Page:Quackery Unmasked.djvu/216

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QUACKERY UNMASKED.

mon consent assigned to man; while to woman was given the lighter, more quiet and more delicate offices. Her vocation is not less important or less honorable, but more refined and more domestic. Hers are the softer and gentler duties; in her own province she is an angel—the pride and ornament of the race—the sacred repository of all that is virtuous and lovely. But when she abandons her own proper sphere, and engages in those employments which properly belong to man, she disparages herself and tarnishes the fair escutcheon of her sex. And we are obliged to believe that nothing better than a morbid ambition, or unchastened cupidity, could induce competent individuals of our own sex to become teachers in schools designed to prepare females to practise medicine and surgery. They may teach the principles of medicine correctly, but they are encouraging aspirations that can never be realized, and inducing hopes which must end in disappointment. Their fair listeners are out of their own proper element, have been led astray in mistaken paths, are seeking laurels on forbidden ground, and ostracising themselves from the glory of womanhood.