ABSTRACT
It is curious to note the tendency of a higher civilisation to break through the tyranny of etiquette and custom which has grown up in the course of time, and to revert to the practice of simpler and more natural F,ges. Of this tendency the changes which have taken place in the medical profession are a striking example. "I well know," says Isaac of York to his daughter, the beautiful Rebecca, "that the lessons of Miriam, daughter of the Rabbi Manasses of Byzantium, whose soul is in Paradise, have made thee 'skilful in the art of healing, and that thou knowest the craft of herbs and the force of elixirs. Therefore do as thy mind giveth thee-thou art a good damsel, a blessing and a crown, and a song of rejoicing unto me and to my house, and unto the people of my fathers." And Sir Walter Scott goes on to point out that " The youngest reader of romances and romantic ballads must recollect how often the females, during the dark ages, as they are called, were initiated into the mysteries of surgery," while" the Jews, both male and female, possessed and practised the medical science in all its branches." But we find the status of the female physician gradually lowered in the succeeding ages, until in the first half of the present century she was only represented in her higher aspect by the lady bountiful of the village with her store of medicaments, dispensed with more or less of judgnlent and experience; and in her lower aspect by the wise woman, who surrounded her l?rescriptions with an atmosphere of mystery and magIc, but who was often far 'more trusted than the regular practitioner. In America her reputation had sunk to a yet lower depth. What a change has taken place in the last fifty years! In America, in England, in,almosLevery European country, and in our Eastern possessions, there has been a return, not only to the idea but to the fact of women
physicians, and the deeply-rooted opinion tha.t "the rougher hand is safer" is nearly exploded. And this state of things we owe, in the first instance, to the heroic perseverance and the womanly qualities of one woman. It was Elizabeth Blackwell who, alone and unaided, stormed the medical schools, and was the first to tread the rough path, now worn smooth by her feet and those of her successors, which admits women to the practice of the medical profession. In the book before us, we have, from her own pen, tlle account of her early difficulties, so nobly met, so triumphantly overcome. We see, represented in its pages, no " new woman," aspiring to dethrone, and imitate, man-"I have had" she writes, "too much kindness,· aid, and just recognition from men to make such attitude of women otherwise than painful "-but a modest and gentle lady, anxious to use her gifts for the good of her fellow creatures. She had. no natural bent for medicine. "I felt," she says, when she first took up the work, "that I was severing the usual ties of life, and preparing to act against my strongest natural inclinations, But a force stronger tha.n myself, then and afterwards, seemed to lead me on; 8. purpose was before me which I must inevitably seek to accomplish."
