Valedictory address to the graduating class of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania : at the eighteenth annual commencement, March 12th, 1870

BY

2-/ oy^

ALEDICTOP>^ y^DDI\ESS

OF PENNSYLVANIA,

AT THE

JjiqHTEENTH ^VNJMUAL j^IoMMEjMCEJVlEjST,

BY

ANN PRESTON, M. D.,

Professor of Physiology and Hygiene.

mil

PHILADELPHIA :
LOAG, Printer, Sansom Street Hall.
1S70.

President, T. MORRIS PEROT.
Secretary, C. N. PEIRCE. Treasurer, REDWOOD F. WARNER.

Joseph Jeanes,

Hon. William S. Peirce,

Rebecca White,

DiLLWYN PAKRISH,

Rev. Albert Barnes,

J. Gibbons Hunt, M. D.,
Edward Lewis,
John Longstreth,

iSlARMADUKE MOORE,

William J. Mullen,

Gen. Thomas L. Kane,
Eli K. Price, Esq.,,
A. J. Derbyshire,
Ann Preston, M. D.,
Israel H. Johnson,

Emeline H. Cleveland, M. D.

ANN PRESTON, M. D.,

Professor of Physiology and Hygiene.
EMELINE H. CLEVELAND, M. D.,

Professor of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women,

MARY J. SCARLETT, M. D.,

Professor of Anatomy and Histology.

RACHEL L. BODLEY, M. L. A.,

Professor of Chemistry and Toxicology.

ISAAC COMLY, M. D.,

Professor of the Principles and Practice of Medicine.

BENJ. B. WILSON, M. D.,

Professor- of the Principles and Practice of Surgery.

CHxVS. HERMON THOMAS, M. D.,

Professor of Materia Medica and General Therapeutics.
HENRY HARTSHORNE, M. D.,

Professor of the Hygiene and Diseases of Children.

The Eighteenth Annual Commencement was held at Musical Fund Hall,
Philadelphia, on Saturday, March 12th, 1870, at 12 M., when the Degree of Doctor
of Medicine was conferred by the President, T. Morris Perot, Esq., upon tlie fol-
lowing named ladies:

SiBELiA T. Baker,
Jennie G. Brown,
Julia W- Carpenter,
HAnna T. Croasdale,
Sarah C. Hall,

Sarah A. Hibbard,
Jennie L. Hildebrand,
Martha E. Hutchings,
Anna Lukens,

Phebe a. Oliver,
Mary T. Seelye,
Jean S. Stevenson,
Melissa M. Webster,
Eliza J. Wood.

The Twenty-First Annual Session of the Woman's Medica! College of Pennsylvania
will open Thursday, October 13th, 1870, and
continue five nnonths.

VALEDICTORY.

Ladies, Graduates: — It is not merely in formal compli-
ance with custom that I give you to-day, on behalf of the
Faculty, a few parting words. We have watched your pro-
gress in study with interest and with pride ; our hopes and
sympathies go with you into the future, and we feel your
welfare and success, henceforth, linked with our own. There
are many to-day who look upon you with something, in-
deed, of sympathy, but with more of pity, believing that
you have chosen a hard pathway, and that care and sorrow
above the common measure must fall to your lot. We do
not share in this feeling. If the care and anxiety be great,
the compensations are yet greater ; if the toil be heavy, we
believe, with E-uskin : " That whenever the arts and labors
of life are fulfilled in this spirit of striving against misrule,
and doing whatever we have to do honorably and perfectly,
they invariably bring happiness, as much as seems possible
to the nature of man."

We can none of us map out the exact road before you,
nor foresee the changes and trials which await you ; but
there are unchanging principles of action which can guide

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safely through all vicissitudes, and these we trust you will
make your own.

What the world needs, is truth ; what the medical world
needs is more of that nice, conscientious observation and
investigation by which it may be elicited. In the stirring
words of Professor Goodsir: '-Let us have God's truth in
the measurements — God's truth in everything." Loose
observations, unsupported hypotheses, blind adherence to
authorities, suffice no longer ; here also,

" They must upward still and onward who would keep-abreast of truth."

