Page:Address on the Medical Education of Women (1864) - Blackwell.djvu/12

 into the practice of medicine, imperfectly prepared, from the impossibility of meeting the expense of longer studies.

I think it will be felt by any one, however little acquainted with medical matters, that for women students, laboring under these numerous disadvantages of position and mental discipline, excluded from existing institutions, unprepared for scientific study, with no pecuniary resources—a medical education complying with the barest terms of legal requisition, and modelled after the very lowest type of male medical education, is entirely insufficient. Yet this is all that is now offered to women. Two short courses of lectures from second rate professors; a little practical anatomy which may or may not be followed; the exhibition of a few cases of sickness, a short and slight examination of acquired knowledge, this is all that is provided. The student receives the honorable and responsible title of "Doctor of Medicine," without having had charge of a single sick person, or attended a single case of midwifery, without even being aware of the immense difference between reading of disease in a book, and detecting and dealing with it under its infinite disguises in the sick room.

Without referring to the important subject of the preliminary education which should be required, there are four points in which a medical college for women should differ from any institution now established for them.

First.—The character of examinations for, and manner of conferring the degree of Doctor of Medicine. 2.—The method of education. 3.—The relation to the Profession. 4.—The necessary foundation for a college.

First then, a change is needed in the character of the examinations, and the manner of conferring the degree which is the seal or stamp of the whole education. The object of examination is to ascertain that the individual presenting herself really possesses the knowledge and capacity necessary for assuming