same class with men day after day in the lecture-room in the Medical College, and I have stripped patients' chests, and women have examined and have listened with the stethoscope to their ears, and have attended to the whole subject matter, and in other cases I have not reserved anything which I should have said if they were not there, but after all the experience which I have had, and I say it plainly, that experience has caused me, and those acting with me, to decide to have no mixture of the The experience I have had teaches me that, and I think the world would be better, civilization would go on faster, and men and women would be better off if each sex were to act in its own proper sphere, and do not lend our influence to the popular clamor. I say it would be well if men and women would stop the eternal wrangling about rights, and each would ask his or her own conscience a little more day by day, What my duty and what are my obligations?

sexes.

is

Dr. Donahue, of Iowa, moved to lay the resolution upon the table.

The Vice-President (Dr. Weatherly) in the chair: The motion is not debatable.

Dr. Davis: I hope there will be no disposition manifested to cut off debate.

Dr. Donahue withdraws the motion to lay on the table.

ARRAYED ON THE SIDE OF WOMAN.

Dr. James King, of Pittsburg: I am not accustomed to speaking on this question of woman's petition. It has been so much brought up in the Society of Pennsylvania-the State Medical Society-that I want it settled, and I rise for the purpose of stating somewhat of what is the attitude of that question in our city.

It has been debated in our Society for a number of years, every year warmly and earnestly debated, and when the vote was taken I remember, on one occasion, it stood 47 on one side and 45 on the other-a majority of two against the woman. Such arguments as have been urged by the learned gentleman, who has just taken his seat, I have heard repeatedly over and

over there, and I have generally found myself arrayed on the side of the woman. I think, sir, that this war against the women is beneath the dignity of a learned Society of scientific men. It would better become us if we would go with General Crooke to Arizona to fight the Indians if we must gratify our bellicose dispositions, rather than to carry on this war against

women.

Mr. President, I agree perfectly with the gentleman who has taken his seat. That woman in her sphere is superior to man, and man in his sphere is superior to woman; I would sustain that proposition with as much earnestness as he has done; but the gist of the question, after all, is: What is woman's sphere? Perhaps the gentleman has obtained his idea of it from India. A woman in India never appears in the street unless veiled, and never appears in the parlor of her lord; her place is back in the kitchen, or in the open field,

"Doomed by the law of man to toil,

Grouped with the beast and fettered to the scil."

That is the idea of woman's sphere in India, but the tendency of Christian civilization everywhere has been to lift her out of degradation to which man would consign her.

Now, sir, is not the practice of medicine an honorable calling? Is it not a noble calling? Is there anything that does not call forth all there is in the heart of a man or all there is in the heart of a woman? What is there in it that is degrading? Sir, if I thought it was degrading, I should abandon it to-day. It is an honorable and noble calling, and there are some gifted minds in it who ignore the distinctions of sex or complexion, and hold that it is beneath the dignity of an honorable Association like this to repress this rising tendency— that it is beneath the dignity of that profession to say: "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther." It is said:

"When pain and anguish wring the brow,

A ministering angel thou."

That she is all very well as a nurse, but, say they: "You cannot come in as a physician, not at all; you have not mind

enough." This is the argument. We have the intellect not the women; they are poor silly runners after fashion, and what do they know about intellect? Why, sir, it is because woman has been kept in the background-because she has been kept down, that she has not manifested her superior intellect. I have read some of the writings of one of the professors in the Womans' Medical School, which Dr. Thomas comes here to represent, and I must say, so far as my judgment goes, those writings are equal to the writings of any other professors in Philadelphia, in the way of pith and point.

