WOMAN IN SCIENCE

ERRATA

" Woman in Science," by H. J. Mozans.

Page 166. Miss Charlotte Angas Scott is recorded, in
error, as " recently deceased." Miss Scott is still actively
engaged in her work as Professor of Mathematics' at
Bryn Mawr.

•

WOMAN IN SCIENCE

WOMAN
IN SCIENCE

WITH AN INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER

ON WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE

FOR THINGS OF THE MIND

BY

H. J. MOZANS, A.M., PH.D.

AUTHOB OF "DP THE OBINOCO AND DOWN THE MAGDALENA,
"ALONG THE ANDES AND DOWN THE AMAZON," ETC.

Que e piu bella in donna que savere?
DANTE, CONVITO.

NEW YORK AND LONDON

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

1913

COPYRIGHT, 1918, BT
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

Printed in the United States of America

TO

MES. CHAKLES M. SCHWAB

AS A SLIGHT TRIBUTE

TO HER CHARMING PERSONALITY

GOODNESS OF HEART AND NOBILITY OF SOUL

THIS VOLUME

IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED

WITH THE BEST WISHES OF

THE AUTHOR.

PREFACE

The following pages are the outcome of studies begun many
years ago in Greece and Italy. While wandering through the
famed and picturesque land of the Hellenes, rejoicing in the
countless beauties of the islands of the Ionian and JEgean seas
or scaling the heights of Helicon and Parnassus, all so redolent
of the storied past, I saw on every side tangible evidence of
that marvelous race of men and women whose matchless achieve-
ments have been the delight and inspiration of the world for
nearly three thousand years. But it was especially while con-
templating, from the portico of the Parthenon, the magnificent
vista which there meets the charmed vision, that I first fully
experienced the spell of the favored land of Hellas, so long the
home of beauty and of intellect. The scene before me was
indeed enchanting beyond expression; for, every ruin, every
marble column, every rock had its history, and evoked the most
precious memories of men of godlike thoughts and of

"A thousand glorious actions that may claim
Triumphal laurels and immortal fame."

It was a tranquil and balmy night in midsummer. The sun,
leaving a gorgeous afterglow, had about an hour before dis-
appeared behind the azure-veiled mountains of Ithaca, where,
in the long ago, lived and loved the hero and the heroine of the
incomparable Odyssey. The full moon, just rising above the
plain of Marathon, intensified the witchery of that memorable
spot consecrated by the valor of patriots battling victoriously
against the invading hordes of Asia. Hard by was the Areopa-
gus, where St. Paul preached to the "superstitious" Athenians
on "The Unknown God." Almost adjoining it was the Agora,
where Socrates was wont to hold converse with noble and simple
on the sublimest questions which can engage the human mind.
Not distant was the site of the celebrated "Painted Porch,"

vii

viii PREFACE

where Zeno developed his famous system of ethics. In another
quarter were the shady walks of the Lyceum, where Aristotle,
"the master of those who know," lectured before an admiring
concourse of students from all parts of Hellas. Farther afield,
on the banks of the Cephissus, was the grove of Academus,
where the divine Plato expounded that admirable idealism
which, with Aristotelianism, has controlled the progress of spec-
ulative thought for more than twenty centuries, and enunciated
those admirable doctrines which have become the common her-
itage of humanity.

But where, in this venerable city — "the eye of Greece, mother
of arts and eloquence" — was the abode of Aspasia, the wife of
Pericles and the inspirer of the noblest minds of the Golden Age
of Grecian civilization? Where was that salon, renowned these
four and twenty centuries as the most brilliant court of culture
the world has ever known, wherein this gifted and accomplished
daughter of Miletus gathered about her the most learned men
and women of her time? Whatever the location, there it was
that the wit and talent of Attica found a congenial trysting-
place, and human genius burst into fairest blossom. There it
was that poets, sculptors, painters, orators, philosophers, states-
men were all equally at home. There Socrates discoursed on
philosophy; there Euripides and Sophocles read their plays;
there Anaxagoras dilated upon the nature and constitution of
the universe; there Phidias, the greatest sculptor of all time,
and Ictinus and Calibrates unfolded their plans for that supreme
creation of architecture, the temple of Athena Parthenos on the
Acropolis. Like Michaelangelo, long centuries afterwards,
who "saw with the eyes and acted by the inspiration" of Vit-
toria Colonna, these masters of Greek architecture and sculpture
saw with the eyes and acted by the sublime promptings of
Aspasia, who was the greatest patron and inspirer of men of
genius the world has ever known.

I felt then, as I feel now, that this superb monument to the
virgin goddess of wisdom and art and science was in great
measure a monument to the one who by her quick intelligence,
her profound knowledge, her inspiration, her patronage, her
influence, had so much to do with its erection — the wise, the
cultured, the richly dowered Aspasia.

PREFACE ix

This thought it was that started the train of reflections on the
intellectual achievements of women which eventually gave rise
to the idea of writing a book on woman's work in things of the
mind.

The following day, as I was entering the University of Athens,
I noticed above the stately portal a large and beautiful paint-
ing which, on inspection, proved, to my great delight, to be
nothing less than a pictorial representation of my musings the
night before on the portico of the Parthenon. For there was
Aspasia, just as I had fancied her in her salon, seated beside
Pericles, and surrounded by the greatest and the wisest men of
Greece. "This," I exclaimed, "shall be the frontispiece of my
book; it will tell more than many pages of text." Nor did I
rest till I had procured a copy of this excellent work of art.

Shortly after my journey through Greece I visited the chief
cities and towns of Italy. I traversed the whole of Magna
Grsecia and, to enjoy the local color of things Grecian and
breathe, as far as might be, the atmosphere which once en-
veloped the world's greatest thinkers, I stood on the spot in
Syracuse where Plato discoursed on the true, the beautiful and
the good, before enthusiastic audiences of men and women, and
wandered through the land inhabited by the ancient Bruttii,
where Pythagoras has his famous school of science and philos-
ophy— a school which was continued after the founder's death
by his celebrated wife, Theano. For in Crotona, as well as in
Athens, and in Alexandria in the time of Hypatia, women were
teachers as well as scholars, and attained to marked distinction
in every branch of intellectual activity.

