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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

illness, though he was under the surgical care of six other physicians.” She also “ introduced to the United States the first Chinese baby of rank born in this country.” There are now thirty-six medical colleges which admit mixed classes, and five med­ical schools exclusively for women, besides a school of pharmacy for women at Louis­ville, Ky. All this since 1849, when one woman was too great a crowd for the Boston editor. He has probably gone long since, to the country where, if present indications are at all reliable, he will find the majority of its inhabitants women. What are the qualifications necessary for a woman to be successful in the profession? We can only give a few 7 of them.

First, energy and courage, self reliance, great perseverance, firmness, love for sci­entific truths, dignity above and beyond all true womanliness. There was never greater mistake made than in thinking one’s influence greater, or that it is in any sense neces­sary, to become masculine or mannish when entering upon any line of public work. The exact reverse is true. We can neither afford to create prejudice nor offend good taste by being ill-mannered or ill-bred. To hold the confidence and respect of both good men and good women we must not only avoid evil in all forms, but even the appearance of evil. Each one must prove her ability by doing better work than her brother practitioner to receive the same credit. Does she lose a patient, nine out of ten of the neighbors and friends will say, or think, if too courteous to express their opinion, you should have known better than to have employed a woman. Does her brother physician lose half a dozen in the same neighborhood, there are grateful words of how he stood by them to the last; of how peculiar were the complications of dis­ease, and the impossibility of understanding the dispensations of providence. Unjust, do you say ? Yes, but it will grow less so as the years go by. For already it is becom­ing noticeable that women do not lose their patients as frequently or in as large a per cent as do men. This is easily accounted for when we pause to consider the facts and reason to natural conclusions. Men too frequently drift into the profession. The father, or brother, or uncle, is a doctor, and it is easy to read with them, and so they drift, as we say, into the medical profession, without thought of special fitness, or special taste, or qualification. Not so with the woman seeking this avocation. Truly to her must there be a distinct call, an overwhelming must. There is no ease or drift­ing to her. She must be the woman who has the pride of excelling, the pride of standing at the head, who will have the best and do the best or nothing. Who has the courage of her convictions, who knows no defeat. This is the type of woman who comes into the profession because nature, which is our most imperative councilor, has been her teacher; because she knows that suffering womanhood can be better understood by women than it ever can be by men. Theory and experience are widely different in practical results. The woman understands at once, from a woman’s knowl­edge and woman’s standpoint, what the man fails to get from books or theory,^.nd cannot experience in himself. The prejudice against women among the men of the profession is fast dying out in college and class room; at the bedside and in our med­ical societies we are accorded every help and encouragement, every courtesy and equality. It is only occasionally that we meet one of the ancient type, and he impresses us with a feeling of amusement rather than one of resentment. It is said that women are nervous and fail in emergencies. This is a libel upon the sex. No greater acts of heroism have ever been shown to the world than those performed by women. It is my experience and observation that sex has nothing to do whatever with the matter of coolness in emergency. I have seen extremely nervous men in the profession, and women who, for calmness, might have stepped from the pedestal of the marble statue. Knowledge is the basis of self-reliance. The man or woman who knows what to do and does it, knows also that they have nothing to fear either from public criticism or self-accusation, whatever the results may be.

In a medical journal we read, not long since, two articles, both upon women as physicians and surgeons. The editor must have had a fine sense of humor, placing them, as he did, upon consecutive pages of his journal. The first stated certain facts