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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    that position. I believe that these statements not only materially injure the cause they profess to sei-ve, but that they are in themselves false. In my own ex- perience as a medical student, I have had far too much reason to acknowledge the honour and delicacy of feeling habitually shown by the gentlemen of the medical profession, not to protest warmly against any such injurious imputation.^ I am very sure that in the vast majority of cases the motives and conduct of medical men in this respect are altogether above question, and that every physician who is also a gentle- man is thoroughly able, when consulted by a patient in any case whatever, to remember only the human suffering brought before him and the scientific bearing of its details ; for, as was said not very long ago by a most eminent London surgeon, “ Whoever is not able, in the course of practice, to put the idea of sex out of Jiis mind, is not fit for the medical profession at all.” .It will, however, occur to most people that the medical man is only one of the parties concerned, and that it is ])ossible that a difficulty which may be of no importance from his scientific standpoint, may yet be very for- midable indeed to the far more sensitive and delicately- organized feelings of his patient, who has no such armour of proof as his own, and whose very condition of suffering may entail an even exaggerated condition of nervous susceptibility on such points.® At any rate, when we hear so many assertions about natural instincts ‘ See Note A. “ See Note B.