As I visited, one after the other, what were once the great
centers of learning and culture in Magna Gra3cia, the idea of
writing the book aforementioned appealed to me more strongly
from day to day, but it did not assume definite form until after
I had tarried for some weeks or months in each of the great
university towns of Italy. And as I wended my way through
the almost deserted streets of Salerno, which was for centuries
one of the noblest seats of learning in Christendom, and recalled
the achievements of its gifted daughters — those wonderful
mulieres Salernitance, whose praises were once sounded through-
out Europe, but whose names have been almost forgotten — I

x PREFACE

began to realize, as never before, that women of intellectual
eminence have received too little credit for their contributions
to the progress of knowledge, and should have a sympathetic
historian of what they have achieved in the domain of learning.

But it was not until after I had visited the great university
towns of Bologna, Padua and Pavia, had become more familiar
with their fascinating histories and traditions, and surveyed
there the scenes of the great scholastic triumphs of women as
students and professors, that I fully realized the importance, if
not the necessity, of such a work as I had in contemplation.
For then, as when standing in silent meditation on the pronaos
of the Parthenon, the past seemed to become present, and the
graceful figures of those illustrious daughters of Italia la Bella,
who have conferred such honor on both their country and on
womankind throughout the world, seemed to flit before me as
they returned to and from their lecture halls and laboratories,
where their discourses, in flowing Latin periods, had commanded
the admiration and the applause of students from every Euro-
pean country, from the Rock of Cashel to the Athenian
Acropolis.

Only then did the magnitude and the difficulty of my self-
imposed task begin to dawn upon me. I saw that it would be
impossible, if I were to do justice to the subject, to compass in
a single volume anything like an adequate account of the contri-
butions of women to the advancement of general knowledge. I
accordingly resolved to restrict my theme and confine myself to
an attempt to show what an important role women have played
in the development of those branches of knowledge in which
they are usually thought to have had but little part.

The subject of my book thus, by a process of elimination,
narrowed its scope to woman's achievements in science. Many
works in various languages had been written on what women
had accomplished in art, literature, and statecraft, and there
was, therefore, no special call for a new volume on any of these
topics. But, with the exception of a few brief monographs in
German, French and Italian, and an occasional magazine
article here and there, practically nothing had been written
about woman in science. The time, then, seemed opportune for
entering upon a field that had thus far been almost completely

PREFACE xi

neglected; and, although I soon discovered that the labor in-
volved would be far greater than I had anticipated, I never lost
sight of the work which had its virtual inception in the peerless
sanctuary of Pallas Athena in the "City of the Violet Crown."

Duties and occupations innumerable have retarded the prog-
ress of the work. But not the least cause of delay has been the
difficulty of locating the material essential to the production of
a volume that would do even partial justice to the numerous
topics requiring treatment. My experience, parva componere
magnis, was not unlike that of Dr. Johnson, who tells us in the
preface to his Dictionary of the English Language, "I saw that
one inquiry only gave occasion to another, that book referred to
book, that to search was not always to find, and that thus to
pursue perfection was, like the first inhabitants of Arcadia, to
chase the sun, which, when they reached the hill where he
seemed to rest, was still beheld at the same distance from them."

Although I have endeavored to give a place in this work to
all women who have achieved special distinction in science, it is
not unlikely that I may have inadvertently overlooked some,
particularly among those of recent years, who were deserving of
mention. Should this be the case, I shall be grateful for in-
formation which will enable me to correct such oversights and
render the volume, should there be a demand for more than one
edition, more complete and serviceable. And, although I have
striven to be as accurate as possible in all my statements, I can
scarcely hope, in traversing so broad a field, to have been wholly
successful. For all shortcomings, whether through omission or
commission,

"Quas aut incuria fudit,
Aut humana parum cavit natura,"

I crave the reader's indulgence, and trust that the present vol-
ume will have at least the merit of stimulating some ambitious
young Whewell to explore more thoroughly the interesting field
that I have but partially reconnoitred, and give us ere long an
adequate and comprehensive history of the achievements of
woman, not only in the inductive but in all the sciences.

CONTENTS

CHAPTEB PAQB

I. WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE FOB THINGS OF THE MIND 1

II. WOMAN'S CAPACITY FOR SCIENTIFIC PURSUITS . . 106

III. WOMEN IN MATHEMATICS 136

IV. WOMEN IN ASTRONOMY 167

V. WOMEN IN PHYSICS 197

VI. WOMEN IN CHEMISTRY . . . . . 214

VII. WOMEN IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES .... 233

VIII. WOMEN IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY .... 266

IX. WOMEN IN ARCHAEOLOGY 309

X. WOMEN AS INVENTORS 334

XI. WOMEN AS INSPIRERS AND COLLABORATORS IN

SCIENCE 356

XII. THE FUTURE OF WOMEN IN SCIENCE: SUMMARY

AND EPILOGUE . 390

BIBLIOGRAPHY 419

INDEX .... 427

Le donne son venute in excellenza
Di ciascun'arte, ove hanno post a cur a;
E qualunque all'istorie abbia avvertenza,
Ne sente ancor la fama non oscura.

What art so deep, what science so high,
But worthy women have thereto attained f
Who Ust in stories old to look may try,
And find my\ speech herein not false nor fain'd.

ARIOSTO, ORLANDO FURIOSO,
CANTO XX, STROPHE 2.

Ad omnem igitur doctrinam muliebres

animos natura comparavit.

MARIA GAETANA A«NESI.

WOMAN IN SCIENCE

CHAPTER I

WOMAN'S LONG STEUGGLE FOB THINGS OF THE MIND
WOMAN AND EDUCATION IN ANCIENT GREECE

I purpose to review the progress and achievements of
woman in science from her earliest efforts in ancient Greece
down to the present time. I shall relate how, in every de-
partment of natural knowledge, when not inhibited by her
environment, she has been the colleague and the emulatress,
if not the peer, of the most illustrious men who have con-
tributed to the increase and diffusion of human learning.
But a proper understanding of this subject seems to re-
quire some preliminary survey of the many and diverse
obstacles which, in every age of the world's history, have
opposed woman's advancement in general knowledge.
Without such preliminary survey it is impossible to realize
the intensity of her age-long struggle for freedom and
justice in things of the mind or fully to appreciate the
comparative liberty and advantages she now enjoys in al-
most every department of intellectual activity. Neither
could one understand why woman 's achievements in science,
compared with those of men, have been so few and of so
small import, especially in times past, or why it is that,
as a student of nature or as an investigator in the various
realms of pure and applied science, we hear so little of
her before the second half of the nineteenth century.

