Medical women : a thesis and a history / by Sophia Jex-Blake.

  • Sophia Jex-Blake
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical women : a thesis and a history / by Sophia Jex-Blake. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    seriously hurt, is it the father or the mother (where both are without medical training) who is most equal to the emergency, and who applies the needful remedies in the first instance ? Or again, in the heart of the country, where no doctor is readily accessible, is it the squire and the parson, or their respective wives, who are usually consulted about the ailments of half the parish ? Of course it may be said that such practice is by no means scientific, but merely empirical, and this I readily allow; but that fact in no way affects mv argument that women are naturally inclined and fitted for medical practice. And if this be so, I do not know who has the right to say that they shall not be allowed to make their work scientific when they desire it, but shall be limited to merely the mechanical details and wearisome routine of nursing, while to men is reserved all intelligent knowledge of disease, and all study of the laws by which health may be preserved or restored. Again, imagine if you can that the world has reached its present standing-point, that society exists as now in every respect but this,—that the art of healing has never been conceived as a separate pro- fession, that no persons have been set apart to receive special-education for it, and that in fact empirical “ domestic medicine,” in the strictest sense, is the only] thing of the kind existing. Suppose now that society! suddenly awoke to the great want so long unnoticed.| that it was recognized by all that a scientific knowledge^ of the human frame in health and in disease, and a j