Note 75 — VII. WOMAN IN MEDICINE.
Reading edition
“Every woman will be narrowly watched and severely criticised because she is a woman. If she bear not herself wisely and well, many will suffer for her sake. Gentleness of manner, the adornment of a quiet spirit, are as important to the physician as the woman.... I too have felt the hopes and the aspirations after a fuller and more satisfying life, which have arisen in the souls of some of you.... The office of healing is Christlike.... Your business is, not to war with words, but to make good your position by deeds of healing.... Probity, simplicity, modesty, hope, patience, benevolence, prudence,—are needed alike by the woman and the physician. All the brave, struggling women, who, in various walks of life, are laboring for small compensations, will be benefited by a movement which opens to women another department of remunerative and honorable activity.”
Contrast with these modest statements of the gentle Philadelphia Quakeress the aggressive self-consciousness of the emancipated French woman, who rushes into the arena, with a little red flag waving in every sentence: “À nos lectrices, à nos lecteurs, à nos collaborateurs, à nos amis connus et inconnus, à tous ceux qui s’interessent à notre entreprise. Salut!... Nous voyons tous les jours des professeurs qui ont étudié dans leurs moindres détails, tous les êtres organises qui forment la série zoologique, et qui semblent ignorer absolument ce qu’est cet être qui tient tant de place dans l’humanité, la femme. Faisons-nous connaître, et quand ils sauront ce que nous valons, ils nous apprecieront comme nous le meritons.”—Mme. C. Renooz, Revue Scientifique des femmes. Paris, Mai, 1888.
The Revue is already extinguished after a year’s existence. The college survives and prospers after forty years of struggle.