A NATIONAL VETERINARY INSTITUTE. 399 



It is a great misfortune that we can not reduce the number to four 

 or five large, well-founded, scientifically-founded sectional institu- 

 tions, under one system of regulations for the whole country. The 

 chartering of special schools for the promulgation of any special 

 doctrine, as homoeopathy, or for the education of special classes — 

 women — is to be most vigorously condemned. In the first place, the 

 fundamentals of medical science are the same, and if, on graduation, 

 a practitioner chooses to start off upon a theoretical side-track, it 

 matters not to the State. As for special schools for women, that is 

 another absurdity. If the women desire to enter into the struggle 

 for existence, good : give them a free chance ; but, when they do 

 this, they must know that they descend from the reverenced throne 

 which American women in general sit upon, and that they have 

 forfeited all rights to any special consideration as women. They 

 must be ready to take the bitter with the sweet, the rough with the 

 polished, the profane and vulgar with the chaste : unless they are 

 willing to do this, bach to their homesteads ! The Trustees of Har- 

 vard College deserve nothing but condemnation in refusing the 

 women admittance to their medical school. They say, " Endow 

 another and a special school" ; but they entirely fail to say a word 

 about its qualifications and restrictions. They certainly know — not 

 to their benefit, I think — that the State will charter anything ; but 

 they should also know that she as yet exercises no control over the 

 chartered organizations. Harvard snobbishness is probably endan- 

 gered by petticoatism ; else why this fear ? Who is to protect the 

 people against incompetently educated graduates? That matters 

 not, so long as Harvard keeps to her exclusiveness. Let the women 

 be educated; but, if the legislators and women of Massachusetts 

 have their senses with them, let them break down these doors of ex- 

 clusiveness and enter Harvard. The men (?) there will be even 

 more benefited than the women. It is possible that a true manhood 

 might get an opportunity to develop, when women have trimmed 

 the skirts of Harvard exclusiveness. 



The first great step toward medical reform in this country is to 

 do away with the superfluous schools, by having but one in each 

 State ; by having them under the control of the State, represented 

 by its board of health as the examining body ; by introducing the 

 competitive system in the selection of teachers, and in opening the 

 schools to free teaching by young aspirants, from which the com- 

 petitors for the special branches are to be finally taken — in fact, in 

 making these scientific institutions, instead of empiric hot-houses, 

 grinding out yearly the largest possible number of half -educated, 



