Medical morals, illustrated with plates and extracts from medical works : designed to show the pernicious social and moral influence of the present system of medical practice, and the importance of establishing female medical colleges, and educating and employing female physicians for their own sex / by George Gregory.

  • Gregory, George, 1790-1853.
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical morals, illustrated with plates and extracts from medical works : designed to show the pernicious social and moral influence of the present system of medical practice, and the importance of establishing female medical colleges, and educating and employing female physicians for their own sex / by George Gregory. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    anointings, managed in such a way as to stimulate the passions, and produce a temporary excitement of the organs, which his deluded victims mistake for a beneficial result. These have to be rep until the effect is lost, and the disease remains not only uncured, but in a worse condition. This has been the lamentable experience of thousands of women in this city; and, as the practice is extremely lucrative, it has been taken up in other places. No words can add to the contempt and detestation every honest man and every pure- minded woman must feel for such shameful practices. Does Dr. Nichols allude to a celebrated female infirmary in Brooklyn, N. Y., to which multitudes of women have resorted, and hundreds of wealthy men have sent their wives and daughters to be treated ? If so, these ladies and these gentlemen should forthwith interest themselves in the education of female physicians to practise in such female infirmaries. Testimony of Dr. Ewell. Thomas Ewell, M. D., of Virginia, Honorary Member of the Philadelphia Medical Society, and former Surgeon in the Navy Hospital, Washington City, was a learned physician, of thirty years' practice, and of high standing in the estimation of the profession. In his Letters to Ladies, detailing Important Information concerning Themselves and Infants, published in Philadelphia, in the introduc- tion to the work, he speaks and argues as follows : — The serious object of my present solicitude is, to wrest the prac- tice of midwifery from the hands of men and transfer it to women, as it was in the beginning, and ever should be. I have seldom fell a more ardent desire to succeed in any undertaking, because I view the present practice of calling on men, in ordinary births, as a source of serious evils to childbearing; as an imposition upon the credulity of women, and upon the fears of their husbands ; as a means of sacri- ficing delicacy, and consequently virtue; and as a robbery of many good women of their proper employment and support. Truly it shows as extraordinary a revolution in practice as any afforded by a survey of all the arts. That all females bring forth their young without assistance except the human in a state of civil- ization, and that women should call for the assistance of men, while the human species is the only one tormented by jealousy, is a fart that will scarcely be credited in a Turkish harem, or by the Christians