Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/81

 WOMEN IN MEDICINE IN AMERICA lxxi

with it in the completeness, thoroughness and impressiveness with which instruction was carried out. In 1888 the New York Polyclinic and the New York Post-Graduate School, institutions for the instruction of gradu- ates in medicine, were founded. In both of these pioneer institutions the department of laryngology was an important feature.

At the present time there are few medical schools and important hos- pitals throughout the United States and Canada in which this depart- ment is not represented, while there are upwards of fifty officially recognized infirmaries and dispensaries where diseases of the throat are treated in the City of New York alone.

The specialty has been ably represented in Cuba for many years, while Semeleder, one of the founders of the Science made his home in the City of Mexico.

Women in Medicine in America.

A little more than half a century has passed since the movement started to admit women to the study and practice of medicine in America.

Undoubtedly progress was sweeping broadly on to this end, but if we look for a specific cause for the starting of the movement we find it in the introduction of surgery and surgical methods into the practice of obstetrics; men's assumption of this branch of medicine justified by their superior training, the consequent ousting of women from their age old profession of midwifery and their subsequent attempt to regain their lost footing by claiming the right to study medicine.

The various phases of this movement have been subdivided by Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi:

1. The Colonial period of exclusively female midwifery dating from the early days of the settlers to approximately 1750.

2. The period of suppression and relegation to the background brought about by increased activity on the part of physicians. Two causes are assigned for this; first, they, by travel and study in Europe, put themselves in touch with advanced methods and theories of practice and made themselves thereby desirably efficient; second, the necessity for emergency and hospital work during the Revolutionary War. This submerged condition of women lasted until about 1848.

3. The period of reaction and

4. The period of action following in quick succession, characterized by a crusade against man-monopoly of midwifery, the opening of schools and the forming of societies for the purpose of giving women opportunity to study medicine and the advent of that little group of noble pioneers. However imperfect and inadequate the first attempts at train- ing proved, they represented at least a stand taken and an attack on the