Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/103

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THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT
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to this profession for women when more than half the patients of doctors are women, and when the profession of nursing had become one of honour and esteem. Yet the objections urged against the admission of Miss Jex-Blake and her colleagues were considered to be insuperable. Of most of these arguments it may at once be said that they cut both ways. If it were indecent for a woman-doctor to attend a man, it must also be indecent for a man-doctor to attend a woman. If it were thought improper for a woman-doctor to attend a man-patient it must be considered improper for a woman to nurse him. If the study of anatomy were regarded as indelicate for women, it was urged that it was no less indelicate for men. These brave pioneers of the medical women were subjected to unbelievable insults. They were accused of lewdness and indecent curiosity; they were taunted with choosing this way of getting husbands for themselves; they were suspected of wishing to carry on improper intrigues with men students. Objections of another class were those that sprang from professional exclusiveness and jealousy. The profession was already overcrowded, it was said, and the admission of women would tend to make things worse. This argument scarcely fitted in with the contention that women would never be able to qualify themselves for this work, since