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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    the practical career of the physician, for which our medical studies should carefully prepare us. I believe that the department of medicine, in which the great and beneficent influence of women may be especially exerted, is that of the family physician; and that not as specialists, but as the trusted guides and wise counsellors in all that concerns the physical welfare of the family, they will find their most con- genial field of labour. It is to fit ourselves for this most useful and in- fluential position, viz., as the medical advisers of families, that, not limiting our education to any speciality, we have laboured, and must continue to labour, to remove all obstacles in the way of obtain- ing the fullest medical education. For this reason I have laid so much stress upon the cultivation of habits of careful observation; and I now would give a warn- ing against sensationalism in medical study. The unreflecting student (not unnaturally) rushes after novelties. There is a certain excitement in wit- nessing a formidable surgical operation, or seeing a rare case of disease that may never again be presented to our observation. But these exceptional occurrences do not fit us for our future medical life, as does the careful study of the commoner forms of disease, for those are the cases that most nearly concern us. But because they are common, they cease to interest the unobservant student, who applies a routine treatment.