Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/106

 to a petition claiming the parliamentary vote for women.

The admission of women to the medical profession has been one of the greatest possible boons to women. It may readily be believed that tens of thousands of women have neglected to consult a physician when there was real need for such a consultation because of their natural shrinking from exposing their weaknesses to a male doctor. There are those who laugh at this notion, and imply that indelicacy and not refinement is responsible for this reluctance. This is not so. It is with a very real sense of relief that many women turn to one of their own sex, specially qualified to treat their several complaints. An effect of the admission of women to this great order of public servants—and this is probably responsible for the large proportion of medical women who are on the side of woman suffrage—is the discovery of how large an evil the double standard of morality is in its effects upon the physical lives of women and their offspring. Medical etiquette forbids certain disclosures of the nature of their sufferings to be made to women; but nothing can be hidden from the doctor who comes to cure, and the awful extent to which depravity has poisoned the health of innocent human beings has so shocked the sensibility and stirred the conscience of women physicians, that they are