A LADY DOCTOR.

Evening Star, Issue 3822, 25 May 1875, Page 3

A LADY DOCTOR.

Ladies who adopt the medical profession will do will to take for their model Dr Harriet Hunt, of Boston, whose death is announced by the American papers. She seems to have been a most pleasant and amiable doctor, her only fault being that she was too short and too fat. She was, it is stated, “as notable in appearance as in mind and character. She was very short and chubby, and the difference between height and circumference in her case it would have puzzled a mathematician to guess. But her face beamed with intelligence, her countenance raidated courage, and every look and motion declared independence. She did a great many eccentric things, and did not shrink from telling fashionable patients the exact truth, which was a hundred times harder to take than'any compound she could prescribe. But her good humour was unfailing, and at times her genial face and cheery voice were better than a whole apothecary’s shop of medicines to a poor invalid.” Dr Harriet Hunt was one of the first women in America who practised medicine, and the first to protest against paying a tax until permitted to vote. Her lectures were always interesting, but audiences care for appearances as well as for sense and sentiment, and tho plain-faced fat doctor was never popular on the platform, where she seemed out of place. Boston is full of tales of her kindness, and her will provides that no bill shall be sent to her patients who are in arrears, and it shall be left to tbeir discretion wbat they shallgpay. She also directs that her house shall be kept open for a time, that nothing “hasty or ill-timed shall take place in a spot so full of influence,” that friends and patients “may find still an open door to enter a home they have consecrated by their blessing.” Fragrant flowers are to be distributed to the visitors, “ whose aroma shall utter its language.” If woman competes with mao in this good-humored fashion, the speedy downfall of that vile creature may be confidently expected.-—‘Pall Mall Gazette ’.