Part 21 (1/2)
The number of the countries that admit women to the Universities and High Schools has been greatly on the increase during the last twenty years; nor can any country, that lays claim to being a member of civilization, shut its ears in the long run to the demand. Ahead of all went the United States; Russia followed--two political systems that present in all respects the strongest contrasts; that notwithstanding, both were guided by the identical views with regard to the equal rights of woman. In the North American Union, women are to-day admitted in all the States to University studies,--in Utah since 1850, Iowa since 1860, Kansas since 1866, Wisconsin since 1868, Minnesota since 1869, California and Missouri since 1870, Ohio, Illinois and Nebraska since 1871; since then all the other States followed in rapid succession. In keeping with the extension of female studies, woman conquered her place in the United States. According to the census of 1890, there were in the country 2,348 female physicians and surgeons, 2,136 female architects, 580 female journalists, 300 female writers, 165 female ministers, 110 female lawyers.[146]
In Europe, Switzerland, princ.i.p.ally, opened its Universities to women.
There the number of female students grew, since 1887, as follows:--
Total Female Year. Students. Students.
1887 2,229 167 1888 2,339 206 1889 2,412 196 1890 2,552 248 1891 2,889 297 1892 3,076 318 1893 3,307 451 1893-94 (Winter course) 3,609 599
Accordingly, the partic.i.p.ation of women in University studies increased considerably in the interval between 1887-1894. In 1887 the number of female students was 7.5 per cent. of the total number of students; in 1893-1894, however, it had risen to 16.6 per cent. In 1887, there were, among 744 medical students, 79 women, or 10.6 per cent.; in the winter course of 1893-1894, there were, of 1,073 medical students, 210 women, or 19.6 per cent. In the department of philosophy, in 1887, there were, of 530 students, 41 women, or 7.8 per cent.; in 1893-1894, there were, of 1,640 students, 381 women, or 23.2 per cent. The large majority of the female students in Switzerland are foreigners, among them many Germans, whose number increases almost yearly. The example of Switzerland was followed in the early seventies by Sweden; in 1874 by England, in so far as medical colleges for women have been established.
Nevertheless, it was not until 1881 that Oxford, and 1884 that Cambridge decided to admit female students. Italy followed in 1876, then Norway, Belgium, France and Austria. In Paris, during 1891, there were 232 female students, mostly of medicine. Of these female students, 103 were Russian, 18 French, 6 English, 3 Roumanian, 2 Turk, and 1 each from America, Greece and Servia. In the department of philosophy there were 82 French female students and 15 foreigners matriculated.
As it will have been noticed, even Turkey is represented among the female students. There, more than anywhere else, are female physicians needed, due to the position that custom and religion a.s.sign to woman as against man. The same reason caused Austria also to open Universities to female students, in order that the Mohammedan women of Bosnia and Herzegovina might enjoy medical attendance. Even Germany, whose ”pig-tail” was thickest, i. e., where the disfavor towards admitting women to the Universities was most bitter, has been compelled to fall in line with progress. In the spring of 1894, the first female student pa.s.sed her examination in Heidelberg for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, and a second one in the fall of the same year in Gottingen.
In Karlsruhe and Berlin, High Schools were established to prepare women for the Universities; finally in the summer of 1894, the Prussian Minister of Public Wors.h.i.+p issued regulations for the remodelling of the higher instruction of girls, looking for their preparation for the study of medicine. Also India has furnished a small contingent of female students. Obviously, there is progress everywhere.
All medical authorities are agreed that women render the best service as nurses of the sick, aye, that they positively can not be got along without. In an address, delivered by Prof. Ziemssen a few years ago, he said:
”Above all, see to it, gentlemen, in your practice that you have thorough, well trained, kind-hearted, characterful female nurses.
Without them, all your sacrifices of time and effort are idle.”
In the September, 1892, issue of the ”German Review”, Prof. Virchow thus expressed himself in favor of female nurses:
”That the post of real responsibility at the sick-bed shall fall to woman is, in my opinion, a principle that should be enforced in all our hospitals. In the hands of a cultivated, womanly, trained person the care of even a sick man is safer than in those of a man.”
