WOMEN PROFESSIONS AND SKILLED LABOR. 465 



are, at times, almost maniacal in character." 1 I shall make but one 

 other quotation, and I am glad to say that it bears directly and prac- 

 t ; cally upon this matter. Dr. H. R. Storer, of Boston, is reported to 

 have spoken as follows in a debate at the Gynaecological Society of 

 Boston, May, 1870: " In the present excited state of public opinion, 

 it were foolish, and at the same time unkind, to object to female physi- 

 cians upon any untenable grounds ; and he frankly stated that the 

 arguments that physicians had usually employed, when discussing this 

 subject, were, almost without exception, untenable. Some of the 

 women who were desirous of practising physic and surgery were just 

 as well educated for the work, had just as much inclination for it, and 

 were as unflinching in the presence of suffering, or at the sight of 

 blood, as were many male practitioners. They had a right to demand 

 an acknowledgment that, in these respects, they were as competent to 

 practise as are a large proportion of ourselves. There is, however, 

 one point, and it is upon this that the whole question must turn, that 

 has till now almost wholly been lost sight of: and this is the fact that, 

 like the rest of their sex, lady doctors, until they are practically old 

 women, regularly menstruate, and are therefore subject to those alter- 

 nations of mental condition, observable in every woman under these 

 circumstances, which so universally affect, temporarily, their faculties 

 of reason and judgment. That these faculties ai-e thus affected at the 

 times referred to is universally acknowledged." 2 



Many other authors may be cited to the same effect ; but these are 

 sufficient to render evident the possibilities of danger, if not of dis- 

 aster, to women subject to the ceaseless calls of professional life. 



Among popular writers upon this subject, the matter of wifehood 

 or motherhood has been treated as if, were woman willing to sacrifice 

 some of her traditional feeling, and voluntary likings for the other 

 sex, she might cast off the fetters of these honorable conditions, and 

 move on untrammeled to the study and practice of a profession. We 

 have been studying woman, in her relation to the subject of this paper, 

 as a sexual being ; and, if we continue the study in the same direction, 

 we must arrive at the conclusion that marriage is not an optional mat- 

 ter with her. On the contrary, it is a prime necessity to her normal, 

 physical, and intellectual life. There is an undercurrent of impulse 

 impelling every healthy woman to marry. That this is a law of her 

 sexual being we know by the positive evidence of medical men and 

 others. We also know that the married woman exerts a more marked 

 influence upon men, and society in general, than the celibate. There 

 is also, among married women, a more perfect equilibrium between 

 the intellectual, physical, and sexual forces ; and yet, necessary as 

 marriage is for woman, in the present relation of the sexes, it must in 

 every way impair her prospects of success in professional work. 



1 'Diseases of Women," p. 617. 



3 "The Journal of the Gynaecological Society of Boston," vol. ii., p. 267. 

 vol. vi. 30 