Now, Mr. President, I want to see this question settled, and I want this war against woman ended. To show the tendency of this thing, I will give you an illustration of an important question that occurred in Williamsport, Lycoming county, Pennsylvania. There was a lady professor of acknowledged merit, highly educated in her profession—a lady who had no disposition to do anything else than pursue the code of ethics, so called. There was a friend of mine, a worthy physician in that place, who was applied to as a consulting physician, and he went to visit the patient of this lady, and the reason why he was asked to do so, was that he had experience in just such cases; he went into the room, and what did he do? Why, just what he was bound to do by the laws of the Medical Society of Pennsylvania, that is, if we stand by its law, he was bound by those rules to turn her off: "Turn that woman out of the house, and I will come in and attend to the case!" Sir, I would rather have cut off my right arm than have done so mean a thing; the meanest and most contemptible thing that a highly educated and honorable physician could do; the meanest possible thing for a physician to say in regard to his juniors, or in regard to one who in other respects would associate upon an equality with him, and especially in regard to a woman, who is excluded by the rules of the Society, is to say: "Walk out of the room, and let me have the case; you are not recognized, and I have the right to attend to it." Sir, an honorable and educated physician will never do such a thing as that. Now, sir, let us not

stultify ourselves in this regard. I find, in reading over a document, which I have in my hand, an account of a hospital in Philadelphia, and the medical staff of that hospital is headed by the name of Mrs. Ann Preston, and I see among the consulting physicians of that Institution, presided over by female physicians, the name of the honorable President of the American Medical Association, the gentleman who adorns the chair, and who delivered to us yesterday so eloquent a speech, Alfred Stille, M. D., Ellwood Wilson, Albert H. Smith, Henry Hartshorne, John Forsyth Meigs, Thomas G. Morton, and S. Weir Mitchell. Now, can you find a nobler set of men belonging to the medical profession in the city of Philadelphia? I trow not. And these gentlemen are the consulting physicians, in violation of a resolution which stands upon record in the Philadelphia Medical Society, which resolution visits the penalty of expulsion upon any member who will consult with a female physician. We have a woman in the chair of that Institution, and the distinguished Professor of the Practice of Medicine in the University of Philadelphia, Dr. Stille, a man who adorns that position, does not hesitate to consult with female physicians; certainly it is a thing he has a right to do, and under certain circumstances. Now, sir, having elevated him to that position, I say we have to recognize his position in this respect, otherwise we stultify ourselves by this war upon women. [Applause.]

A VOICE FROM CALIFORNIA.

Professor Henry Gibbons, of San Francisco, Cal.: It has been several years since I commenced active practice-in the early period of my life-and I never yet stood upon a platform in which this question was brought up, but upon this occasion I am inclined to place myself upon the record in regard to this question, whether popular or unpopular, în respect to profession or the outside world.

I have listened, I must confess, with some degree of surprise to some of the remarks that have been here offered by my worthy friend, Dr. Davis-a man who holds almost the highest place in the profession. He rather astonished me by assuming

the position he had, and which savored very much of that kind of logic attributed yesterday by our worthy President to the female sex, an ad captandum form of argument, alluding to the terrible position in which we should be thrown if a woman should come here as a delegate to this Society and claim a seat by our sides. The terrible picture which he presented, I have no doubt, almost caused the blood to curdle in the veins of some in this room. I almost forgot at the moment, carried away by his enthusiasm, that my mother was a woman, and that I had any respect for that class of animals, existing in creation, known as woman; further than that, he linked the question at present under consideration with the idea of female suffrage, female voting, and he told us of females aspiring to every department in life. This is exactly in accordance with the old ad captandum style of argument which he has himself, doubtless, heard and answered a thousand times in days past, when he stood up for the rights of man, irrespective of color: "Would you have your daughter marry a 'nigger?'" There is the whole gist of the argument on that point in regard to this Association. I have never gone as far as my friend has; I have never taught mixed classes of males and females; I have never stripped a "subject" upon the dissecting table in the presence of both men and women who are students; and, what is more, I am never likely to. It is not likely that I shall ever do it. I have never gone so far in that respect as my brother, Dr. Davis; I acknowledge a limit in these things. There are certain limitations in regard to the position of women in the profession which I do acknowledge, and the idea of teaching them in mixed classes, the promiscuous intermingling of them in our schools and hospitals I utterly repudiate. [Applause.] But when it comes to the abstract right of a woman to study medicine, and to perfect herself in the science and art, and to be acknowledged on a par with man, if she shows herself to be his equal, I cannot, for the life of me, see what reasonable objection there can be to such a proposition as that. I am not jealous of the ascendency of woman. If a woman can teach herself, or be