290 WOMAN IN SCIENCE 



a curious adumbration of similar proceedings within the 

 memory of many still living ! 



The prosecution of Jacobe Felicie recalls that of Agno- 

 dice in Greece long ages before. And the plea urged for 

 the necessity of a female physician that many a woman 

 would rather die than reveal the secrets of her infirmity to 

 a man 1 was the same as that offered by the women of 

 Athens before the council of the Areopagus. It was the 

 same agonizing cry that had been heard thousands of times 

 before and which has been heard thousands of times since. 

 Isabella of Castile was not the first of the long list of 

 victims who, for lack of a doctor of their own sex, have 

 been sacrificed through womanly modesty, and, more's the 

 pity, she will not be the last. 



Unfortunately for the women of France, the result of 

 the prosecution of Mme. Felicie was the very reverse of 

 that instituted against Agnodice; for the latter came off 

 victorious, while the former was condemned and punished. 

 So crushing was the blow dealt to women practitioners, 

 outside of obstetrics, that they did not recover from its 

 effects for more than five hundred years. For it was not 

 until 1868 that the Ecole de Medicine of Paris opened its 

 doors to women, and it was not until nearly twenty years 

 later that female physicians were able to enter the hospi- 

 tals of the French capital as internes. 2 



Until quite recent years there is very little to be said of 

 women physicians in England and Germany. Their prac- 

 tice, outside of that of certain herb doctors, was confined 



i ' ' Mulier antea permitteret se mori, quam secreta infirmitatis 

 sui homini revelare propter honestatem sexus muliebris et propter 

 verecundiam quam revelando pateretur." Chartularium Universi- 

 tatis Parisiensis, Tom. II, p. 264, Paris, 1891. 



2 It may interest the reader to know that the first two women to 

 get the doctorate in the Paris School of Medicine were Miss Eliza- 

 beth Garret, an English woman, and Miss Mary Putnam, an Ameri- 

 can. The first woman permitted to practice in the Paris hospitals 

 was likewise an American, Miss Augusta Klumpke, of San Francisco. 



