WOMEN DOCTORS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10063, 8 June 1910, Page 4

WOMEN DOCTORS.

As Florence Nightingale was the reformer of the nursing system, so Elizabeth Blackwell 1 was the pioneer of the movement for admitting women into the medical profession. It is said that she herself wouldjaever have thought of medicine as a career but for the complaint of a sick friend. "If I could have been treated by a lady I should have been saved." Other sad examples confirmed her growing conviction that women wanted women physicians,and she set herself to face not only the arduous study but the adverse criticism, sneers and persecution which greeted what was then thought an outrageous scheme. To accumulate funds enough for the course, Miss Blackwell first went out teaching; then came the problem of getting accepted as a student at any medical school. After .failing to gain admission at one centre after another, | she was almost resolved to adopt a masculine disguise In order to secure instruction, when a chance was offer ed to her at the small school of Gen eva, New York. The question of admitting a female was here left by the authorities to the students on the understanding that it must depend on the«r unanimous vote. "To the eternal honour of .Geneva," says a sym-

pathetic essayist, "the students I voted in a manner worthy of a j great Republic." Progressive youth threw open the gate that had elsewhere been held close by cautious age. After completing her course of study Miss Blackwell walked the hospital wards of the Btockley, Almshouses at Philadelphia; finally in 1849, she won the reward of her ! long effort, and became, by full medical diploma, the first woman doctor, and the patron saint of many succesafal students yet to come. , ■ .