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Judge Samuel Curwen (1715-1802), of Salem, married Abigail, daughter of Hon. Daniel and Rebecca (Chambers) Russell, of Charlestown, Mass.

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only business acumen, but in many cases considerable mechanical and executive ability. May it not be that the American shrewdness and inventive genius which have become proverbial are inherited partly from the distaff side?

CHAPTER IV

THE MINISTERING ANGEL

"O Woman! in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
And variable as the shade

By the light quivering aspen made;
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou!"

THIS qualified compliment has been paid to woman in all ages, and until recently it has been supposed that instinct would always teach her the right way to relieve pain and anguish, as surely as it guided Lady Clare in getting a drink of water for the dying Marmion.

Treatment as well as care of the sick, whether in the hands of men or of women, was largely a mat-. ter of inspiration in the first days of the colonies. Samuel Fuller, the doctor of Plymouth, had been a silk-maker in Leyden.1 John Winthrop the younger, Governor of Connecticut, gave medical advicenot only in person, but also by letter, and purchased remedies for his friends when he was in London on diplomatic business.2

Women were not lacking among these avocational doctors. The obituary notice of Mrs. Mary 1 Bradford, p. 39 n.

2 Mass. Hist. Col., 4th Ser., vol. vii, p. 492 ff.

Hazard, of Newport (grandmother of the Deputy Governor of Rhode Island), who died in 1739, in the one hundredth year of her age, states that "she was accounted a very useful gentlewoman, both to poor and rich, on many accounts, and particularly amongst sick persons for her skill and judgment, which she did gratis." 1

It was not long, however, before this class was, if not supplanted, at least supplemented, by more trained physicians. One branch of medical practice! alone was unaffected by the change — obstetrics. For over a century, midwifery was left to women; and in those days no woman had professional training. A Boston physician, writing in 1810, states: 2

Obstetrical attendance, except in the most difficult cases, was seldom by male practitioners till within the last sixty years, but this part of the profession is now principally conducted by physicians.

Another doctor, writing ten years later, says that the employment of men accoucheurs was much more common in Boston than elsewhere. Arguing in favor of this practice, he goes on: 3

It is obvious that we cannot instruct women as we do men in the science of medicine; we cannot carry

1 New York Gazette, March 13, 1739.

Bartlett, p. 13.

Boston Physician, p. 7.

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