth part so much inconvenience as attached to Florence Nightingale's Crimean mission. Besides, when a generation of lady medical teachers has sprung up, and when it has become unnecessary that men should lecture before female students, the force of the objection will cease altogether, and it will undoubtedly be a social advantage that young girls and children, instead of being attended in all their ailments by medical men, shall be confided to the care of those whom their parents may implicitly trust. Women, as a quaint author asserts, are by nature half doctors and half nurses ; the profession, he adds, seems to belong to them ; and certainly the wonderful proficiency to which numbers of the sex have attained in America almost justifies the paradox. Certain theorists have gone further, and advocated the practice of law and theology by ladies. We will not now discuss these questions; but there are already reverend ladies in the United States ; and, although no Miss has yet become a lawyer, the famous plea of Lady Alice Lisle, delivered when she could not speak by attorney, has tempted some people to believe in the probability of petticoats invading the Inns and Courts. Undoubtedly, mankind might hear better preaching from many a woman than the Spaniards or Italians hear from a race of superstitious celibate monks. Apart from these speculations, every person can judge independently whether or not in numerous and constantly-recurring instances, the presence of a lady professionally qualified would not be invaluable in a family of girls, or to an invalid, or in those cases which, as instinct told the Roman matron, call naturally for the help of women alone. We need not, in defence of this position, be for ever citing Semiramis or Maria Theresa, Vittoria Colonna or Brynhilda, Mrs. Somerville or Captain Betsey, who commands the Scotch brig Cleotus. The question is not whether a few feminine minds have shot to the zenith, but whether the average has not been depressed by prejudice, by false theories, and whether infinitely too much credit has not been given to satires, representing all female advocates of progress as Amazons, who regard women as a race naturally at enmity with man. Between a harem of the East and a fashionable drawing-room in the West there is not a great deal of difference in point of social philosophy ; but, in order to re-arrange the balance in our own favor, we have to encourage healthier and bolder views; and however lady students of Anatomy or the pharmacopœia may be ridiculed by dolts and jesters, they have but to persevere, and half a century will bring about no unimportant revolution. To say, with a writer who was rather too fond of startling his readers, that "men will not retain their manliness unless women acquire it," is to go far in search of an epigram; the subject may more usefully be discussed in common-sense language. Let women pursue legitimate objects of ambition, take part in social work, heal the sick of their own sex, gain enlightenment, emancipate themselves from the debasing necessity of being married, or forced into menial chains, and they can afford to be lectured on the dangers of contamination; for a true woman, whatever her studies, will no more be polluted by them than a star in the heavens can be blackened by a ground-fog in Bermondsey.

Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957), Friday 1 July 1859 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article5683730