mischief and misery are even greater than in that of their mothers. How many of us there are that can bear witness to the unutterable distress of young mothers when their suffering infants are in the hands of men, often bachelors, whom they see to be incapable of interpreting the natural language of mute infancy, and unaware of the infinite delicacy of the changes which take place in a sick child, and the special nicety required in its treatment! Where is the wonder if they apply to ignorant women, as a resource against the insensibility of inexperienced men? I have seen a strange-looking infant, under a year old, large, puffy, and white in the face, to whom an eminent physician had been giving eight grains of calomel daily for weeks. Is it a wonder if the mother follows the advice of the first sympathising old nurse she meets, who can understand the child’s feelings, and foretell what will happen next, while wholly unlearned in scientific treatment? That there is no wonder in it is shown by the continued existence of quackery in a very vigorous form wherever women and children are living. It will always be so till we have able women educated for the medical profession: and some of the wisest physicians in all countries plainly admit the truth.
Our own country is behind almost every other in this admission, and in the action to which it leads. While in England we are always hearing of the preposterous remedies prescribed by women of all ranks and degrees of education, there are at least certain branches of practice regularly committed to female hands in other countries. While Florence Nightingale remarks on the wild confidence with which ladies give blue-pill as an ordinary remedy in their families, as they would give colocynth pills or salts and senna, we find lower down in society that epileptic fits are treated by tying three sprats upon the breast, when the patient goes to bed, and that the trusted remedy for tic-douloureux is putting live worms into a muslin bag, and laying it on the seat of torture, “to draw out the pain.” We find women braying snails in a mortar to make snail-tea for a consumptive patient. We find a prevalent persuasion among the poor, and among many above the poor, that “the doctors don’t know anything about the bones,” however wise in other matters; and the large fraternity of “bone-setters,” men and women, are very apt at referring a wide variety of diseases to some disorder in “the bones.” In Germany, meantime, several branches of small surgery are committed to women; and in France much more is done, and well done, by women for their own sex, and for children, than the medical profession in England would at all approve. In every German town there are female practitioners who do all the cupping and bleeding, as well as the management of blisters and the dressing of wounds and sores. It may be agreed before long that bleeding is vicious practice, and cupping little better; but while it is the approved practice, it is no small comfort to patients that the dexterous touch, and fine observation of women are available for the process. Vaccination, again, is proper woman’s work; and if it has hitherto been badly managed under female care, it can be only for want of instruction and training.
The United States are, however, before all other countries in the improvement so universally needed. In all the large towns there are now female physicians established in good practice, after undergoing the best professional training that society affords. In several of the States the legislatures vote an annual grant for the support of female medical schools and hospitals. Nowhere, perhaps, is such a reform more needed. For many years past it has been becoming evident that the greatest peril of the American nation lies in the decline of its physical condition; and especially in the feeble health of its women. The mortality of children there is beyond all precedent and example. Without going into the causes of this perilous liability, I may just say, that the best promise of a remedy lies in the establishment of a class of duly qualified female physicians who can set forth “the Laws of Life, with special reference to the Education of Girls,” as Doctor Elizabeth Blackwell has done, in her work under that title. Such a professional class is established there: and it is she who has done it.
She could tell dreary and heart-breaking things, no doubt (judging by what we otherwise know), of the recklessness with which human life is trifled with in a country where the physical vigour of the race should correspond with its political youth: she has more power to deal with the causes of the mischief than any physicians can possess who have a less free access to female confidence and to children’s nurseries: but we need not go so far from home to learn how infant mortality might be checked everywhere if the health of mothers and babies were in the charge of physicians who possess instincts of interpretation of female and infantine nature, which science alone can never compensate for. Add science to the natural gift, and the health of half the human race will be under such guardianship as it has never enjoyed before. One immediate consequence of the institution of female physicians and surgeons is that the natural practice of mothers nursing their own infants has a chance of restoration. If we had such attendance in all our towns, the practice of wet-nursing would decline from its present fearful prevalence. The influence of female physicians is altogether on the side of nature and duty; and they cannot be misled and coaxed as our doctors are by self-indulgent, or timid, and feeble women.
Women know what women can do and bear better than anybody else can know: and a trained and practised physician of their own sex can stimulate, and admonish, and encourage, and re-assure a dependent and ignorant and irresolute mother as few or no men are able or willing to do. At present our medical men, especially in London, are easily won upon to recommend a wet-nurse; and, in far too many cases, it is they who suggest and urge the mother’s relinquishment of her first duty to her child; so that we have reached such a pass that something must be done. We shall ere long know from the Registrar-General what proportion of infant mortality is due to this practice: and we are told by those who are likely to know, that