Note 26 — III.

I am happy to find, on the authority of the "London Athenæum," that this statement was, when I wrote it, untrue. "Germany," it says, on the 23d of July, 1859,—"Germany has lost one of her most famed and eminent female scholars. Frau Dr. Heidenreich, née Von Siebold, died at Darmstadt a fortnight ago. She was born in 1792, studied the science of midwifery at the Universities of Göttingen and Giessen, and took her doctor's degree in 1817; not, honoris causâ, by favor of the Faculty, but, like any other German student, by writing the customary Latin dissertation, as well as by bravely defending, in public disputation, a number of medical theses. After that, she took up her permanent abode at Darmstadt, indefatigable in the exercise of her special branch of science, and universally honored as one of its first living authorities."

"Universally honored as one of its first living authorities," that was what I was in search of; and French and German papers confirm the statement. Dr. Heidenreich came of a family highly distinguished in her specialty. It was ancient and noble: she was a baroness in her own right. All readers of English works on midwifery know the authority given to the name of Von Siebold. Her father founded the famous hospital at Berlin; and her brother, still living, stands high in medical fame, having written the best history of midwifery extant.

Rosa Bonheur, also, is as unquestionably at the head of her department as Sir Edmund Landseer. The three pictures Boston has had a chance to see this autumn ought to fill every woman's bosom with a glow of honest pride.

I can find no better place than this, perhaps, to introduce the following facts, to which my attention has been directed by the kindness of Miss Mary L. Booth, of New York.

In the History of Southold, N.Y.,—one of the oldest towns in the United States,—it appears that women have practised there as "doctresses" and "midwives" from the first settlement of the country. From 1740 to the present time,—more than one hundred years,—the town of Southold has had a trustworthy female physician. The first of these, Elizabeth King, who practised from 1740 until her death in 1780, attended at the birth of more than one thousand children.

During this time,—from 1760 to 1775,—a Mrs. Peck was also known in the same town as an excellent midwife. The direct successor of Mrs. King was, however, a Mrs. Lucretia Lester, who practised from 1745 to 1779. Of her my authority says, "She was justly respected as nurse and doctress to the pains and infirmities incident to her fellow-mortals, especially her own sex;" a remark which shows she attended both. "She was, during thirty years, conspicuous as an angel of mercy; a woman whose price was beyond rubies. It is said she attended at the birth of thirteen hundred children, and, of that number, lost but two."

A Mrs. Susannah Brown practised from 1800 to 1840, and attended at the birth of fourteen hundred children. From the number of patients these women must have had, it would seem as if they were sustained by the whole neighborhood. The book just published speaks highly of them, as what Henry Ward Beecher would call a "means of grace," and pleads, from the precedent, for the education of women to medicine.

Southold is in Suffolk County, on Long Island; and was settled in the early part of the seventeenth century. It has now three churches, and less than five thousand inhabitants.

The instance of so creditable a practice being maintained for a whole century, by three women, stands alone, so far as I know, in this country. Mrs. King probably studied abroad, and taught her next successor, and possibly Mrs. Peck, who seems to have assisted both. That three of the four women named should have practised forty years each, seems very remarkable.