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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![flagrant act — one inexcusable save under the duress of a conviction that it is needful for the safety of the sick woman. Here, then, according to the admission of a distinguished medical author, is a flagrant performance of a flagrant act, excusable only by dire necessity. Who is to be the judge of this necessity? The patient? She knows nothing about it but what the physician tells her ; and the physician may be one of those who, as Dr. Ewell sayB, have great curiosity about women, or have some baser aims in prospect, and, under the pretence that it is needful for the safety of the sick woman, may practise abuses to an unlimited number and extent. Dr. Meigs, in the following sentence, intimates not only the possibility, but the probable frequency of professional abuses : lie is an unchaste man who ruthlessly insists upon a vaginal taxis [exam- ination by the touch] in all cases of women's diseases that, however remotely, may seem to have any, the least connection with disor- ders of their reproductive tissues. And again he says, Do not compel the young girl to submit to the debasement of a vaginal examination except on a well-founded opinion of its necessity for her — and for you. Some may suppose these speculum examinations are of rare occur- rence ; but not so. An elderly physician, who lias resided in different cities and sections of our country, and who probably has had as good opportunities of knowing as any other man in the profession, says, such has been the rage for performing this operation, that almost every physician, even to the striplings in the profession, had his speculum, and was anxious to secure every possible opportunity of using it, some of them seeming hardly willing that a female patient should escape being subjected to their shameful and debasing per- formances. To such an extent, said he, was the matter carried in London, that the better part of the profession themselves became alarmed for the public morals, and, in some measure, put a check to the infamous business. These are but a few of the professional services which none but a female physician ought to perform, relating to a few of what Dr. Meigs terms a the great host of female complaints. Some persons may wonder how such transactions could be carried to such an extent, and the public be so ignorant of the fact. But such things seek the shade, and could exist only under the mantle of thick darkness. The unhappy patient would, of course, never divulge](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2112422x_0041.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
