Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/84

 lxxiv INTRODUCTION

did the State Society admit its first woman delegate to membership, the Philadelphia County Society yielding only in 1888.

In 1876 The American Medical Association accepted by acclamation a woman delegate sent by the Illinois State Medical Society, Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson, of Chicago. New York State proved less obdurate. In 1869 the Drs. Blackwell were accepted members of the Medical Library and Journal Association of New York. In 1873 Dr. Mary Putnam with her previously acquired honor of a Paris diploma was admitted without discussion to the Medical Society of New York, and the following year sent as a delegate to the Annual Meeting of the State Medical Society.

The Massachusetts Medical Society, after prolonged deliberation extending over many years, finally acted on a minority report to admit women for examination; the "Boston Medical and Surgical Journal" made the following ungracious announcement : " We regret to be obliged to announce that at a meeting of the councilors held October 15, 1879, it was voted to admit women to the Massachusetts Medical Society." Evidently the pill was not even sugar-coated. Slow as was the accept- ance of the new order of things, it was hastened by many years by the chivalrous men physicians* who aided the movement.

Years ago women recognized that if limited to their own hospitals, which are given up so largely to obstetrical, gynecological cases they would suffer the disadvantages of specialism and miss the broad, general insight of science. Admission to the general hospitals, therefore, either as students, internes or visiting physicians is a vital matter viewed from the standpoint of best results. The entering wedge was of course in the guise of students, but, even so, how grave a matter for deliberation! The Boston City Hospital obtained reports on the contemporary usage of ninety-one hospitals throughout the United States before granting the petition that women students be admitted. The correlated and inevitable sequence of events is so curiously and frequently lost sight of.

To the position of internes and visiting physicians women have also made their way, not largely but perhaps proportionately. In the field of dispensary work they have been particularly active and successful and the movement which originated in Pennsylvania requiring the appoint- ment of women physicians to the female wards of the insane asylums is one which has received legislative sanction in many states.

As regards the scientific side of woman's work Dr. Osier in his memorial tribute to Dr. Mary Putnam Jaocbi says: "That in the past quarter of a century the long battle has been won, is due less to a growing tolerance among physicians at large, less to the persistence with which

Putnam, Chadwick, Derby, of Boston. Dr. Byford, of Chicago. Dr. Abraham Jacobi> of New York.
 * Drs. Hartshorn, Atlee, Stills, Thomas, of Philadelphia. Drs. Bowditch, Caboti