Both the above rights, as independent of sex as other natural rights, should be expressly protected by "mandamus," and "suit for damages." The lecturers to be compelled to lecture to mixed classes, or to give separate lectures to matriculated women for half fees, whichever those lecturers prefer. Before this clause all difficulties would melt, like hail in the dog days. ,Male modesty is a purely imaginary article, set up for a trade purpose, and will give way to justice the moment it costs the proprietors fifty per cent. I know my own sex from hair to heel, and will take my Bible oath of _that._Of the foreign matriculated student, British or European, nothing should be demanded hut the one thing, which matters one straw--viz., infallible proofs of proficiency in anatomy, surgery, medicine, and its collaterals, under public examination. This, which is the only real safeguard, and the only necessary safeguard to the public, and the only one _the public_ask, should he placed, in some degree, under _the sure control of Government_ without respect of cities; and much greater vigilance exercised than ever has been yet. Why, under the system which excludes learned women, male dunces have been personated by able students, and so diplomas stolen again and again. The student, male or female, should have power to compel the examiners, by mandamus and other stringent remedies, to examine at fit times and seasons. In all the _paper work_ of these examinations, the name, and of course the sex, of the student should he concealed from the examiners. There is a very simple way of doing it.
Should a law be passed on this broad and simple basis, that law will stand immortal, with pettifogging acts falling all around, according to the custom of the country. The larger half of the population will no longer be unconstitutionally juggled, under cover of law, out of their right to take their secret ailments to a skilled physician of their own sex, and compelled to go, blushing, writhing, and, after all, concealing and fibbing, to a male physician; the picked few no longer robbed of their right to science, reputation, and Bread.
The good effect on the whole mind of woman would be incalculable. Great prizes of study and genius offered to the able few have always a salutary and wonderful operation on the many who never gain them; it would be great and glad tidings to our whole female youth to say, "You need not be frivolous idlers; you need not give the colts fifty yards' start for the Derby--I mean, you need not waste three hours of the short working day in dressing and undressing, and combing your hair. You need not throw away the very seed--time of life on music, though you are unmusical to the backbone; nor yet on your three "C's--croquet, crochet, and coquetry: for Civilization and sound Law have opened to you one great, noble, and difficult profession with three branches, two of which Nature intended you for. The path is arduous, but flowers grow beside it, and the prize is great."I say that this prize, and frequent intercourse with those superior women who have won it, would leaven the whole sex with higher views of life than enter their heads at present; would raise their self-respect, and set thousands of them to study the great and noble things that are in medicine, and connected with it, instead of childish things.
Is there really one manly heart that would grudge this boon to a sex which is the nurse and benefactress of every man in his tender and most precarious years?
Realize the hard condition of women. Among barbarians their lot is unmixed misery; with us their condition is better, but not what it ought to be, because we are but half civilized, and so their lot is still very unhappy compared with ours.
And we are so unreasonable. We men cannot go straight ten yards without _rewards_ as well as punishments. Yet we could govern our women by punishments alone. They are eternally tempted to folly, yet snubbed the moment they would be wise. A million shops spread their nets, and entice them by their direst foible. Their very mothers--for want of medical knowledge in the sex--clasp the fatal, idiotic corset on their growing bodies, though thin as a lath. So the girl grows up, crippled in the ribs and lungs by her own mother; and her life, too, is in stays--cabined, cribbed, confined: unless she can paint, or act, or write novels, every path of honorable ambition is closed to her. We treat her as we do our private soldiers--the lash, but no promotion; and our private soldiers are the scum of Europe for that very reason, and no other.
I say that to open the study and practice of medicine to women folk, under the infallible safeguard of a stiff public examination, will be to rise in respect for human rights to the level of European nations, who do not brag about just freedom half as loud as we do, and to respect the constitutional rights of many million citizens, who all pay the taxes like men, and, by the contract with the State implied in that payment, buy the clear human right they have yet to go down on their knees for. It will also import into medical science a new and less theoretical, but cautious, teachable, observant kind of intellect; it will give the larger half of the nation an honorable ambition, and an honorable pursuit, toward which their hearts and instincts are bent by Nature herself; it will tend to elevate this whole sex, and its young children, male as well as female, and so will advance the civilization of the world, which in ages past, in our own day, and in all time, hath, and doth, and will, keep step exactly with the progress of women toward mental equality with men.
End