Medicine is surely destined to become a richer blessing
to humanity than it has yet been. The advances already
made are prophecies of greater to come. If some widely-
destructive scourges, as scurvy and small-pox, are al-
most banished from the civilized world ; if epidemics are
held in check, and the percentage of recoveries in ordinary
diseases greatly increased; if, with advanced knowledge of
hygiene, the average duration of human life becomes greater
from decade to decade ; still there is a vast amount of pre-
ventable disease and death, for which no effective remedy,
as yet, has been systematically adopted.

But Physiology is now giving light and life to practical
medicine. Therapeutics at last is widening into a science,
as it begins to be recognized that all surrounding influ-
ences — air, sunlight, food, sleep, clothing, exercise, and
mental stimuli — are within its legitimate domain as truly
as iron, opium, bitters, and bromides.

Nor do its boundaries stop here. Morals^ also, belong
to Therapeutics. Temperance, purity, faith, hope, and
charity modify bodily processes ; they ward off disease and
prolong life ; and the physician who does not realize this

5

truth, and understand something of the reactions of the
moral, intellectual, and physical life, does not possess the
key to the best success in practice ; is not yet initiated into
the sacred mysteries of the divine art of healing. The ear-
lier physicians were the priests of their time, and amid igno-
rance and superstition there was in this fact a dim recogni-
tion of the truth that the same great principles subserve the
physical and moral life ; and, in the words of a writer in
the British Medical Journal : " Year by year we shall come
to value dogmas and rules less, and principles more," in
their application to both.

At present, nervous maladies, womanhood enfeebled and
diseased, are the fashion of society ; and perhaps the most
frequent question that you will have to answer practically
will be, "What can be done for our suffering women 1"
There is a deep conviction that these headaches, neuralgias,
and weak backs are neither necessary nor destined to be the
permanent condition of womanhood; and. Ladies, the phi-
lanthropist and scientist, who are seeking the remedy, look
hopefully to the results of your knowledge and experience
in their bearing upon this point.

When anxious fathers and mothers bring you their beau-
tiful daughters, from whose young faces and steps the bloom
and elasticity are departing, and ask your counsel, what shall
you do ? You look at those girls and at once take in their
history. Kept long at school, and strained with many les-
sons at an age when the conditions of healthful growth and
development were incompatible with sedentary habits and
severe mental tasks; their bodies so tightly bound with
clothing that by no possibility have the ever-moving vital
organs been able fully to perform their functions ; their ex-
tremities cold and thinly clad, and the weight of their cloth-

6

ing supported, not by their shoulders, made by God to bear
burdens, but by parts totally unfitted to sustain them I Re-
leased from school, they have bent long in the same posture
over piano, fancy Avork, or exciting novel, instead of rejoic-
ing in the open air, or in active muscular exercise; their
homes, luxurious, it may be, have yet been grudgingly sup-
plied with pure air and quickening sunshine ; the pas>^ion
for dress and company has been fostered until these have
become the staples rather than the stimulants of their lives ;
while late hours, artificial lights, and continuous excite-
ments have interfered with the nutrition of nerve tissue,
and perverted the distribution of nerve force. You know
that quiet, interesting, imperative work, — work for hands
and for mind, — is essential to their health; and as you sigh
over their wasted, suffering, unsatisfied lives, you cannot
be content with the mockery of merely prescribing drugs,
needful and beneficent as these may often be.

Some morbid Michelet may speak of this feeble w^oman-
hood as the necessary result of advanced civilization, but it
is very clear to us that it is not a high civilization, but the
failure to reach it, to which this is due. The highest civil-
ization will surely be in harmony with nature, with health,
with the moral and Divine law. It will drive out follies as
well as fevers ; it will foster pure, quiet, simple tastes, and
will find its models of beauty in form and drapery, not in
the vulgar devices by which fashionable mantua-making dis-
torts and burlesques human proportions, but in the grace
and freedom of artistic Nature, and the corresponding fit-
ness of clothing.

The woman of a true civilization will regard as pitiful
and barbarous the idea that uselessness is elegance, or that
disease and languor are womanly; and she will surely escape

7

the emptiness and dissatisfaction which oppress every hu-
man heing — the proudest queen of fashion as well as the
lowliest child of poverty— who does not cultivate and direct
to ennobling uses, the powers and faculties which are the
glorious birthright of humanity.

