November 23, 1872.] THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
400 
Ihe absurd imitation of birds, beasts, and flowers, called 
“fancy work;” or, perhaps, they are driven to effer- 
wescent fits of pseudo-piety, the only alternatives to 
which are reckless flirtation and the slow poisoning pro¬ 
cess of uncontrollable ennui. There must be something 
essentially wrong in such a state of things. Why 
should all other labour have a definite end; all other 
seed-time an abundant harvest, and only the long years 
and hard earned money spent on a girl’s education have 
no fruition ? These considerations, even were there no 
others, should lead the present generation to seek some 
useful and honourable career for its daughters as well as 
for its sons. In some cases, perhaps in many, there is 
an absolute necessity for the girls of a family to aid in 
the common effort to earn the household bread. The 
daughters of our English mechanics, labourers, and 
small farmers know well that they must turn out into 
the world and do their best to maintain themselves in 
Recency and comfort. They have no false shame in 
using, to the best of their ability and knowledge, the 
heads and hands that nature has given them. They are, 
-as a general rule, diligent in their calling and faithful 
in the exercise of the little committed to them by the 
Great Master. It is when we come to a step higher in 
the social scale that we meet with sad instances of the 
want of an acknowledged career for the girls and women 
of the day. Perhaps one girl, braver or better endowed 
by nature than the rest, tries a situation as governess, 
but, notwithstanding all its drawbacks, the profession of 
governess is much overstocked in England, and there is 
no room for it in India. To take the lowest view of it, 
in the language of the old Jew, it does not pay. For 
many years, however, no other opening could be thought 
of at home; and thousands of ladies, well-born, well-bred, 
and well-educated, were sacrificed in this profitless man¬ 
ner. We are aware that these remarks are more applic¬ 
able to the circumstances of England than to those of 
India, but the principles of education and its good or ill 
.results are the same there as here. AVe are most thank¬ 
ful to find that there are now several openings at home 
to a useful and happy career for women, whose birth 
and education would render unbearable and irksome the 
duties of domestic servants, shop-girls, or needle-women. 
England, conservative and tenacious to the back-bone, 
hesitated long ere she followed the example set by 
foreign nations; but the real misery caused by want of 
means and want of employment has, at last, told its 
.lesson, and we now find English women busy in print¬ 
ing-offices and book-binding rooms, directing the won¬ 
drous telegraph, or copying hard-worded folios in law¬ 
yers’ offices. Many doors of honest and hopeful toil are 
thrown open to them; and the women of England, to 
.their credit and advantage, have proved themselves both 
willing and able to avail themselves of these several 
.sources of industry and honest bread-winning. 
There is another sphere of usefulness to which we 
would now specially call attention,—one which, in its 
•appeals to the best attributes of a woman’s nature, far 
.excels all others : one which has claimed the attention 
•of women since the earliest historic ages, and of which 
one branch, at least, was under the direct protection and 
patronage of the ancient queen of heaven, Juno Lucina! 
We refer to the most humane of all—the healing of the 
sick, the soothing of the anguished, the comforting of 
the distressed. The medical profession is one of the 
noblest that man or woman can be called on to exercise. 
It appeals to our three-fold nature, and every one who, 
-even in the humblest of its grades, exercises this calling 
•aright should be better, more learned, and holier from 
.the daily ministrations to suffering humanity. In the 
preliminary scientific examinations the mind of the em¬ 
bryo physician is strengthened, cultivated, and trained 
to a degree far beyond the mere book-knowledge he 
may acquire. In the subsequent course of lectures deli¬ 
vered by the heads of his profession, he is directed how 
.to apply this knowledge, and by clinical experience, by 
patient watching and accurate observation by tho bed¬ 
side of the sick, and in the diligent prosecution oi post¬ 
mortem studies he gains that insight into the construc¬ 
tion of man and the workings of nature which truly fit 
him to be a high-priest of the healing art. “ The eye 
only sees what it brings tho power of seeing.” From 
sharing in the labours, trials, and honours of this pro¬ 
fession women have long been debarred—debarred, no 
doubt, as much by their own ignorance and want of 
system as by the objections raised against them by the 
members of the medical profession. All this is easily 
understood if we remember the class of women who pro¬ 
fessed to have any medical knowledge. They were, for 
the most part, aged women, to whom age had taught 
neither sobriety, honesty, nor the power of governing 
their tongue. They were utterly unediicated, and pre¬ 
judiced to a fearful degree; women who eschewed cold 
water and fresh air, and who, in the hour of emergency, 
were altogether unfitted to aid the medical man in the 
simplest of operations. No wonder that the highly edu¬ 
cated and refined doctor shrunk from being associated 
with those wretched specimens of womanhood, devoid of 
knowledge, ordinary sense, and common good-feeling. 
These women seldom set up, as the village barber did, 
to be “bone-setters,” or “bleeders,” or domestic sur¬ 
geons ; they confined themselves to midwifery and the 
nursing of the sick. How they were ever tolerated by 
medical men as their co-adjutors is a matter of marvel, 
but we must suppose that they were put up with simply 
because no fitter helpers were forthcoming. The case is 
altered, or, rather, is altering now; women of all ranks 
show themselves eager for medical tuition, from the un¬ 
educated woman, whose highest ambition is to be a good 
nurse, to the highly educated and well-born women who 
swell the ranks of the Sisters of Charity, sincerely de¬ 
sirous to render help in as intelligent and as perfect a 
manner as possible. 
There have been many objections raised against the 
admission of women to a medical career—some of them, 
no doubt, of great weight and deserving of serious con¬ 
sideration: others, again, merely frivolous, and sprung 
from mistaken notions of propriety or from desire to let 
things be as they are. Some of the faculty are opposed 
to the medical training of women on the ground that 
they must share the class rooms of the male students, 
and that it by no means beseems a woman’s modesty 
and delicacy of feeling to acquire from a male teacher, 
and amid male fellow-students, any knowledge of ana¬ 
tomy, midwifery and other kindred subjects. This is an 
objection that comes home to every woman desiring 
tuition; to every father who would like his daughter 
trained to the most noble of professions. We hold, how¬ 
ever, that this objection is founded upon a mistaken no¬ 
tion as to what is and what is not true delicacy of feel¬ 
ing. We would put our opinion forward with due re¬ 
spect for the opinions of others, but to our mind the 
whole body is a monument to the greatness and wisdom 
of Him who made it; and no right-minded man or 
woman could make the highest manifestation of God’s 
creative might the subject of unseemly jest, unholy 
thought, or undesirable allusion. We think that the evil, 
if evil there be, exists only in the imagination of the mor¬ 
bid, not in the subject which demands the best efforts of 
the mind. Further, we do not see how, in a properly con¬ 
ducted class-room, under the supervision of a teacher who 
himself felt the solemnity and responsibility of his pro¬ 
fession, the pupils could ever behave in any but a be¬ 
coming manner. Another objection frequently urged is 
that women are deficient in nerve and strength; as to 
the latter, we believe that skill is more in request than 
strength in a doctor; and for nerve, or quiet, silent sted- 
fastness of purpose wo think that women are, at least, as 
well endowed as men—if not more so. No. doubt we 
shall find individual women, as well as individual men, 
who feel faint at the sight of a streaming wound or a 
repulsive sore. Perhaps more women than men might 
