WOMEN IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY 295 



exhibits a wonderful knowledge of anatomy, physiology, 

 surgery, pathology and therapeutics. It gave her a large 

 following in Germany as well as in France, and there were 

 not wanting distinguished German accoucheurs who fol- 

 lowed Mme. Bovin's teachings to the letter. 



The remarkable German and French women just named 

 were all practically self-made women. They won fame as 

 they had acquired knowledge chiefly by courage, in spite 

 of the countless obstacles that beset their paths. They 

 owed nothing to schools or universities, nothing to govern- 

 ment patronage or assistance, nothing to the medical fra- 

 ternity as a whole. Universities would not admit them to 

 their lecture rooms or laboratories, and the various medical 

 faculties opposed them as intruders into their jealously 

 guarded domain, and as competitors whose aspirations 

 were to be frustrated, whatever the means employed. It 

 is true that, when some of the women mentioned had won 

 world-wide renown by their achievements, they were made 

 the recipients of belated honors by certain universities and 

 learned societies; but these societies and universities were 

 then honoring themselves as much as the women who re- 

 ceived their degrees and diplomas of membership. 



How different it was in Italy, which, since the fall of the 

 Roman Empire, has ever been in the van of civilization, 

 and which has always continued the best traditions of 

 Graeco-Roman learning and culture Italy, which has been 

 the home of such supreme masters of literature, science, 

 art as Dante, Petrarch, Galileo, Leonardo da Vinci, Ra- 

 phael, Michaelangelo, Brunnelleschi Italy, the mother of 

 universities, the birthplace of the Renaissance, and the 

 recognized leader of intellectual progress among the nations 

 of the world. Here in the favored land of the Muses and 

 the Graces, women enjoyed all the rights and privileges 

 accorded to men ; here the doors of schools and universities 

 were open to all regardless of sex; and art, science, liter- 

 ature, law, medicine, jurisprudence counted its votaries 