Ladies, society hails your advent into the field of medi-
cine as among the heralds of this higher civilization — the
civilization which is harmonious with Christianity ; and you
will prescribe for those who seek your advice in the knightly
spirit of your profession, with all tenderness, but with all
truth. Scorning make-believes and pretensions, with the
authority of knowledge you will say: "These things ye
cannot do and realize the joy of health." Nor will you
speak in vain. When an evil is once fully seen and ad-
mitted, and its cause understood, the remedy will surely be
devised.

Whether giving advice to chronic invalids, or watching
by the bed of xoain and death, to whatever class of diseases
and needs you may minister, you will share the life of
" that common mass of humanity which toils along the
weary ways of the world," as none others do. You will be
entrusted with secret sorrows, be initiated inevitably into
the hidden springs of domestic life, and become, for the time,
in interest and sympathy, a part of the families into which
you enter. Your suggestions will be respected and re-
peated, and your influence for good will be limited only by
your own abilities, attainments, and characters. How full
of wisdom and knowledge should those be who thus pene-
trate household sanctities, and deal with the delicate ma-
chinery of life ! how stainless in honor, how prudent in
speech !

There is one principle that covers all medical as well as

8

general ethics, and this is embodied in the Divine rule :
" Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye
even so to them." The practical .carrying out of this rule
will make you prompt, faithful, reliable. It will make the
interests of your patients as sacred as your own, and their
secrets as safe in your keeping as in the silence of the grave.
In consultations, it will preserve you alike from the common
temptation of agreeing with everything proposed by those
with whom you consult, whether or not it really seem to
you the best thing to be done ; or the opposite fault of re-
commending a different treatment from selfish and un-
worthy motives. It will also suppress in you the injustice
and pettiness of anger or resentment, in case your patients,
in the exercise of their just rights, should chance to prefer
other physicians to yourselves.

Ladies, you intend to be good practitioners, but you must
not forget that to minister the most effectively to others,
the mind and body should not be continually exhausted. So
it should be ranked among your duties to husband your own
vitality, whenever it is possible rightly to do so. Those who
are the most active, mentally and physically, have especial
need of constant renewal, and with proper care and deter-
mination, it is possible, under most circumstances, to secure
time for regular meals, and for that great renovator — sleep.
I am aware that in active practice, there come, at times,
anxious and crowded days and nights ; but in my observa-
tion, those who fail to take care of their health, fail quite
as often through carelessness and the lack of methodical
habits, as through the stern necessities of duty.

It is marvelous how much self-discipline and care in
hygienic matters can do to strengthen delicate constitutions
and increase available working power. Among the friends

9

of my earlier years was the- late lamented President of the
Pennsylvania Farm School — a man of powerful frame and
robust health. During his studies in Germany, he wrote
home that himself and another American student, who, like
him, was making a choice collection of books, had made
an agreement that on the death of either, the survivor
should have the privilege of purchasing his library. But
the writer added, that this was an opportunity which he
believed his fellow-student would never have, as he was
exceedingly delicate and a great sufferer, " although he
takes more care of his health than any other man I ever
knew." When my friend died at the early age of thirty-
two, clearly and directly from the effect of exposures which
might have been avoided, this same delicate fellow-student
was a Professor in a New England College!

You will need recreation and social enjoyment ; but social
communion should not be permitted to become, what it often
is, a drain upon nervous power, a weariness instead of a
rest and joy. Those whose time is less fully and richly
occupied can scarcely appreciate the value of your hours for
reading and rest, and unless you guard these from encroach-
ment, you cannot be fresh and posted for your daily work.
You must keep up with the times. You cannot afford to
be unacquainted with the latest discoveries, and the most
approved methods of treatment. You will need to take
at least one or two good medical journals, to purchase new
medical books, and to find time to read them. This ac-
quaintance with the labors of others will not only often
give you invaluable hints for practice, but it will also pre-
vent loss of time, and wasteful experiments. I once knew
an ingenious but uneducated mechanic, who spent toiling
years over a machine for " perpetual motion," when a frac-

10

tion of that time, devoted to studying what was ah'eady
known, in some good manual on physics and mechanics,
might have saved all his fruitless labor.

