WOMEN IN SCIENCE 337 



bishop of Bologna, both of whom advocated her advancement. 



In Salerno, Giovanna Trotula was professor of medicine at 

 the University in the Middle Ages, and wrote a work upon the 

 diseases of women, even yet referred to ; while Francesca Ro- 

 mana, of the same place, became one of the greatest physicians 

 and surgeons of the fourteenth century. There was no prohi- 

 bition against women attaining eminence in the medical or 

 surgical world in Catholic Italy, as is curiously shown by a 

 decree of Pope Sixtus IV, saying that : "No man or woman, 

 whether Christian or Jew, shall presume to treat the human 

 body, unless a master or licentiate in medicine." {Nemo, mas- 

 culiis aut foemina, &c.) 



Maria dalle Donne, of peasant birth, gained the degree of 

 Doctor of Medicine, summa cum laude, in the University of 

 Bologna, and became a professor in the University, holding 

 her chair there until she died, in 1842. Yet Miss Elizabeth 

 Blackwell, here in America, some seven years after the death 

 of Maria dalle Donne, desired to study medicine and applied 

 in vain to nearly one dozen American medical institutions, 

 which refused to take her as a student. Finally she was re- 

 ceived, nearly eight years afterwards, by a small college in 

 Geneva, N. Y. In Great Britain, every medical institution re- 

 fused to receive Miss Sophia Blake as a student, and when 

 she finally obtained admission to the University of Edinburgh, 

 the students mobbed her. A half-dozen young Irishmen 

 among the students came to her rescue, and afterwards be- 

 came her bodyguard, escorting her to and from lectures. This 

 is how women students, seekers after higher education, have 

 been treated in their search for knowledge, in lands not under 

 the genial and progressive traditions of the Catholic Church. 



With these examples before you, and I could give you many 

 more, you will see that you are only coming, as Catholic 

 women, once more into your own heritage. The expansion of 

 education for women is after all only a return to the condition 

 of things as it existed before the breaking away of the nations 

 from the Faith. 



It therefore behooves you, as the graduates of this College, 

 to see that you avail yourself of your return to the proper 

 realm of educated womanhood. You will have to work hard 

 to do so. You remember the definition of genius which is 

 attributed to Edison. He is credited with saying that "genius 