If woman is fit for the extraordinarily difficult service of nurse, a service that places a heavy strain upon patience and self-sacrifice, why should she not be also fit for a physician?
Above all, the idea must be resisted that women shall be educated for physicians by separate courses of study, i. e., separated from the male students,--a plan that Frau Mathilde Weber of Tubingen has declared herself satisfied with.[147] If the purpose be to degrade the female physicians, from the start, to the level of physicians of second or third rank, and to lower them in the eyes of their male colleagues, then, indeed, that is the best method. If it is no violation of ”ethics”
and ”morality” that female nurses a.s.sist in the presence of male physicians at the performance of all possible operations upon male and female subjects, and on such occasions render most useful service; if it is ”ethically” and ”morally” permissible that dozens of young men, as students and for the sake of their studies, stand as observers at the bed of a woman in travail, or a.s.sist at the performance of operations on female patients, then it is absurd and laughable to deny such rights to female students.
Such prudery in natural things is the rage, particularly in Germany, this big children's play-room. The English, discredited by reason of the same qualities, may, nevertheless, be our teachers in the treatment of natural things.
In this direction, it is the United States, in particular, that furnish the example most worthy of imitation. There, and to the utter horror of our learned and unlearned old fogies of both s.e.xes, High Schools have existed for decades, at which both s.e.xes are educated in common. Let us hear with what result. President White of the University of Michigan declared as early as the middle of the seventies: ”The best pupil in Greek, for several years, among 1,300 students, has been a young lady; the best pupil in mathematics in one of the strongest cla.s.ses of our Inst.i.tute is, likewise, a young lady; and several among the best pupils in natural science and the sciences in general are likewise young ladies.” Dr. Fairchild, President of Oberlin College in Ohio, where over a thousand students of both s.e.xes are instructed in common, said at about the same time: ”During my inc.u.mbency of eight years as professor of ancient languages--Latin, Greek, and Hebrew--also in the ethical and philosophic studies, and during my inc.u.mbency of eleven years in abstract and applied mathematics, I have never noticed any difference in the two s.e.xes except in the manner of reciting.” Edward H. Machill, President of Swarthmore College in Delaware County, Pa., and author of a pamphlet,[148] from which these facts are taken, says that, after an experience of four years, he had arrived at the conclusion that, with an eye to both manners and morals, the education of the two s.e.xes in common had given the best results. Many a pig-tail has yet to be cut off in Germany before common sense shall have broken its way through here.
More recently, lively controversies have arisen in the literature of almost all countries of civilization on the question whether woman could achieve intellectually as much as man. While some, by dint of great ac.u.men and with the aid of facts supposed to be proofs, deny that such is possible, others maintain that, on many fields, it undoubtedly is the case. It is claimed that, generally speaking, woman is endowed with qualities that man is deficient in, and _vice versa_: the male method of reasoning is reflective and vigorous, woman's, on the contrary, distinguishes itself by swiftness of perception and quickness of execution. Certain it is that woman finds her way more quickly in complicated situations, and has more tact than man. Ellis, who gathered vast materials upon this question, turned to a series of persons, who had male and female students under their guidance for many years, and questioned them on their opinion and experience. McBendrick of Glasgow answered him: ”After having taught female students for twenty years, I would sum up my observations with the statement that many women accomplish as much as men in general, and that many men do not accomplish as much as the female average.” Other opinions in Ellis' book are less favorable, but none is unfavorable. According to the Yearbook of Berlin for 1870, pp. 69-77, investigation showed girls to be stronger in the sense of s.p.a.ce, boys at figures; the girls excelled in the telling of stories, the boys in the explaining of religious principles.
Whatever the way these questions may be turned and twisted, the fact appears that the two s.e.xes supplement each other; the one is superior on one, the other on some other field, while on a number of others there is no difference in point of s.e.x, but only in point of individual.
