what she did on the only occasion of breach of promise on the part of the students.
In the midst of a lecture in the amphitheatre, on a particularly critical subject, a note was thrown to her from a back row. It fell on the sleeve of her black dress. There she let it lie, making notes as if she did not perceive it: when she had finished, she raised the arm on which she knew that all eyes were fixed, and by a slight movement threw off the paper upon the floor. A burst of cheers rang through the place, followed by some hissing of the writer. She took no more notice of the one demonstration than of the other; and all that she knew of her fellow-students from that day forward was that they at once respected her reserve, and afforded every facility in their power to her attainment of her object.
She had more trouble outside the walls, where the New England village character, described by Hawthorne, seems to have extended across the frontier of the Puritan States. She could not get a lodging; she was stared at and quizzed in the street as “the lady-doctor;” and it required the countenance of the Professors’ wives to obtain admission for her to a respectable boarding-house. When they called on her she was no longer denied bed and board. She soon lived down all this prejudice: but it needed very great courage and fortitude for a woman under thirty to pass alone through so dreary a stage of social prejudice. I trust that that passage of Elizabeth Blackwell’s life is remembered by the young women who now sit in peace in the lecture-rooms of their own colleges, among congenial comrades, and safe in the respect of society. Nobody insults them: nobody wonders at them: and they do not know what it is to be alone, as she was alone. Let them never forget that she took the whole difficulty upon herself, and made the roughest places plain for them.
After a complete course of instruction, with some practice in hospital and college, she graduated in January, 1849. The occasion was memorable; and it was acknowledged to be so by the presence of a crowd of strangers, including a large proportion of women, and by the special and encouraging notice of the particular case taken by the president. He testified to the excellent effect produced upon the whole institution by the presence of the sensible and indefatigable student of the other sex; and he probably felt that the authorities and the students had reaped the natural reward of a bold course of justice and good sense. The authorities of our medical schools have not so much faith and courage. A precisely similar opportunity has been afforded to them by a countrywoman; but there was no man among us qualified to act as the Geneva Faculty had grace to act.—It is melancholy to be obliged to add that professional bigotry was so brought to bear on the Faculty at Geneva that they afterwards refused admission to Dr. Emily Blackwell, a younger sister, who obtained her object at Chicago. The same process was gone through there: and when Emily Blackwell, distinguished for learning and ability, went to resume her place for a second year, she found the doors shut against her. The Professors were grieved: but the Faculty of the State Medical Council were peremptory, and nothing could be done.
When Elizabeth Blackwell was finishing her professional education in Europe, she received very characteristic advice at Paris, where the Faculty would not hear of her attending lectures and hospitals under her own name and aspect, but advised her to wear men’s clothes. Her reply was, that as her aim was to open the profession to women, she must appear as a woman. She obtained private instruction in anatomy, with facilities for dissection; and she became an inmate of the Maternité Hospital for a course of practice.
While struggling with difficulties in Paris, she was gratified by an invitation from Berlin to go and study at the Royal Hospital there, where every facility would be afforded her. Such are the differences in civilisation of contemporary societies! She studied at St. Bartholomew’s finally; and we may be glad that we had not the disgrace of turning her away, as we think it necessary to do with our own countrywomen. She was regarded as an American, as she had graduated there; and hence she was permitted to pick up some knowledge in London.
She settled in New York in 1851; and there she is now, though more than once tempted to take up her abode in London. She has a large private practice: but (what she cares for far more) hospitals, dispensaries, and female medical schools are also flourishing under legislative grants, and large private subscriptions—some supplied, I am happy to say, from England. This is a proof that there is an English public ready to support such institutions, whenever an opening can be found for their establishment.
This case is a clear confirmation of the great truth that the emancipation and elevation of any class (outside of personal slavery) must be achieved by the class itself. There is little use in talking about wrongs—whether of women, or of the working class, or of oppressed nations. Nobody can help them till they have first proved that they can help themselves. As it is also true that the only education for the use of rights is in the exercise of them, the despots of human society chuckle over their own security. If the exercise of rights is the only education for the use of them, and if also none but the wronged can achieve their own rights, the depressed seem to be confined within a vicious circle from which they cannot escape. But the despots are mistaken in their confidence. The process of emancipation is always the same; and it never fails of success, sooner or later. Some one, or some few, cannot for ever endure the repression; and individual effort bursts the barrier, and opens the way for the many to follow. It is thus that art and science have been opened to women, never to be closed again. It is thus that every pursuit of which women are capable will in time be at their choice. It is mere loss of time to argue in advance what women can do, and what they ought to do. One after another women will do whatever they are capable of doing; and what they can do they ought to do, and will assuredly do. If they will drop all talk of rights and wrongs, except in moral disquisition, and silently prove, like the Blackwells, their capacity and their