You will need also thte influence of literature, and of other
general interests, not only because all departments of life
and thought send tributary streams to medicine, and farnish
practical suggestions to the physician, but for your own re-
freshment and enlargement; for that change of thought, that
lifting out of daily cares, so indispensable to the highest
health of the spirit, and the continued fullness and freshness
of life.

In your business tran'^actions, permit me to suggest the
importance of keeping clear records of your cases and visits,
and of making out bills at regular periods. "While you
would disdain to enter the profession of medicine merely as
a trade, you know at the same time, that pecuniary embar-
rassments must impair the efficiency of your work; and
careful business habits, if not strictly moral virtues, are at
least, among their legitimate guards. This care will enable
you to be generous in the right places. Some will seek
your counsel, worn with over-work, diseased because they
could not rest from their toils and command the comforts
essential to recovery. Ladies, you will, we are sure, as the
true friends of those who trust you, deal generously with
such as these. Striving to make your work a blessing to
humanity as well as to yourselves, you will minister to the
poor and needy, not with the conscious superiority that
would toss "a piece of gold in scorn," but in the sym-
pathizing spirit of Him who said : " Inasmuch as ye have
done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it
unto me."

I trust there is no occasion to warn you against the fault

11

of those who habitually make their patients and practice a
subject of conversation, and boast of their own superior
skill and success. This form of egotism, hateful in men,
would be certainly not less offensive in women. Persons
of fine culture do not publish their special callings in com-
mon conversation.

Nor will you, we trust, waste your strength and sacrifice
the repose and sweetness of life in personal dislikes and
controversies. The jealousies of physicians have often been
made the theme of vulgar comment, and those familiar with
medical literature can but feel humiliated by the personali-
ties which sometimes there intrude. Even in England,
where so many medical writers have evinced a wise and
large spirit, this offensive antagonism shows itself in cer-
tain medical journals ; and a medical friend, who visited
the hospitals in the metropolis of that kingdom, informs
us that the fact of a cordial reception at one hospital, and
attendance there, seemed to prevent the same full friend-
liness at the next.

Ladies, Ave hope other and more beautiful things from
you ; we trust' you will live on a plane far above petty jeal-
ousies and dislikes ; that you will be not only just, but also
magnanimous and courteous to all. It is no Utopian dream
that it is possible to live truthfully and generously in the
world. The cynic and worldling may sneer at the simplicity
that believes and trusts in humanity ; but the riglit-minded
and prudent who habitually appeal to the best in others,
find that best respond ; those who trust in the right, find the
right a sure defence. It has been well said, " One, on the
side of God, is a majority," and we have seen in some late
occurrences in which we have all been deeply interested,
that even the prestige of position, and the pride of learning.

12

brought to bear upon public feeling, may utterly fail of
their object when put forth in defence of a wrong position.

We have no fears in regard to your reception by society.
Others have gone before you, and up and down in the land
are pleasant homes, of which the graduates of this school
are the active and happy centres. These homes, in many
cases, are the result of their success in practice ; and those
who know most of the needs and cravings of women are
well aware that, after the first flush and dream of early
youth have passed, there is, to them, no outward necessity
so imperative as that of a restful liome.

The progress which our cause is making throughout the
world is truly marvelous. In free Switzerland, the Medical
University of Zurich has for years admitted women to all
its advantages ; the great University of cosmopolitan Paris
— I'Ecole de Medicine — has now dispensed to them its
fullest privileges, and highest honors ; the University of
Edinburgh has opened its doors, creaking with the rime of
ages, wide enough for their entrance ; the University of
Stockholm, in Sweden, we understand, is oft'ering them
facilities for medical education, and the Swedish Govern-
ment^ it is stated, is about to establish a medical college at
Gothenburg, for women exclusively. In Austria, the can-
didates for the degree of Doctor of Obstetrics consist both
of men and women ; while in our own country, not only the
great University of Michigan, but a number of smaller in-
stitutions also, have removed the barriers which forbade
them to enter.