_It follows, furthermore, that there is no reason for confining one s.e.x to a certain field, and prescribing to it the course of development that it shall pursue, nor that, based on differences in natural bent, in advantages and in defects, which mutually equalize themselves, privileges may be deducted for one s.e.x, hindrances for another.
Consequently--equality for all, and a free field for each, with a full swing according to their capacity and ability._
Based upon the experience made during the last decades in the higher studies of woman, there is no longer any valid reason against the same.
The teacher can do much, by the manner in which he teaches, to affect the att.i.tude of his male and female pupils. Women, who devote themselves to a science, are often animated with an earnestness and will-power in which they excel most other students. The zeal of the female students is, on an average, greater than that of the male.
In reality, it is wholly different reasons that cause most professors of medicine, University teachers, in general, to take a hostile stand towards female students. They see in it a ”degradation” of science, which might lose in the esteem of the narrow-minded ma.s.ses, if the fact were to transpire that female brains also could grasp a science, which, until then, was confined to the select of the male s.e.x only.
All claims to the contrary notwithstanding, our Universities, along with our whole system of education, are in poor plight. As, at the public school, the child is robbed of valuable time by filling his brain with matters that accord neither with common sense nor scientific experience; as a ma.s.s of ballast is there dumped into him that he can not utilize in life, that, rather, hampers him in his progress and development; so likewise is it done in our higher schools. In the preparatory schools for the Universities a ma.s.s of dry, useless matter is pounded into the pupils. These matters, that the pupils are made to memorize, take up most of their time and engage their most precious brain-power; whereupon, at the University, the identical process is carried on further. They are there taught a ma.s.s of antiquated, stale, superfluous lore, along with comparatively little that is valuable. The lectures, once written, are reeled off by most of the professors year after year, course after course, the interlarded witticisms included. The high ministry of education becomes with many, an ordinary trade; nor need the students be endowed with great sagacity to find this out. Furthermore, tradition regarding University life sees to it that the young folks do not take their years of study too seriously, and many a youth, who would take them seriously, is repelled by the pedantic and unenjoyable style of the professors. The decline in the zeal to learn and to study is a fact generally noticed at all our Universities and higher schools, and is even cause for serious concern with those in authority. Intimately connected therewith is the ”grafting” tendency, which, in these days of ours, so poor in character, makes great progress and grows ever ranker in the higher schools. To have ”safe views” takes the place of knowledge, and the poison spreads. To be a ”patriot,” that is to say, a person without a mind of his own, who carefully takes his cue from above, sees how the wind blows there, and trims his sails accordingly, bends and crawls,--such a person is more considered than one of character and knowledge. When the time for examination approaches, the ”grafter” crams for a few months what seems most indispensible, in order to squeeze through. When, finally, examination has been happily pa.s.sed and an office or professional post is secured, most of these ”ex-students” work along in a merely mechanical and journeyman style, and are then highly offended if one, who was not a ”student,” fails to greet them with the greatest respect, and to treat them as specimens of some other and higher race. The majority of the members of our so-called higher professions--district attorneys, judges, doctors, professors, Government officials, artists, etc.,--_are mere journeymen at their trades, who feel no need of further culture, but are happy to stand by the crib_. Only the industrious man discovers later, but only then, how much trash he has learned, often was not taught the very thing that he needed most, and has to begin to learn in good earnest. During the best time of his life he has been pestered with useless or even harmful stuff. He needs a second part of his life to rub all this off, and to work himself up to the height of his age. Only then can he become a useful member of society. Many do not arrive beyond the first stage; others are stranded in the second; only a few have the energy to reach the third.
But ”decorum” requires that the mediaeval trumpery and useless curriculum be retained; and, seeing, moreover, that women, as a consequence of their s.e.x, are from the start excluded from the preparatory schools, the circ.u.mstance furnishes a convenient pretext to shut the doors of the University lecture rooms in their faces. In Leipsic, during the seventies, one of the most celebrated professors of medicine made the undisguised confession to a lady: _”The gymnasium (college) training is not necessary to the understanding of medicine.