To exhibit the nature of the difficulties woman has had
to contend with in every age and in every land, in order

1

2 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

to secure what we now consider her inalienable rights to
things of the mind, it is not necessary to review the history
of female education, or to enter into the details of her
gradual progress forward and upward in the New and
Old Worlds. But it is necessary that we should know
what was the attitude of mankind toward woman's educa-
tion during the leading epochs of the world's history and
what were, until almost our own day, the opinions of men —
scholars and rulers included — respecting the nature and
the duties of woman and what was considered, almost by
all, her proper sphere of action. Understanding the nu-
merous and cruel handicaps which she had so long to en-
dure, the opposition to her aspirations which she had to
encounter, even during the most enlightened periods of the
world's history, and that, too, from those who should have
been the first to extend to her a helping hand, we can the
better appreciate the extent of her recent intellectual en-
franchisement and of the value of the work she has accom-
plished since she has been free to exercise those God-given
faculties which were so long held in restraint.

The first great bar to the mental development of woman
was the assumed superiority of the male sex, the opinion,
so generally accepted, that, in the scheme of creation,
woman was but "an accident, an imperfection, an error of
nature"; that she was either a slave conducing to man's
comfort, or, at best, a companion ministering to his amuse-
ment and pleasure.

From the earliest times she was regarded as man's in-
ferior and relegated to a subordinate position in society.
She was, so it was averred, but a diminutive man — a kind
of mean between the lord of creation and the rest of the
animal kingdom. By some she was considered a kind of
half man; by others, as was cynically asserted, she was
looked upon as a mas occasionatus — a man marred in the
making. She was, both mentally and physically, what
Spencer would call a man whose evolution had been ar-

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 3

rested, while man, as in the modern language of Darwin,
was a woman, whose evolution had been completed.

When such views prevailed, it was inevitable that, so
long as physical force was the force majeure, a woman
should be relegated to the position of a slave or to that of
' ' a mere glorified toy. ' ' Every man then said, in effect, if
not in words, of the woman who happened to be in his
power what Petruchio said of Katherine: —

"I will be master of what is mine own,
She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house,
My household stuff, my field, my barn,
My horse, my ox, my ass, my everything."

Even after civilization had superseded savagery and bar-
barism, it was still inevitable, so long as such views found
acceptance, that woman should continue to be held in vas-
salage and ignorance and to suffer all the disabilities and
privations of "the lesser man." She was studiously ex-
cluded from civic and social functions and compelled to
pass her life in the restricted quarters of the harem or
gyneceum. This was the case among the Athenians, as
well as among other peoples ; for, during the most brilliant
period of their history, women, when not slaves or hetaerae,
were considered simply child-bearers or housekeepers.1 A
girl's education, when she received any at all, was limited
to reading, writing and music, and for a knowledge of these
subjects she was dependent on her mother. From her
earliest years the Athenian maiden was made to realize
that the great fountains of knowledge, which were always
i Demosthenes In Necercm, 122. Tds fdv y&p era/pas ijdovijs tveS

ToO 7rai5o7roiet(T0cu yvi]<rl<as Kal rCtv evdov

As indicative of the comparative value of men and women, as
members of society, in the estimation of the Greeks, Euripides makes
Iphigenia give utterance to the following sentiment:
' ' More than a thousand women is one man
Worthy to see the light of life."

4 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

available for her brothers, were closed to her. Her duty
was to become proficient in the use of the needle and the
distaff, and, later on, to learn how to embroider, to ply
the loom and make garments for herself and for the other
members of her family.

Until she was seven years old, she was brought up with
her brothers under the eye of her mother. During this
period of childhood she had a certain amount of freedom,
but, after her seventh year, she was kept in the gyneconitis
— women's quarters — " under the strictest restraint, in or-
der, " as Xenophon informs us in his (Economicus, "that
she might see as little, hear as little and ask as few ques-
tions as possible. " On rare occasions she was permitted
to be a spectator at a religious procession, or to take part
in certain of the choral dances that constituted so impor-
tant a part in the religious ceremonies of ancient Greece.
Whether in public or in private, silence was always con-
sidered an imperative duty for a woman.

But more than this. Not only was she expected to ob-
serve silence herself, but she was also expected so to con-
duct herself that no one would have occasion to speak
about her. Pericles, in a celebrated discourse, gave ex-
pression to the prevailing opinion regarding this phase of
female excellence when, on a notable occasion, he addressed
to a certain number of women the following words : ' ' Great
will be your glory in not falling short of your natural char-
acter ; and greatest will be hers who is least talked of among
men whether for good or for evil. ' ?1

From the foregoing observations it will be seen that the

1 Ti)t re 7&/>, {nrapxofovi* tyffetat fi^j x^P0^1 ytveffdai v^lv /j,eyd\rj rj 861-0.'
/ecu ^s Av eir' f\dxiffrov &p€TT)s irtpi ij \^byov 4v <lp<re<n K\tos 1j. gThucidides,
History of the Peloponnesian War, II, 45.

"Phidias," Plutarch tells us in his Conjugal Precepts, "made
the statue of Venus at Elis with one foot on the shell of a tortoise,
to signify two great duties of a virtuous woman, which are to keep
at home and be silent. For she is only to speak to her husband or by
her husband. "

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 5

general attitude of the Athenians toward woman was any-
thing but favorable to her intellectual development, or to
her exerting any influence beyond the limits of her own
household. And what is said of the Greeks can be affirmed,
with still greater emphasis, of the other nations of an-
tiquity. Indeed, it can be safely asserted that, had they
all entered into a solemn compact systematically to dis-
credit woman's mental capacity and to repress all her
noblest aspirations, they could not have succeeded more
effectually than by the methods they severally adopted. In
ancient Greece the condition of woman was little better
than it is in India to-day under the law of Manu, where
the husband, no matter how unworthy he may be, must be
regarded by the wife as a god.

And yet, notwithstanding the dominant force of public
opinion and the strange traditional prejudices that pos-
sessed for the majority of people all the semblance and
commanding power of truth, woman was here and there
able to break through the barriers that impeded her pro-
gress in her quest of knowledge and to defy the social con-
ventions that precluded her from being seen or heard in
the intellectual arena.

