300 WOMAN IN SCIENCE 



For it was about this time that the movement which had 

 long been agitated in behalf of the higher education of 

 women began suddenly to assume extraordinary vitality, 

 not only throughout Europe but in America as well. And 

 to no women did this movement appeal so strongly as to 

 those who had long been looking forward to an opportunity 

 to qualify themselves for the learned professions, especially 

 medicine. No sooner did they descry the first flush of dawn 

 on their long-deferred hopes than they began to consider 

 ways and means for putting their fondly nurtured projects 

 into execution. 



Seven years, almost to the day, after the death of Maria 

 dalle Donne, Miss Elizabeth Blackwell, a young woman in 

 America, of English birth, decided to enter college with a 

 view of studying medicine and surgery. But, at the very 

 outset, she encountered all kinds of unforeseen difficulties 

 difficulties that would have caused a less courageous and 

 determined woman to give up her plans in despair. She 

 was told, in the first place, that it was highly improper 

 for a woman to study medicine and that no decent woman 

 would think of becoming a medical practitioner. As to a 

 lady studying or practicing surgery that, of course, was out 

 of the question. 



But a more serious obstacle than the conventionalities in 

 the case was the difficulty of finding a medical college that 

 was willing to admit a woman to its lecture rooms and 

 laboratories. Miss Blackwell applied to more than a dozen 



aggravated case of tertian fever in 1638, while living in Lima, she 

 lost no time, on her return to Spain, in making known to the world 

 the marvelous curative properties of the precious quinine-producing 

 bark. The powder made from the bark was most appropriately called 

 Pulvis ComitesscB the countess's powder and by this name it was 

 long known to druggists and in commerce. Thanks to Linnaeus, the 

 memory of the gracious lady will always be kept green, because her 

 name is now borne by nearly eight score species of the beautiful 

 trees which constitute the great and incomparable genus Chinchona. 

 See A Memoir of the Lady Ana de Osorio, Countess of Chinchon, 

 and Vice-Queen of Peru, by Clements B. Markham, London, 1874. 



