i88i.J 
Early Practice of Medicine by Women. 
69 
to meet her engagements. 6t She kept an account of the 
number of cases she had, and the success of the patients, 
and the new-comers; and of these last there is at least one 
living in the town. In the midst of her usefulness she was 
removed by death, and it became a great inquiry, ‘ Who will 
take the place of Granny Johnson ?’” This question was 
answered more successfully than anticipated in the person 
of Mrs. Huldah Beach, daughter of Aaron Loomis, jun. 
Mrs. Beach became as celebrated in her calling as Granny 
Johnson, and continued to attend to her professional duties 
until an advanced age. She was a woman of remarkably 
fine personal appearance and decided dignity of carriage, 
yet marked kindliness of manner. Her intellectual strength 
and ability was perceptible to every one, and she in conse- 
quence commanded great respeCt in all classes of society, 
and won the confidence of the people so that but few calls 
were made on any other physician in her specialty, on the 
western side of the town. She also rode as far as Winches- 
ter, Goshen, and Litchfield. 
Dr. Orcutt, whose “History of Torrington ” has furnished 
us with these particulars, remarks in this connection — 
“ Many have imagined that, in the practice of medicine by 
women, a new era has arrived, but in this there is only a 
4 restoration of the lost arts.’ ” 
Our allotted task is completed, yet we cannot close this 
address without a brief survey of the present period, in 
which the facilities afforded women in all branches of 
learning contrast strongly with the impediments and obsta- 
cles formerly well nigh insurmountable. 
Women desirous of acquiring medical knowledge are no 
longer obliged to disguise themselves in male attire like 
Agnodice the Athenian, nor are practitioners liable to suffer 
the penalties of the law for their works of benevolence and 
charity. In 1880 the young woman with aspirations for 
intellectual culture finds open to her such excellent training- 
schools as Holyoke, Wells, and Rutgers, — such noble insti- 
tutions as Vassar, Smith, and Wellesley. Does she not 
shrink from contaCt with her brothers, she may gain entrance 
into many universities, either expressly founded in a liberal 
spirit, — as Oberlin, Cornell, and Ann Arbor, — or which have 
yielded to the steady pressure of public opinion, and now 
open their doors more or less widely to the gentler sex. To 
enumerate the latter would be tedious and unprofitable ; suf- 
fice it to say that even venerable and aristocratic Harvard 
has lately joined the number, and our own Columbia, should 
her President’s views prevail, will not be slow to follow. 