One of the first and most notable of Greek women to
assert her independence and to emerge from the intellec-
tual eclipse which had so long kept her sex in obscurity,
was the Lesbian Sappho, who, as a lyric poet, stands, even
to-day, without a superior. So great was her renown
among the ancients that she was called "The Poetess," as
Homer was called "The Poet." Solon, on hearing one of
her songs sung at a banquet, begged the singer to teach it
to him at once that he might learn it and die. Aristotle did
not hesitate to endorse a judgment that ranked her with
Homer and Archilochus, while Plato, in his Phsedrus, exalts
her still higher by proclaiming her "the tenth Muse."
Horace and Ovid and Catullus strove to reproduce her pas-
sionate strains and rhythmic beauty ; but their efforts were

6 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

little better than paraphrase and feeble imitation. Her
features were stamped on coins, " though she was but a
woman," and, after her death, altars were raised and
temples erected in honor of this "flower of the Graces, " of

"That mighty songstress, whose unrivaled powers
Weave for the Muse a crown of deathless flowers."

Second only to the "violet-crowned, pure, sweetly-
smiling Sappho," as her rival, Alcaeus, calls her, were
Gorgo, Andromeda and Corinna. The last of these was
the teacher of Pindar, the celebrated lyric poet, whom she
defeated five times in poetic contests in Thebes.1 She was
one of the nine lyrical muses, corresponding to "the celes-
tial nine," who dwelt on the sacred slopes of Helicon.2
Telesilla and Praxilla were two others. The last named
was by her countrymen ranked with Anacreon.

Scarcely inferior to Corinna were those ardent pupils of
Sappho, who had flocked from the sunny isles of the JEgean

1 Ariosto, referring to the undying fame of Sappho and Corinna,
expresses himself in words as beautiful as they are true, as witness
the following couplet:

Saffo e Corinna, perche furon dotte,
Splendono illustri, e mai non veggon notte.

— ORLANDO FURIOSO, Canto XX, strophe I.

2 The nine ' ' Terrestrial Muses ' ' were Sappho, Erinna, Myrus,
Myrtis, Corinna, Telesilla, Praxilla, Nossis and Anyta.

The Greek poet Antipater embodies the names of the "Terres-
trial Nine" in an epigram which is well rendered in the appended
Latin translation:

Has divinis linguis Helicon nutrivit mulieres

Hymnis, et Macedon Pierias scopulus,
Prexillam, Myro, AnytsB os, f OBminam Homerum,

Lesbidum Sappho ornamentum capillatarum.
Erinnam, Telesillam nobilem, teque Corinna,

Strenuum Palladis scutum quae cecinit.
Nossidem muliebri lingua, et dulsisonam Myrtin,

Omnes immortalium operatrices librorum.
Novem quidem Musas magnum coalum, novem vero illas
Terra genuit hominibus, immortalem laetitiam.

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 7

and the laurel-crowned hills of Greece around "the fair-
haired Lesbian ' ' in her island home, which was, at the same
time, a school of poetry and music. The most gifted of
these were Danophila, the Pamphylian, and Erinna, whose
hexameters were said by the ancients to reveal a genius
equal to that of Homer. She died at the early age of nine-
teen and has always excited a pathetic interest because,
like so many others of her sex since her time — women and
maidens of the loftiest spiritual aspirations, — she was con-
demned to the spindle and the distaff when she wished to
devote her life to the service of the Muses. The following
is her own epitaph:

"These are Erinna's songs, how sweet, though slight!
For she was but a girl of nineteen years.
Yet stronger far than what most men can write;
Had death delayed, whose fame had equaled hers?"

Never before nor since did suck a wave of feminine
genius pass over the fragrant valleys and vine-clad plains
of Greece. Never in any other place or time shone so bril-
liant a galaxy of women of talent and imagination; never
was there a more perfect flowering of female intelligence
of the highest order. According to tradition, there ap-
peared in the favored land of Hellas, when the entire popu-
lation of the country was not equal to that of a fair-sized
modern city, within the brief space of a century, no fewer
than seventy-six women poets. When we remember that
the Eenaissance produced only about sixty female poets,
though in a more extended territory and with a much
larger population, and that none of them could approach
the incomparable Sappho, or even many of her pupils, in
the perfection of their work, we can realize the splendor
of the achievements of the female intellect in the Hellenic
world during the golden age of feminine poetic art.1

iCf. Poetriarum octo, Erinnce, Myrus, Mytidis, Corinncs, Telesil-
ICB, Praxillw, Nossidis, Anytce fragmenta et elogia, by J. C. Wolf,

8 JVOMAN IN SCIENCE

One would think that this phenomenal outburst of men-
tal vigor, and especially the marvelous achievements of
Sappho, Corinna and those of their pupils and followers,
would have compelled the world for all subsequent time to
recognize the innate power of the female mind, and per-
ceive the wisdom — not to say justice — of according to
women the same advantages for the development of their
inborn gifts as were afforded to men. They had proved
that, under favorable conditions, there was essentially no
difference between the male and the female intellect, and
that genius knows no sex. And this they demonstrated
not only in poetry, but also in philosophy and in other
branches of human knowledge as well.

Among those who had especially distinguished them-
selves were Hipparchia, the wife of the philosopher Crates ;
Themista, the wife of Leon and a correspondent of Epicu-
rus, who was pronounced "a sort of female Solon"; Peric-
tione, a disciple of Pythagoras, who distinguished herself
by her writings on Wisdom and The Harmony of Woman,
and Leontium, a disciple and companion of Epicurus, who
wrote a work against Theophrastus, which was pronounced
by Cicero a model of style.

And was not the school of Pythagoras at Crotona con-
tinued after his death by his daughter and his wife, The-
ano ? And did not this fact alone manifest woman 's capac-
ity for abstract thought, as effectively as the Lesbian school
had demonstrated her talent for consummate verse?1

But it was all to no purpose. The comparative freedom

Hamburg, 1734. See also the charming memoir " Sappho " by H. T.
Wharton, London, 1898, and Griechische Dicterinnen, by J. C. Poes-
tion, Vienna, 1876.

i See Mulierum Grcecarum qua oratione prosa uses sunt fragmenta
et elogia Greece et Latine, by J. C. Wolf, London, 1739, Historia
Mulierum, Philosopharum, scriptore ^Egidio Menagio, Lugduni, 1690,
Griechische Philosophinnen, by J. C. Poestion, Norden, 1885, and Le
Donne alle Scuole del Filosofi Greci in Saggi e Note Critiche, by A.
Chiappelli, Bologna, 1895.

