Valedictory address to the graduating class of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, at the eighteenth annual commencement, March 12th, 1870 / by Ann Preston, M.D.

Preston, Ann, 1813-1872.

Date:: 1870

Credit: Valedictory address to the graduating class of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, at the eighteenth annual commencement, March 12th, 1870 / by Ann Preston, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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$truth, and understand something of the reactions of the moral, intellectual, and physical life, does not possess the key to the best success in practice; is not yet initiated into the sacred mysteries of the divine art of healing. The ear- lier physicians were the priests of their time, and amid igno- rance and superstition there was in this fact a dim recogni- tion of the truth that the same great principles subserve the physical and moral life; and, in the words of a wi^iter in the British Medical Journal: Year by year we shall come to value dogmas and rules less, and principles more, in their application to both. At present, nervous maladies, womanhood enfeebled and diseased, are the fashion of society; and perhaps the most frequent question that you will have to answer practically will be, What can be done for our suffering women \ There is a deep conviction that these headaches, neuralgias, and weak backs are neither necessary nor destined to be the permanent condition of womanhood.; and. Ladies, the phi- lanthropist and scientist, who are seeking the remedy, look hopefully to the results of your knowledge and experience in their bearing upon this point. When anxious fathers and mothers bring you their beau- tiful daughters, from whose young faces and steps the bloom and elasticity are departing, and ask your counsel, what shall you do ] You look at those girls and at once take in their history. Kept long at school, and strained with many les- sons at an age when the conditions of healthful growth and development were incompatible with sedentary habits and severe mental tasks; their bodies so tightly bound with clothing that by no possibility have the ever-moving vital organs been able fully to perform their functions; their ex- tremities cold and thinly clad, and the weight of their cloth- I$