A Woman-Hater Part 36

"To qualify us for examination we now needed but one thing more--hospital practice. The infirmary is supported not so much by the university as the town. We applied, therefore, with some confidence, for the permission usually conceded to medical students. The managers refused us the _town infirmary._ Then we applied to the subscribers. The majority, not belonging to a trades-union, declared in our favor, and intimated plainly that they would turn out the illiberal managers at the next election of managers.

"But by this time the war was hot and general, and hard blows dealt on both sides. It was artfully suppressed by our enemies in the profession and in the Press that we had begged hard for the separate cla.s.s which had been promised us in anatomy, and permission to attend, by ourselves, a limited number of wards in the infirmary; and on this falsehood by suppression worse calumnies were built.

"I shall tell you what we really were, and what foul mouths and pens insinuated we must be.

"Two accomplished women had joined us, and we were now the seven wise virgins of a half-civilized nation, and, if I know black from white, we were seven of its brightest ornaments. We were seven ladies, who wished to be doctresses, especially devoted to our own s.e.x; seven good students, who went on our knees to the university for those separate cla.s.ses in anatomy and clinical surgery which the university was bound in honor to supply us; but, our prayer rejected, said to the university, 'Well, use your own discretion about separate or mixed cla.s.ses; but for your own credit, and that of human nature, do not willfully tie a hangman's noose to throttle the weak and deserving, and don't cheat seven poor, hard-working, meritorious women, your own matriculated students, out of our entrance-fees, which lie to this day in the university coffers, out of the exceptionally heavy fees we have paid to your professors, out of all the fruit of our hard study, out of our diplomas, and our bread.

Solve the knot your own way. We will submit to mixed cla.s.ses, or anything, except professional destruction.'

"In this spirit our lion-hearted leader wrote the letter of an uninjured dove, and said there were a great many more wards in the infirmary than any male student could or did attend; we would be content to divide the matter thus: the male students to have the monopoly of two-thirds, we to have the bare right of admission to one-third. By this the male students (if any) who had a sincere objection to study the sick, and witness operations, in our company, could never be troubled with us; and we, though less favored than the male students, could just manage to qualify for that public examination, which was to prove whether we could make able physicians or not.

"Sir, this gentle proposal was rejected with rude scorn, and in aggressive terms. Such is the spirit of a trades-union.

"Having now shown you what we were, I will now tell you what our enemies, declining to observe our conduct, though it was very public, suggested we _must_ be--seven shameless women, who pursued medicine as a handle for s.e.xuality; who went into the dissecting-room to dissect males, and into the hospital to crowd round the male patient, and who _demanded_ mixed cla.s.ses, that we might have male companions in those studies which every feminine woman would avoid altogether.

"This key-note struck, the public was regaled with a burst of hypocrisy such as Moli'ere never had the luck to witness, or oh, what a comedy he would have written!

"The immodest s.e.x, taking advantage of Moli'ere's decease without heirs of his brains, set to work in public to teach the modest s.e.x modesty.

"In the conduct of this pleasant paradox, the representatives of that s.e.x, which has much courage and little modesty, were two professors--who conducted the paradox so judiciously that the London Press reprimanded them for their foul insinuations--and a number of young men called medical students.

"Now, the medical student surpa.s.ses most young men in looseness of life, and indecency of mind and speech.

"The representatives of womanhood to be instructed in modesty by these animals, old and young, were seven prudes, whose minds were devoted to study and honorable ambition. These women were as much above the average of their s.e.x in feminine reserve and independence of the male s.e.x as they were in intellect.

"The average girl, who throughout this discussion was all of a sudden puffed as a lily, because she ceased to be _observed,_ can attend to nothing if a man is by; she can't work, she can't play, she is so eaten up with s.e.xuality. The frivolous soul can just manage to play croquet with females; but, enter a man upon the scene, and she does even that very ill, and can hardly be got to take her turn in the only thing she has really given her mind to. We were angels compared with this paltry creature, and she was the standing b.u.t.t of public censure, until it was found that an imaginary picture of her could be made the handle for insulting her betters.

