Medical morals, illustrated with plates and extracts from medical works : designed to show the pernicious social and moral influence of the present system of medical practice, and the importance of establishing female medical colleges, and educating and employing female physicians for their own sex / by George Gregory.
- George Gregory
- Date:
- 1852
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Medical morals, illustrated with plates and extracts from medical works : designed to show the pernicious social and moral influence of the present system of medical practice, and the importance of establishing female medical colleges, and educating and employing female physicians for their own sex / by George Gregory. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![circumstances, to save her the horrible trial of passing into the hands of another medical man. It is not a few unscrupulous doctors who alone are guilty in this matter. The authors, the professors, the leading men of the faculty, are mainly responsible. The fee table of the Boston Medical Association lays down the following charges for this operation : For a visit and passing the catheter, $5. For a visit and passing the catheter, when frequently repeated, and for that purpose only, $1.50. Please mark the words, when frequently repeated, and for that purpose only. In case of the clergyman's daughter, above mentioned, had the change been from the hands of one female physician to those of another, her whole mental difficulty would have been removed. And so in thousands of other cases, where females endure the greatest sufferings, and permit their diseases, unexplored, and therefore un- cured, to carry them to their graves, because there are no medical counsellors of their own sex to whom they can apply. Dr. John Ware, of Boston, in a published lecture delivered in the Harvard Medical College, speaks of the agitated and often agonized condition in which she [the female patient] is placed, and adds, It is certain that many females suffer for years, from causes which might be easily removed, for want of courage to speak of them to their medical attendant. Dr. Meigs writes, I confess I am proud to say that in this country generally, certainly in many parts of it, there are women who prefer to suffer the extremity of danger and pain rather than waive those scruples of delicacy which prevent their maladies from being fully explored. I say it is an evidence of the dominion of a tine morality in our society. Why do not these gentlemen, who seem to have so correct an appreciation of female delicacy, encourage the education of female physicians, and thus save those scruples of delicacy and the lives of women also ? Another duty of the medical man is the application of the pessary, an instrument worn internally in case of prolapsus uteri, or falling of the womb — a common complaint among feeble women, who do not preserve their health and the tone of the system, by sufficient exer- cise, and among women who have had protracted and distressing labors in consequence of the indecent presence and meddling of men. And then there are various displacements of the womb to be rectified by some simple mechanical means. Dr. Meigs says to his students.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2112422x_0039.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
