4 
HELEN ABBOTT MICHAEL 
Through her zeal for study she met with an accident which 
affected her health for many years, but this unfortunate deple¬ 
tion of physical power never stood in the way of her ambition; 
she fought against suffering with Spartan heroism. 
Another of the great lessons of her life emphasizes the value 
of thoroughness. She was not satisfied to be a smatterer. After 
she had won an enviable reputation as an original investigator 
in plant chemistry, she made a pilgrimage to Europe, with a 
view of perfecting herself in the use of methods and appliances; 
and she records with sweet humility her consciousness of what 
she lacks in training, — with humility, but with no sense of dis¬ 
couragement, rather with quickened zeal and enthusiasm. 
Even at that time it could have been said of her, as was said 
later of what she had already accomplished, “Her studies in 
tracing the relations existing between chemical composition and 
botanical species are of the highest interest from the view-point 
of research.” 
Women have ever been leaders in great popular movements. 
History is studded with the names of queens. Mythology, which 
is in a sense crystallized history, gives equal honor to goddesses 
and gods. It seemed to the Greeks perfectly in accordance with 
the order of Nature that a whole tribe of women should have 
had a comity and state by themselves, with Hippolita their mis¬ 
tress. Sappho held rank with the greatest poets of antiquity. 
Yet in modern days, when the tendency of the Church, based 
on a chance remark or possibly a set principle of Saint Paul, 
has been to condemn women to silence and to subordination, 
the occasional woman who has had the genius and the courage 
to break a path for her sex into the more active fife of the world, 
has compelled recognition. 
Such a woman was Helen Abbott Michael. She did in chem¬ 
istry what Maria Mitchell did in astronomy, and others before 
and since have done in other branches. It seems almost in¬ 
credible that within so short a time she accomplished so much. 
Woman has in the last decade made such tremendous strides 
in all professions that it sounds strange to state that she was 
a pioneer. Only twenty years ago she made her first investi¬ 
gations, and it is perfectly true that, in the words of Dr. H. W. 