"Against these seven prudes, decent dotards and their foul-mouthed allies flung out insinuations which did not escape public censure; and the medical students declared their modesty was shocked at our intrusion into anatomy and surgery, and pet.i.tioned against us. Some of the Press were deceived by this for a time, and _hurlaient avec les loups._

"I took up, one day, my favorite weekly, in which nearly every writer seems to me a scholar, and was regaled with such lines as these:

"'It appears that girls are to a.s.sociate with boys as medical students, in order that, when they become women, they may be able to speak to men with entire plainness upon all the subjects of a doctor's daily practice.

"'In plain words, the aspirants to medicine and surgery desire to rid themselves speedily and effectually of that modesty which nature has planted in women.' And then the writer concludes: 'We beg to suggest that there are other places besides dissecting-rooms and hospitals where those ladies may relieve themselves of the modesty which they find so troublesome. But fathers naturally object to this being done at their sons' expense."

"Infamous!" cried Vizard. "One comfort, no man ever penned that. That is some old woman writing down young ones."

"I don't know," said Rhoda. "I have met so many womanish men in this business. All I know is, that my cheeks burned, and, for once in the fight, scalding tears ran down them. It was as if a friend had spat upon me.

"What a chimera! What a monstrous misinterpretation of pure minds by minds impure! To _us_ the dissecting-room was a temple, and the dead an awe, revolting to all our senses, until the knife revealed to our minds the Creator's hand in structural beauties that the trained can appreciate, if wicked dunces can't.

"And as to the infirmary, we should have done just what we did at Zurich.

We held a little aloof from the male patients, unless some good-natured lecturer, or pupil, gave us a signal, and then we came forward. If we came uninvited, we always stood behind the male students: but we did crowd round the beds of the female patients, and claimed the inner row: AND, SIR, THEY THANKED G.o.d FOR US OPENLY.

"A few awkward revelations were made during this discussion. A medical student had the candor to write and say that he had been at a lecture, and the professor had told an indelicate story, and, finding it palatable to his modest males, had said, 'There, gentlemen: now, if female students were admitted here, I could not have told you this amusing circ.u.mstance.'

So that it was our purifying influence he dreaded in secret, though he told the public he dreaded the reverse.

"Again, female patients wrote to the journals to beg that female students might be admitted to come between them and the brutal curiosity of the male students, to which they were subjected in so offensive a way that more than one poor creature declared she had felt agonies of shame, even in the middle of an agonizing operation.

"This being a cry from that public for whose sake the whole clique of physicians--male and female--exists, had, of course, no great weight in the union controversy.

"But, sir, if grave men and women will sit calmly down and fling dirt upon every woman who shall aspire to medicine in an island, though she can do so on a neighboring continent with honor, and choose their time when the dirt can only fall on seven known women--since the female students in that island are only seven--the pretended generality becomes a cowardly personality, and wounds as such, and excites less cold-hearted, and more hot-headed blackguards to outrage. It was so at Philadelphia, and it was so at Edinburgh.

"Our extramural teacher in anatomy was about to give a compet.i.tive examination. Now, on these occasions, we were particularly obnoxious.

Often and clearly as it had been proved, by _'a priori_ reasoning, that we _must_ be infinitely inferior to the average male, we persisted in proving, by hard fact, that we were infinitely his superior; and every examination gave us an opportunity of crushing solid reasons under hollow fact.

"A band of medical students determined that for once _'a priori_ reasoning should have fair play, and not be crushed by a thing so illusory as fact. Accordingly, they got the gates closed, and collected round them. We came up, one after another, and were received with hisses, groans, and abusive epithets.

"This mode of reasoning must have been admirably adapted to my weak understanding; for it convinced me at once I had no business there, and I was for private study directly.

"But, sir, you know the ancients said, 'Better is an army of stags with a lion for their leader, than an army of lions with a stag for their leader.' Now, it so happened that we had a lioness for our leader. She pushed manfully through the crowd, and hammered at the door: then we crept quaking after. She ordered those inside to open the gates; and some student took shame, and did. In marched our lioness, crept after by her--her--"

"Her cubs."

"A thousand thanks, good sir. Her does. On second thoughts, 'her hinds.'

