The influence of women in the profession of medicine : address given at the opening of the winter session of the London School of Medicine for Women / by Elizabeth Blackwell.

  • Blackwell, Elizabeth, 1821-1910.
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The influence of women in the profession of medicine : address given at the opening of the winter session of the London School of Medicine for Women / by Elizabeth Blackwell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    conclusions formed by one half of the race only, must necessarily require revision, as the other half of humanity rises into conscious responsibility. It is a difficult lesson, also, fully to recognize the limitations of the human intellect; which recognition nevertheless is necessary, before we can grasp this important and positive fact in human experience, viz., that the Moral must guide the Intellectual, or there is no halting-place in the rapid incline to error. The brilliant professor will always exercise an undue influ- ence over the inexperienced student, and particularly over the woman student. I therefore strongly urge the necessity of cherishing a mild scepticism respect- ing the dicta of so-called medical science, during the period of student life; scepticism, not in relation to truth—that noble object which we hope to approach ever more nearly,—but scepticism in relation to the imperfect or erroneous statement of what is often presented as truth. Of this one guiding fact, as a basis of judgment, we may be quite sure, viz., that whatever revolts our moral sense as earnest women, is not in accordance with steady progress ; it cannot be permanently true, and no amount of clever or logical sophistry can make it true. It will be a real service that we, as medical women, may render to the profession, if we search out —calmly, patiently, but resolutely—why what revolts our enlightened sense of right and wrong is not true.