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 9

and advantages which Sappho, Corinna and their friends
had enjoyed was soon — for some reason scarcely compre-
hensible by us — taken from all the women of Greece except
the peculiar class known in history as hetcerce — companions.
These we should now rank among the demimonde, but the
Greek point of view was different from ours. The hetaeras
were the friends and companions of the men who spent
most of their time in public resorts, and they accompanied
them to the gymnasium, to banquets, the games, to the
theater and other similar assemblies from which the wives
and daughters of the Athenians, during the golden age of
Greece, were rigorously excluded. For so great was the
seclusion in which the wives of the Greeks then lived that
they never attended public spectacles and never left the
house, unless accompanied by a female slave. They were
not permitted to see men except in the presence of their
husbands, nor could they have a seat even at their own
tables, if their husbands happened to have male guests.

It was by reason of this strict seclusion and the enforced
ignorance to which they were subjected that we hear very
little of the virtuous women of this period of Greek his-
tory. We have records of a few instances of filial and con-
jugal affection, but, outside of this, the names of the wives
and daughters of even the most distinguished citizens have
long since passed into oblivion. Only the hetaeras attracted
public notice, and only among them, during the period to
which reference is now made, do we find any women who
achieved distinction by their intellectual attainments, or
by the influence which they exerted over those with whom
they were associated.

But strange as it may appear, these extra-matrimonial
connections, far from incurring the censure which they
would now provoke, received the cordial recognition of
both legislators and moralists, and even those who were
considered the most virtuous among men openly entered

10 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

'into these relations without exposing themselves to the
slightest stigma or reproach. Many of the hetaerae, con-
trary to what is sometimes thought, were ' ' of highly moral
character, temperate, thoughtful and earnest, and were
either unattached or attached to one man, and to all in-
tents and purposes married. Even if they had two or three
attachments but behaved in other respects with temper-
ance and sobriety, such was the Greek feeling in regard
to their peculiar position that they did not bring down
upon themselves any censure from even the sternest of
the Greek moralists. ' n

The most famous men of Greece, married as well as un-
married, had their " companions, " many of whom were as
distinguished for their accomplishments as for their wit
and beauty. Thus Epicurus had Leontium, Menander
Glycera, Isocrates Metaneira, Aristotle Herpyllis, and
Plato Archlanassa, while Aristippus, the philosopher, Di-
ogenes, the cynic, and Demosthenes, the great orator, each
had a companion bearing the name of Lais.2 More than
this. So strongly had many of the hetaerae impressed them-
selves on the esthetic sense of the beauty-loving Greeks
that not a few of them had statues erected in their honor,
especially in Athens and Corinth, and thus shared in the
honor that hitherto had been reserved exclusively for the
goddess of beauty and love, fair Aphrodite.

The hetaarae from Ionia and JEtolia were particularly
conspicuous for their intelligence and culture. And all
of them, whencesoever they came, enjoyed unrestricted lib-
erty and, unlike the wives of the citizens of Athens, had
free access to the Portico and the Academy and the Ly-

1 Woman: Her Position and Influence in Ancient Greece and
Rome and Among the Early Christians, pp. 58 and 59, by James
Donaldson, London, 1907.

2 There were several hetserae named Lais. One of them, apparently
a native of Corinth, was celebrated throughout Greece as the most
beautiful woman of her age.

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE U

ceum, and were permitted to attend the lectures of the
philosophers on the same footing as the men. Thus, to
mention only a few, Thais was a pupil of Alciphron, Nicar-
ete of Stilpo, and Lasthenia of Plato.

And so keen were their intellects and so marked was
their progress in the most abstract studies, that many of
them were recognized as the most distinguished pupils of
their masters. This accounts, in part, for the popularity of
their salons, at which were gathered the most eminent
statesmen, poets, artists, philosophers and orators of the
day. The nearest approach in modern times to such tryst-
ing-places, where beauty, wit and talent found a congenial
atmosphere, were the celebrated salons of Ninon de Len-
clos, Mile, de I'Espinasse and Mme. du Deffand. At these
reunions were discussed, not only the news of the day,
but also, and especially, art, science, literature and politics,
and always to the advantage of both guests and hostesses.

Possessing such freedom and enjoying such splendid op-
portunities for culture and intellectual advancement, it is
not surprising that the hetaeraa played so remarkable a role
in the social and civic life of Greece, and that they were
able to wield such influence over their associates, and that
they often attained even the highest royal honors. Nor
is it surprising to read in Plato's Symposium the splendid
tribute which Socrates renders to Diotima of Mantinea,
when, in discussing the true nature of divine and eternal
beauty, he speaks of her as his teacher.

Many of the hetaeraa were not only the models but also
the inspirers of the most famous painters and sculptors of
antiquity. Thus, Lais was the companion and inspirer of
Apelles, the most noted painter of Greece, while Phryne,
said to have been the most beautiful woman who ever lived,
was the inspirer of the peerless Praxitiles, who, in repro-
ducing her form, succeeded in bequeathing to the world
what was undoubtedly the most lovely representation of

12 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

"the human form divine " that ever came from a sculp^
tor's chisel.1

On account of the relations of the hetaerge, especially
those of the fourth and fifth centuries B.C., with the great-
est men of their time, the writers of antiquity thought
them of sufficient importance to preserve their history.
One author has left us an account of no fewer than one
hundred and thirty-five of them. But, of all those whose
names have come down to us, by far the most noted, accom-
plished and influential was the famous Aspasia of Miletus.
In many respects she was the most remarkable woman
Greece ever produced. Of rare talent and culture, of
extraordinary tact and finesse, of a fascinating personality
combined with the grace and sensibility of her sex, together
with a masculine power of intellect, "this gracious Ionian, "
as has well been said, * ' stands with Sappho on the pinnacle
of Hellenic culture, each in her own field the highest femi-
nine representative of an esthetic race."

At an early age she won the passionate love of the great
statesman Pericles, after which she entered upon that mar-
velous career which secured for her a place in the front
rank of the most eminent women of all time. "Her house
became the resort of all the great men of Athens. Soc-
rates was often there. Phidias and Anaxagoras were inti-
mate acquaintances, and probably Sophocles and Euripi-
des were in constant attendance. Indeed, never had any
woman such a salon in the whole history of man. The
greatest sculptor that ever lived, the grandest man of all
antiquity, philosophers and poets, sculptors and painters,
statesmen and historians, met each other and discussed
congenial subjects in her rooms. And probably hence has

i For information respecting the hetaerse the reader is referred to
the Letters of Alciphron, to Lucian's Dialogues on courtesans, and
more particularly to the Deipnosophists of Athenseus, Chap. XIII.
See also The Lives and Opinions of the Ancient Philosophers, by
Diogenes Laertius, Bohn Edition, London.