One of our graduates of last year is now a medical mis-
sionary in India, sent out by the W Oman's Branch of the
Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
"With the angels' song — " On earth peace, goodwill to men'*

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resounding in her spirit, she bears with her that medical
knowledge, so prized in the East, which will open to her the
harems and homes that men physicians cannot enter. In
a recent report of the Philadelphia Branch of the Woman's
Union Missionary Society, are these words : " From all
heathenism comes the call, send us the educated doctress,
to teach our women how to take the medical care of women
and children." It further adds : " Heathen men of high
rank have offered to give funds to establish medical colleges
for their women, if we will send the educated American
ladies to teach."

The recent circumstances in this city which have called
forth such a surprising expression of public sentiment
through the general newspaper press of this country and of
Europe, have shown it to be the conviction of the civilized
world, that it is right and proper that women should study
and practice medicine, and that they should have the means
of education necessary to fit them to do so, eff'ectively.

Nor would it be just for you to estimate ^3ro/e6'sio^^a? sen-
timent by cases of individual illiberality. Great-hearted
men illustrate and adorn this noble calling, and your best
help and kindliest welcome will come from some of these.
Of the ladies who, last spring, went out from this college
to practice medicine, two, unsolicited by themselves, have
been elected members of the medical societies in their re-
spective localities. Knowing the culture and attainments
of these ladies, we congratulate those societies on having
honored themselves as well as their new members, by this
action. Still another of the class of last session, as assis-
tant physician in the Woman's department of the State
Lunatic Hospital at Worcester, Massachusetts, is associated,
professionally, with distinguished physicians. She accepted

14

this untried post of duty with hesitation and diffidence ; but
after six months of trial she has been officially informed
that her services are entirely satisfactory and desirable ; and
her salary, not less at first than the ordinary salary of a man
assistant, for the first year, has been already increased.

Ladies, there are some parts of medical work that men
doubtless can perform better than you — some that you can
perform better than they ; but society expects from you the
nicer sensibilities, the finer humanities that it ascribes to
woman. Its standard of moral virtue is higher for woman
than for man, and so it deems any disregard of it worse in
her than in him.

Medical literature and medical feeling, it is all too obvi-
ous, need the refining and ennobling influences that the
purity, and peculiar endowments of ths true woman are
calculated to give. You bring into the profession your
womanly tact and insight, your quick sympathies, your
watchful care, and your high ideal of the purity and deli-
cacy befitting the sacred office you have assumed. As
women, with the experiences of your womanhood, and
looking at the subject from a fresh standpoint, you cannot
fail to unfold new resources in the art of healing, and, if
you are true to yourselves, the gifts you bring must enrich
as well as refine the profession you enter.

Ladies, it is meet that you go forth to your labors, full
indeed of that humility which belongs to wisdom, but full
also of faith, hope, and glowing enthusiasm. And yet I
know full well that your joy to-day is softened and tinged
with something akin to sadness. You feel, indeed, the
beauty and greatness of your work, but mingled with this
is self-distrust, a sense of responsibility, the thought of an
untried future ! It is true, you must encounter trials, but if

15

you avoid prejudices and keep your minds receptive and
nobly ingenuous, you shall learn something from every per-
son and circumstance about you, and be able to rejoice, day
by day, in the consciousness of ever widening knowledge
and continually increasing power for good.

You love the profession of your choice, and believe in its
power to bless society ; and, although true work is in itself
true success, irrespective of rewards, yet the faithful per-
formance of the duties of your calling will often bring re-
sults to surprise as well as gladden your hearts. Among
the experiences of my life, and they have been many and
varied, among the affections and kindnesses which often
have made me feel that " the lines are fallen unto me in
pleasant places," there have been few manifestations more
touching than the devoted gratitude of some who, when
languishing in weakness and suffering, have deemed them-
selves helped by such offices as I have been able to bestow ;
and, Ladies, among the enjoyments in store for you, next to
the infinite peace that comes from the consciousness of
duty performed, I could scarcely ask for you any sweeter
than such as these.

Go forth prudently, truthfully, trusting in the eternal
strength of the ever-living God, content "to labor and to
wait," willing to accept toil and privation as well as ease
and victory ; and fear not but that a true and glorious suc-
cess shall be yours — that this shall be to you the " Com-
mencement" of a renewed life of enlarged activity, in w^hich,
amid cares and responsibilities, you shall often be led beside
stiU waters, and lie down in green pastures.