J. Sarah Braunwarth, MD
1853-1927

That women will practice medicine goes without saying, but the advisability of their doing so will long remain open for discussion. On this subject the Practitioner and New says:

Socrates thanked the gods daily that he was a human being, not a beast; a man, not a woman; a Greek, not a barbarian. If he be quoted aright, the most popular lady's man in England stands in with the father of philosophy on the second count. Mr. Lawson Tait is said to have said: "For the greater part of my life I have been engaged in the study of and practice among the special diseases of women, and no conclusion is more firmly rooted in my mind than a devout thankfulness that I belong to the other sex. From the cradle to puberty they seem to be on fairly equal terms with man, but from that moment through the whole period of active life their existence is one of prolonged suffering. The great function of their lives is led up to by troubles, and from it endless suffering springs."

No practitioner of the healing art will fail to give this a melancholy seconding. For, granting that "man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward," the physician knows, as no other can know, that suffering and woman are well nigh synonymous terms. From puberty to senility she carries the heavy end of the burden of life. If forbidden the exercise of the function for which she was made, the life-long hunger of her heart can never be satisfied by the husks of business, professional or artistic success. The spinster is an anomaly for which nature makes no provision. If she marry, and thereby attain motherhood, which is her destiny and crown of rejoicing, she must enter this her heaven appointed sphere at the cost of early pain and peril, later pain and danger, and with the prospect of still further pain and jeopardy."

When to these unavoidable physiological loads are added the unavoidable burdens which a false, a wicked, and cruel state of society launches upon her, the most optimistic philosopher might well be pessimistic on the woman question, and thank the gods with Socrates and Tait that his part in the major function of life is begetting and not conceiving.

In the opinion of the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association the deliverance of Mr. Tait bears heavily upon the question of the fitness of woman for usefulness in the healing art. He says:

"Two arguments based upon Lawson Tait's exposition at once present themselves: (1) Can unfortunate, pain afflicted woman (sic) ever occupy a sphere of unquestioned usefulness in medicine where physical and mental rigor, fortitude, and endurance are eminently requisite, and the strong must help the weak, help them by virtue of their strength to healthier and stronger states? or, (2) Can the power of sympathy--operating from the intelligence of affliction and the possible comfort of relief, together with knowledge and discrimination, pass from a medical woman to her suffering sex with a probability of extenuating their distress equally as great as would maintain under the fullness of power mentioned in the first proposition?

"Such is the question , the argument of which has been before the medical profession for some time, but the solution of which may not be said to have as yet been reached.

"This much remains clear, however, woman has yet to achieve any greatness in the ranks of medicine, and if such is to be her future portion it must be in the direction of relief to her own sex. She must become a Lawson Tait, a Spencer Wells (Why not a Sims?] a Battey, Thomas, Price; or if that be impossible under the outlines of the first great general question and the conclusions of Lawson Tait, then must she rest, in the unsought weakness of her nature, as a follower of man and under the privilege of that sympathy which, if properly fortified, may reach if not greatness, that degree of usefulness the medical world can not with reason gainsay."

To our mind neither the two above deep and dark questions can be answered until the typical woman, that is, the wife and mother, shall enter the ranks of medicine. As a rule she is better employed; and if by chance she be deprived of her natural support, she is too much handicapped by maternity and puberty to begin life in a great profession. Against that large and daily increasing class of involuntary spinsters, which the worthlessness of man and the pinch of poverty have forced to seek support out of the proper sphere of woman, no great profession will bar the door. Among these may be found a few who will follow science with masculine force, enthusiasm and success, but the majority must ever be unsexed, discontented, and unsuccessful anomalies, whose only hope for usefulness and happiness is in marriage and its consequences.

--Toledo Medical Compendium. Series of 1891, vol. 7, pp. 366-67.

Courtesy, Raymond H. Mulford Library, Medical College of Ohio, Toledo.

Editors Toledo Medical Compend: --Your October number on page 366, has an article on "Should Women Practice Medicine?" I should answer it by an article on "Are Not Men Intruders on the Field of Medicine?"

When we take into consideration the millions of cut and sore fingers annually bound up by mothers, the thousands of sore throats, headaches, earaches, and other aches, and the thousand and one ailments of childhood through which mothers so successfully pilot generation after generation, without calling on theLord of Creationto meddle with the case, we feel that man had usurped the title of physician. It is only when her great anxiety and solicitude for the comfort and welfare of the child prompts the mother to step back, thinking if there is or could anything more be done for the child's comfort and she appeals toa manwho pompously steps up and does what? Perhaps something which is not as good as what she has been doing.

In all ageswomanhas been the real physician of the human race. But it is only lately that she has "caught on" that a service to be appreciated must be paid for. Out of the unselfish purity of heart, she has ministered night and day to neighbors and relatives and never charged money for her services. Women, who in country neighborhoodswaitedon obstetric cases, which in number outnumbered many a city practitioner's work in that line, did it for a "thank you," and that often dispensed with.

But today all that is changed. Our charges are the same asother mencharge, and Mr. and Mrs. People you can have your choice at the same price.

You say "Women do not do surgery." Thank stars they did not do some surgery as I have seen. As school teachers in days gone by were few and far between, but now are more plentiful, may be, as physicians, our day is coming.

You speak of women's aches and pains. I know many robust Irish and German women who could take you across her knees and spank you in spite of all your resistance, and that at a time when she had a new hopeful kid perhaps but a few days old.

You speak of our "Mother love hunger." Mrs. F., one of my neighbors, has a son in the penitentiary in Colorado. They are our best blueblood here. Mrs. K., another neighbor here, has just been presented with a daughter-in-law, recruited from the demi-monde. Don't I wish I had a son?

Statistics prove that one out of every five born in London, die either in the almshouse or in the insane asylum. Don't we women doctors wish we had children? And you personally, if you are my old classmate, Henry H., know it is not for lack of chances, that we remain, as most all independent educated women do, unmarried. I can not strike any crowd of a dozen married women, out of which I can buy a husband for two cents, and they (the women) glad to get rid of them, and as for rent,probably half a dozen would pay the rent to get rid of the man.

Now let us hear no more chestnuts about the health, strength, or ability, either physical or mental, of lady physicians.

Owing to half a dozen interruptions during the writing of this it may read rather jerky.

J.S.Braunwarth, MD
Muscatine, Iowa.

[Our modern Sarah does not seem to be possessed of a strong mother love hunger, but we believe that ere she reaches the age of the Sarah of old, she will yearn for the blessing that a child will bring to any person, and much more to the female portion of the human race. We remember our schoolmate, Dr. Braunwarth, as a diligent and earnest student, and as a worthy rival of the male portion of the class. We admire the pluck and enthusiastic devotion to medical subjects that she manifested while at school, but we still believe there is a more useful field for woman than is the practice of medicine.] --ED.