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 13

arisen the tradition that she was the teacher of Socrates
in philosophy and politics, and Pericles in rhetoric. Her
influence was such as to stimulate men to their best, and
they attributed to her all that was best in themselves.
Aspasia seems especially to have thought earnestly on the
duties and destiny of women. The cultivated men who
thronged her assemblies had no hesitation in breaking
through the conventionalities of Athenian society, and
brought their wives to the parties of Aspasia ; and she dis-
cussed with them the duties of wives. She thought they
should be something more than mere mothers and house-
wives. She urged them to cultivate their minds, and be in
all respects fit companions for their husbands/'1

She is said to have written some of the best speeches of
Pericles — among them his noted funeral oration over those
who had died in battle before the walls of Potidaea. As to
Socrates, he himself explicitly refers to her, in the Memo-
rabilia, as his teacher. She is a notable character in the
Socratic dialogues and appears several times in those of
JEschines, while there is every reason to believe that she
strongly influenced the views of Plato, as expressed by him
in the Republic respecting the equality of woman with man.
She was continually consulted regarding affairs of state,
i Donaldson, op. cit., pp. 61 and 62.

Adolph Schmidt, one of the late biographers of Aspasia, accepts
these statements as true and credits to Aspasia the making of both
Pericles and Socrates. His views are also shared by other modern
writers who have made a special study of the subject.

According to some writers an indirect allusion to Aspasia 's in-
tellectual superiority is found in the Medea of Euripedes in the fol-
lowing verses of the women's chorus:

"In subtle questions I full many a time
Have heretofore engaged, and this great point
Debated, whether woman should extend
Her search into abstruse and hidden truths.
But we too have a Muse, who with our sex
Associates to expound the mystic lore
Of wisdom, though she dwell not with us all."

14. WOMAN IN SCIENCE

and her influence in social and political matters was pro-
found and far-reaching. This is evidenced by the abuse
heaped upon her by the comic dramatists of the time. Re-
ferring to the ascendancy which she had over Pericles, she
was called Dejanira, the wife of Hercules; Hera, the queen
of the gods and wife of the Olympian Jove. It was as-
serted by her enemies that the Samian war had been
brought about at her instigation and that the Peloponne-
sian war had been undertaken to avenge an insult which
had been offered her. These and similar statements which,
when not absurd, were greatly exaggerated, show the
boundless influence she wielded over Pericles, and what an
important part she took in the government of Greece in
the zenith of its glory.

But, however great her influence, we are warranted in
asserting that it was never exercised in an illegitimate
manner. She was ever, as history informs us, the good,
the wise, the learned, the eloquent Aspasia. It was her
goodness, her wisdom, her rare and varied accomplish-
ments, her clear insight and noble purposes that gave her
the wonderful power she possessed and which enabled her,
probably more than any one person, to make the age of
Pericles not only the most brilliant age of Greek history,
but also the most brilliant age of all time.1

1 It is proper to add that certain modern writers will not admit
that Aspasia was ever an hetsera in the sense of being a courtesan.
After Pericles had divorced his first wife, he lived with Aspasia as his
second wife, to whom he was devoted and faithful until death. Ac-
cording to Greek law, which forbade Athenian citizens to marry for-
eign women, he could not be her legal husband; but, there can be no
doubt that he always treated her with all the respect and affection
due to a wife. His dying words: "Athens entrusted her greatness
and Aspasia her happiness to me," clearly evince her nobility of
character and the place she must ever have occupied in the great
statesman 's heart.

The most important notices in ancient writings, respecting Aspasia,
are found in Plutarch's Pericles, Xenophon's Memorabilia of Socra-

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 15

But, notwithstanding the beneficent influence which
Aspasia ever exerted on those about her, notwithstanding
the heroic efforts she had made to liberate her own sex
from the restrictions that had so long harassed and de-
graded it, the wives and daughters of the citizens of
Athens were still kept in almost absolute seclusion and
denied the opportunities of mental culture which were so
generously accorded the free-born hetaerae from Asia Minor
and the islands of the Mgean. Socrates, as we learn from
Xenophon, asserted woman's equality with man, while
Plato taught that mentally there was no essential differ-
ence between man and woman. He concluded, accordingly,
that women of talent should have the same educational ad-
vantages as men. In The Republic as well as in the Laws,
when he refers to education — which he would make com-
pulsory for l ' all and sundry, as far as possible ' ' — his views
are far in advance of those which have been entertained
until the last half century. He would have girls as well
as boys thoroughly instructed in music and gymnastic —
"music for the mind and gymnastic for the body."1

In the Laws he contends that "women ought to share,
as far as possible, in education and in other ways with men.
For consider : — if women do not share in their whole life
with men, then they must have some other order of life."

Again he asserts "Nothing can be more absurd than
the practice which prevails in our own country of men and
women not following the same pursuits with all their

tes and Plato's Menexenus. Among the most valuable of modern
works on the same subject is Aspasie de Milet, by L. Becq de
Fouquieres, Paris, 1872. Cf. also Aspasie et le Siecle de Pericles,
Paris, 1862; Histoire des Deux Aspasies, by Le Comte de Bievre,
Paris, 1736, and A. Schmidt's Sur I' Age de Pericles, 1877-79.

1 Under the term music, Plato, like his contemporaries, included
reading, writing, literature, mathematics, astronomy and harmony.
It was opposed to gymnastic as mental to bodily training. Both music
and gymnastic, however, were intended for the benefit of the soul.

16 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

strength and with one mind, for thus the state, instead of
being a whole, is reduced to a half. ' ' *

In The Republic he expresses the same idea when he
affirms that "the gifts of nature are alike diffused in
both" — men and women — "all the pursuits of men are
the pursuits of women. ' ' 2

These opinions of Socrates and Plato are so at variance
with those of their contemporaries, and so contrary to the
custom that then obtained of excluding all but free-born
hetserae from the advantages of education and culture, that
we cannot but think that they were due to the profound
influence which had been exercised directly or indirectly
by Aspasia on both of these great philosophers. Be this as
it may, neither the efforts of Aspasia nor the teachings of
Socrates and Plato were able to remove the bars to intel-
lectual development from which the women of Greece had
so long suffered. A change in customs and laws concern-
ing the rigid, oriental seclusion of women did not come
until much later, and then it was under a new regime —
that of the Caesars — while complete equality of men and
women in school and college was not recognized until long
centuries afterward.

