Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/494

Rh expedient that students of different sexes should attend promiscuously; that all special diseases of men should be treated by men in the presence of men only, and those of women, where it is practicable, by women in the presence of women only. It was this feeling, founded on the respect due to the delicacy of women as patients, perhaps more than any other consideration, which led to the founding pf the Women's Hospital in Philadelphia. There the clinical demonstration of special diseases is made by and before women alone. As we would not permit men to enter these clinics, neither would we be willing out of regard to the feelings of men as patients, if for no other considerations that our students should attend clinics where men are specially treated, and there has been no time in the history of our college when-our students could intentionally do so, save in direct contravention of our known views. In nearly all the great public hospitals, however, by far the larger proportion of cases suited for clinical illustration whether medical or surgical is of those which involve no necessary exposure, and are the results of diseases and accidents to which man and woman are subject alike, and which women are constantly called upon to treat. Into these clinics, women also often sensitive and shrinking, albeit poor are brought as patients to illustrate the lectures, and we maintain that wherever it is proper to introduce women as patients, there also is it but just and in accordance with the instincts of the truest womanhood for women to appear as physicians and students.

We had arranged when our class was admitted to the Pennsylvania hospital to attend on alternate clinic days only, so as to allow ample opportunity for the unembarrassed exhibition of special cases to the other students by themselves. We encouraged our students to visit the hospital upon this view, sustained by our confidence in the sound judgment and high-minded courtesy of the medical gentlemen in charge of the wards. All the objections that have been made to our students' admission to these clinics seem to be based upon the mistaken assumption that they had designed to attend them indiscriminately. As we state distinctly and unequivocally that this was not the fact, that they had no idea or intention of being present except on one day of the week, and when no cases which it would not be proper to illustrate before both classes of students would necessarily be brought in it seems to us that all these objections are destroyed, and we cannot but feel that those fair-minded professional gentlemen, who, under this false impression as to facts, have objected to our course, will, upon a candid reconsideration, acknowledge that our position is just and intrinsically right. The general testimony of those who attended the Saturday clinics last winter at the Philadelphia Hospital at Blockley, when about forty ladies made regular visits, was that the tone and bearing of the students were greatly improved, while the usual cases were brought forward and the full measure of instruction given without any violation of refined propriety.

We maintain, in common with all medical men, that science is impersonal, and that the high aim of relief to suffering humanity sanctifies all duties: and we repel, as derogatory to the science of medicine, the asser-