A Woman-Hater [86]
seven prudes, whose minds were devoted to study and honorable ambition. These women were as much above the average of their sex in feminine reserve and independence of the male sex as they were in intellect.
"The average girl, who throughout this discussion was all of a sudden puffed as a lily, because she ceased to be _observed,_ can attend to nothing if a man is by; she can't work, she can't play, she is so eaten up with sexuality. The frivolous soul can just manage to play croquet with females; but, enter a man upon the scene, and she does even that very ill, and can hardly be got to take her turn in the only thing she has really given her mind to. We were angels compared with this paltry creature, and she was the standing butt of public censure, until it was found that an imaginary picture of her could be made the handle for insulting her betters.
"Against these seven prudes, decent dotards and their foul-mouthed allies flung out insinuations which did not escape public censure; and the medical students declared their modesty was shocked at our intrusion into anatomy and surgery, and petitioned against us. Some of the Press were deceived by this for a time, and _hurlaient avec les loups._
"I took up, one day, my favorite weekly, in which nearly every writer seems to me a scholar, and was regaled with such lines as these:
"'It appears that girls are to associate with boys as medical students, in order that, when they become women, they may be able to speak to men with entire plainness upon all the subjects of a doctor's daily practice.
"'In plain words, the aspirants to medicine and surgery desire to rid themselves speedily and effectually of that modesty which nature has planted in women.' And then the writer concludes: 'We beg to suggest that there are other places besides dissecting-rooms and hospitals where those ladies may relieve themselves of the modesty which they find so troublesome. But fathers naturally object to this being done at their sons' expense."
"Infamous!" cried Vizard. "One comfort, no man ever penned that. That is some old woman writing down young ones."
"I don't know," said Rhoda. "I have met so many womanish men in this business. All I know is, that my cheeks burned, and, for once in the fight, scalding tears ran down them. It was as if a friend had spat upon me.
"What a chimera! What a monstrous misinterpretation of pure minds by minds impure! To _us_ the dissecting-room was a temple, and the dead an awe, revolting to all our senses, until the knife revealed to our minds the Creator's hand in structural beauties that the trained can appreciate, if wicked dunces can't.
"And as to the infirmary, we should have done just what we did at Zurich. We held a little aloof from the male patients, unless some good-natured lecturer, or pupil, gave us a signal, and then we came forward. If we came uninvited, we always stood behind the male students: but we did crowd round the beds of the female patients, and claimed the inner row: AND, SIR, THEY THANKED GOD FOR US OPENLY.
"A few awkward revelations were made during this discussion. A medical student had the candor to write and say that he had been at a lecture, and the professor had told an indelicate story, and, finding it palatable to his modest males, had said, 'There, gentlemen: now, if female students were admitted here, I could not have told you this amusing circumstance.' So that it was our purifying influence he dreaded in secret, though he told the public he dreaded the reverse.
"Again, female patients wrote to the journals to beg that female students might be admitted to come between them and the brutal curiosity of the male students, to which they were subjected in so offensive a way that more than one poor creature declared she had felt agonies of shame, even in the middle of an agonizing operation.
"This being a cry from that public for whose sake the whole clique of physicians--male and female--exists, had, of course, no great weight in the union controversy.
"But, sir, if grave men and women will sit calmly
"The average girl, who throughout this discussion was all of a sudden puffed as a lily, because she ceased to be _observed,_ can attend to nothing if a man is by; she can't work, she can't play, she is so eaten up with sexuality. The frivolous soul can just manage to play croquet with females; but, enter a man upon the scene, and she does even that very ill, and can hardly be got to take her turn in the only thing she has really given her mind to. We were angels compared with this paltry creature, and she was the standing butt of public censure, until it was found that an imaginary picture of her could be made the handle for insulting her betters.
"Against these seven prudes, decent dotards and their foul-mouthed allies flung out insinuations which did not escape public censure; and the medical students declared their modesty was shocked at our intrusion into anatomy and surgery, and petitioned against us. Some of the Press were deceived by this for a time, and _hurlaient avec les loups._
"I took up, one day, my favorite weekly, in which nearly every writer seems to me a scholar, and was regaled with such lines as these:
"'It appears that girls are to associate with boys as medical students, in order that, when they become women, they may be able to speak to men with entire plainness upon all the subjects of a doctor's daily practice.
"'In plain words, the aspirants to medicine and surgery desire to rid themselves speedily and effectually of that modesty which nature has planted in women.' And then the writer concludes: 'We beg to suggest that there are other places besides dissecting-rooms and hospitals where those ladies may relieve themselves of the modesty which they find so troublesome. But fathers naturally object to this being done at their sons' expense."
"Infamous!" cried Vizard. "One comfort, no man ever penned that. That is some old woman writing down young ones."
"I don't know," said Rhoda. "I have met so many womanish men in this business. All I know is, that my cheeks burned, and, for once in the fight, scalding tears ran down them. It was as if a friend had spat upon me.
"What a chimera! What a monstrous misinterpretation of pure minds by minds impure! To _us_ the dissecting-room was a temple, and the dead an awe, revolting to all our senses, until the knife revealed to our minds the Creator's hand in structural beauties that the trained can appreciate, if wicked dunces can't.
"And as to the infirmary, we should have done just what we did at Zurich. We held a little aloof from the male patients, unless some good-natured lecturer, or pupil, gave us a signal, and then we came forward. If we came uninvited, we always stood behind the male students: but we did crowd round the beds of the female patients, and claimed the inner row: AND, SIR, THEY THANKED GOD FOR US OPENLY.
"A few awkward revelations were made during this discussion. A medical student had the candor to write and say that he had been at a lecture, and the professor had told an indelicate story, and, finding it palatable to his modest males, had said, 'There, gentlemen: now, if female students were admitted here, I could not have told you this amusing circumstance.' So that it was our purifying influence he dreaded in secret, though he told the public he dreaded the reverse.
"Again, female patients wrote to the journals to beg that female students might be admitted to come between them and the brutal curiosity of the male students, to which they were subjected in so offensive a way that more than one poor creature declared she had felt agonies of shame, even in the middle of an agonizing operation.
"This being a cry from that public for whose sake the whole clique of physicians--male and female--exists, had, of course, no great weight in the union controversy.
"But, sir, if grave men and women will sit calmly