It is interesting to speculate regarding what Greece
would have become had she developed her women as she
developed her men. Never in the history of the world were
there in any one city so many eminent men — poets, orators,
statesmen, painters, sculptors, architects, philosophers — as
in Athens, and yet not a single native-born Athenian
woman ever attained the least distinction in any depart-
ment of art or science or literature. We cannot conceive
for a moment that Greece's fertility in great men and
barrenness in great women was due to the fact that the
mothers of such illustrious men were ordinary housewives

1 The Dialogues of Plato, Laws, VII, 805, Jowett 's translation,
New York, 1892.

2 Op. cit., The Eepublic, V, 451 et seq. and 466.

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE It

and entirely devoid of the talent and genius which gave
immortality to their distinguished sons. The careers of
Aspasia and the achievements of Sappho, Corinna, Myr-
tides, Erinna, Praxilla, Telesilla, Myrus, Anytse and Nos-
sidis, Theano and her daughter, to mention no others,
absolutely preclude such an assumption.

The women in Greece, there can be no doubt about it,
were as richly endowed by nature as were the men, and
only lacked the opportunities that men enjoyed to achieve,
in every sphere of intellectual activity, a corresponding
measure of success. They were extraordinary types, these
women of ancient Greece; for among them we find the
dignified Roman matron, the chatelaine of the Middle Ages,
the brilliant woman of the Renaissance and the cultured
mistress of the French salon. But all their talent, power
and genius counted for naught.

Had the civilization of Greece been a woman's civiliza-
tion, as well as a man's civilization, had there been a fed-
eration of all the Greek states, as Aspasia seems to have
striven for, instead of a number of small and independent
city-states ; had the women of Hellas been allowed the same
liberty of action in intellectual work as was granted to
the Italian women during and after the revival of letters,
and had they been encouraged to develop all their latent
powers that were so systematically suppressed, and to work
in unison with the men for the welfare and advancement
of a united nation, it is difficult to imagine what a daz-
zling intellectual zenith a supremely gifted people, "full
summ'd in all their powers," would have attained. Their
capacity for work and for achieving great things would
have been doubled and their power as a political organiza-
tion would have been practically irresistible.

"We are the only women that bring forth men," said
Gorgo, the wife of Leonidas. The Spartan mothers, who
had more of liberty than their Athenian sisters, did, indeed,
bring forth warriors of undying renown; but it was the

18 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

mothers of Athens who, notwithstanding all their grievous
disabilities, gave to the world all the greatest masters in
art, literature, and philosophy — the men who through the
ages have been the leaders and the teachers of humanity,
and who seem destined to hold their exalted position until
the end of time.

The failure of the men of Greece to avail themselves of
the immense potential power, which they always kept latent
in their women, was the occasion of a terrible nemesis in
the end. For this failure, coupled with the frightful
license introduced by a class of educated women, like the
hetaerae, without legal status or domestic ties, and the wave
of corruption that subsequently followed the advent of the
countless dissolute women who flocked to the Hellenic cities
from every part of the East, paved the way for the na-
tion's downfall and for its ultimate conquest by the resist-
less Roman legions that swept the once glorious but ill-
fated country of Pericles and Aspasia.

WOMAN AND EDUCATION IN ANCIENT ROME

The condition of women in Rome, especially from 150
B.C. to 150 A.D., was quite different from what it was in
Athens, even during her palmiest days. Owing to the lack
of authentic documents we know but little of the history
of the Roman people during the first five hundred years
of their existence, but we do know that during this period
many and important changes were effected regarding the
social and civil status of women.

In the first place the Roman matron had much more
freedom than was accorded the Greek wife during the age
of Pericles. Far from 'being kept in oriental seclusion,
like her Athenian sister, she was at liberty to receive and
dine with the friends of her husband, and to appear in
public whenever she desired. She went to the theater and
the Forum; she took part in all reputable entertainment,
whether public or private. Besides this, she had more

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 19

and greater legal rights than Greek women had ever
known, and was treated rather as the peer and companion
of man than as his toy or his slave.

Besides this, foreign women were never so conspicu-
ous in Rome as in Athens. Even after Greece had become
a Roman province, and after Grcecia capta Romam cepit —
when Greek ideas and Greek customs were introduced into
the capital of the Roman world — it was still the Roman
matron that was supreme. And, although many Greek
women, some of them of rare beauty and culture, found
their way to Rome, especially under the empire, they were
always kept in the background and never succeeded in
achieving anything approaching the ascendancy which
distinguished them during the time of Aspasia. Their
influence in literature and politics was almost nil.

In the case of the women of Rome, on the contrary, it
may well be questioned whether woman has ever wielded a
greater influence than she did during the three centuries
that followed the reign of Augustus. But she did not at-
tain to this position of preeminence without a long and
bitter struggle. Every advance toward the goal of social
and intellectual equality was strenuously contested by the
men, who wished to limit the activities of their wives to
the spindle, the distaff and the loom and the other occupa-
tions of the household. For, as in Greece, the generally
accepted view was that woman, in the language of Gib-
bon, "was created to please and obey. She was never sup-
posed to have reached the age of reason or experience. "
And her noblest epitaph, it was averred, was couched in
the following words:

"She was gentle, pious, loved her husband, was
skillful at the loom and a good housekeeper."1

lit was the boast of the Emperor Augustus that all his clothes
were woven by his wife, sister or daughter. Suetonius, in his Lives
of the Twelve Ccesars, informs us that this great master of the world
filiam et neptes ita instituit ut etiam lanificio assuefaceret.

20 ^VOMAN IN SCIENCE

As to her mental work, far from, being considered on its
own merits or as a factor in the world's growth, it was
flouted as

"Mere woman's work

Expressing the comparative respect

Which means the absolute scorn."