Doe is the female of buck. Now, I said stags. Well, the ruffians who had undertaken to teach us modesty swarmed in too. They dragged a sheep into the lecture-room, lighted pipes, produced bottles, drank, smoked, and abused us ladies to our faces, and interrupted the lecturer at intervals with their howls and ribaldry: that was intended to show the professor he should not be listened to any more if he admitted the female students.

The affair got wind, and other students, not connected with medicine, came pouring in, with no worse motive, probably, than to see the lark.

Some of these, however, thought the introduction of the sheep unfair to so respected a lecturer, and proceeded to remove her; but the professor put up his hand, and said, 'Oh, don't remove _her:_ she is superior in intellect to many persons here present.'

"At the end of the lecture, thinking us in actual danger from these ruffians, he offered to let us out by a side door; but our lioness stood up and said, in a voice that rings in my ear even now, 'Thank you, sir; no. There are _gentlemen_ enough here to escort us safely.'

"The magic of a great word from a great heart, at certain moments when minds are heated! At that word, sir, the scales fell from a hundred eyes; manhood awoke with a start, ay, and chivalry too; fifty manly fellows were round us in a moment, with glowing cheeks and eyes, and they carried us all home to our several lodgings in triumph. The cowardly caitiffs of the trades-union howled outside, and managed to throw a little dirt upon our gowns, and also hurled epithets, most of which were new to me; but it has since been stated by persons more versed in the language of the _canaille_ that no fouler terms are known to the dregs of mankind.

"Thus did the immodest s.e.x, in the person of the medical student, outrage seven fair samples of the modest s.e.x--to teach them modesty.

"Next morning the police magistrates dealt with a few of our teachers, inflicted severe rebukes on them, and feeble fines.

"The craftier elders disowned the riot in public, but approved it in private; and continued to act in concert with it, only with cunning, not violence. _It caused no honest revulsion of feeling,_ except in the disgusted public, and they had no power to help us.

"The next incident was a stormy debate by the subscribers to the infirmary; and here we had a little feminine revenge, which, outraged as we had been, I hope you will not grudge us.

"Our lioness subscribed five pounds, and became ent.i.tled to vote and speech. As the foulest epithets had been hurled at her by the union, and a certain professor had told her, to her face, no respectable woman would come to him and propose to study medicine, she said, publicly, that she had come to his opinion, and respectable women would avoid him--which caused a laugh.

"She also gave a venerable old physician, our bitter opponent, a slap that was not quite so fair. His attendant had been concerned in that outrage, and she a.s.sumed--in which she was not justified--that the old doctor approved. 'To be sure,' said she, 'they say he was intoxicated, and that is the only possible excuse.'

"The old doctor had only to say that he did not control his a.s.sistants in the street; and his own mode of conducting the opposition, and his long life of honor, were there to correct this young woman's unworthy surmises, and she would have had to apologize for going too far on mere surmise. But, instead of that, he was so injudicious as to accuse her of foul language, and say, 'My attendant is a perfect gentleman; he would not be my attendant if he were not.'

"Our lioness had him directly. 'Oh,' said she, 'if Dr. So-and-so prefers to say that his attendant committed that outrage on decency when in his sober senses, I am quite content.'

"This was described as violent invective by people with weak memories, who had forgotten the nature of the outrage our lioness was commenting on; but in truth it was only superior skill in debate, with truth to back it.

"For my part, I kept the police report at the time, and have compared it with her speech. The judicial comments on those rioters are far more severe than hers. The truth is it was her facts that hit too hard, not her expressions.

"Well, sir, she obtained a majority; and those managers of the infirmary who objected to female students were dismissed, and others elected. At the same meeting the Court of Contributors pa.s.sed a statute, making it the law of the infirmary that students should be admitted without regard to s.e.x.

"But as to the mere election of managers, the other party demanded a scrutiny of the votes, and instructive figures came out. There voted with us twenty-eight firms, thirty-one ladies, seven doctors.

"There voted with the union fourteen firms, two ladies, _thirty-seven doctors,_ and three _druggists._

"Thereupon the trades-union, as declared by the figures, alleged that firms ought not to vote. _Nota bene,_ they always had voted unchallenged till they voted for fair play to women.