As early as 450 B.C., when the laws of the Twelve Tables
were promulgated, the girls of Borne received instruction
in reading, writing and arithmetic. "Up before dawn,
with a lamp to light the way, and an attendant to carry
her satchel, the little Roman maiden of seven years, or
over, would trudge off to the portico where the school-
master wielded his rod.1 For some years this life con-
tinued, with but few holidays, and those far between,
until she attained some proficiency in the rudiments. Then,
most probably, her education in the scholastic sense came
to an end. Her brothers and boy schoolmates, if their
parents wished it, could proceed from the primary school
to the secondary, where geography, history and ethics were
taught; where the art of elocution was assiduously prac-
ticed and the works of the great Greek and Roman poets

iThis type of the old Eoman schoolmaster is alluded to in the
following well known verses of Martial:

"Quid tibi nobiscum est, ludi scelerate magister,

Invisum pueris virginibusque caput?
Nondum cristati rupere silentia Galli

Murmure jam saevo verberibusque tonas."

—Lib. IX, 79.
which have been rendered as follows:

Despiteful pedant, why dost me pursue,
Thou head detested by the younger crew!
Before the cock proclaims the day is near
Thy direful threats and lashes stun my ear.

Martial elsewhere refers to "Ferulaeque tristes, sceptra pedago-
gorum" — melancholy rods, sceptres of pedagogues — and it appears
from one of Juvenal's satires that "to withdraw the hand from the
rod" was a phrase meaning "to leave school."

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 21

were carefully read and expounded; but it was enough
for the girl to have learned how to read, write and cipher ;
she had then to learn her domestic duties. ' ' *

With the extension of the empire and the consequent
enormous increase in wealth and the rapid progress in
social and intellectual freedom, there was a notable change
in the character of the education given to women, at least
to those of the wealthier and patrician families. This was,
in great measure, due to the wave of Hellenism which,
shortly after the conquest of Greece, broke upon the
Roman capital with such irresistible force. To the large
and rapidly increasing number of women of keen intellect
and lofty aspirations, whose minds had hitherto been con-
fined to the comparatively barren field of Roman letters,
the splendid creations of Greek genius came as a revela-
tion. To become thoroughly versed in Greek poetry and
proficient in the teachings of Greek philosophy was the
ambition of scores of Roman women, who soon became
noted for the extent and variety of their attainments, as
well as for their rare culture and charming personality.

Among the pioneers of the intellectual movement in

i Woman Through the Ages, Vol. I, pp. 110, 111, by Emil Eeich
London, 1908.

Schoolhouses among the Eomans, as well as among the Greeks,
were quite different from our modern, well-equipped buildings. Usu-
ally, at least, in earlier times, instruction was given in the open air,
in some quiet street corner or in tabernce — sheds or lean-tos — as in
certain Mohametan countries to-day. Horace refers to this in Epis-
tola XX, Lib. I, when he writes:

"Ut pueros elementa docentem
Occupet extremis in vicis balba senectus." «

In such schools the pupils sat on the floor or the bare ground, '
or, if the lessons were given on the street, they sat on the stones.
There were no desks, or, if there were any benches, they had no
backs. The pupils were, therefore, perforce obliged to write on
their knees.

Of. Historical Survey of Pre-Christian Education, pp. 278 and
346, by S. S. Laurie, London, 1900.

22 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

Rome, and one of the most beautiful types of the learned
women of her time, was the celebrated daughter of the
elder Scipio Africanus — Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi.
She is famous on account of her devotion to her two sons,
Tiberius and Caius. She was their teacher; and it
was her educated and refined mind that, more than any-
thing else, contributed to the formation of those splendid
characters for which they were so highly esteemed by their
countrymen. Plutarch informs us that these noble sons
of a noble mother "were brought up by her so carefully
that they became beyond dispute the most accomplished
of Roman youth; and, thus, they owed perhaps more to
their excellent upbringing than to their natural parts."1
One is not surprised to learn that this noble lady was
almost idolized by the Romans, and that they erected a
statue to her with the inscription, "Cornelia, Mother of
the Gracchi."

Scarcely less distinguished and accomplished was an-
other Cornelia, the wife of Pompey, the Great. "Besides
her youthful beauty, ' ' writes Plutarch, in his Life of Pom-
pey, "she possessed other charms, for she was well versed
in literature, in playing on the lyre, and in geometry, and
she had been used to listen to philosophical discourses with
profit. Besides this, she had a disposition free from all
affectation and display of pedantry — blemishes which such
acquirements usually breed in women. ' '

Then there was the cultured and devoted Aurelia, the
mother of Julius Cassar. It is safe to say that this emi-
nent man was as much indebted to his mother for his suc-
cess and greatness as were Tiberius and Caius Gracchus
to the benign influence and careful teachings of the gentle
and virtuous Cornelia. Highly educated and of com-
manding personalities, both these women, like many others

xCf. his Tiberius Gracchus. Cicero says of them, "Non tarn in
gremio educates quam sermone matris."
2 Ibidem, Life of Pompey.

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 23

of their time, contributed much to the making of Roman
history by the success they achieved in molding the char-
acters of some of the greatest men of their own or of
any age.

It is a splendid tribute that Cicero, in his Orator, pays
to Laelia when he tells of the purity of her language and
the charm of her conversation. "When I listen," he de-
clares, "to my mother-in-law, Laelia — for women preserve
the traditional purity of accent the best because, being
limited in their intercourse with the multitude, they retain
their early impressions — I could imagine that I hear Plau-
tus or Naevius speaking, the pronunciation is so plain and
simple, so perfectly free from all affectation and display;
from which I infer that such was the accent of her father
and his ancestors — not harsh like the pronunciation to
which I have just referred, not broad nor rustic nor rugged,
but terse, smooth and flowing."1

These are a few of the cultured and learned women who
shed glory on their country by the refining influence which
they exerted in the quiet and unostentatious precincts
of the family circle. But there were others who chose a
wider field for their activities, and who, by reason of
their unerring judgment, well-poised and highly culti-
vated minds, had so won the confidence of the nation's
greatest leaders that they were frequently consulted on
important affairs of state. Thus, Cicero tells us of an
interview which he had at Antium with Brutus and Cas-
sius. Besides the men, there were present on this occasion
three women, who took an active part in the discussion.
These were Servilia, the mother of Brutus, Porcia, the
wife of Brutus and the daughter of Cato, and Tertulla,
the wife of Cassius and sister of Brutus. The views of
the women were not without effect, and so confident was
Servilia of her power that she engaged to have a certain
clause in one of the decrees of the Senate expunged. This
*De Oratore, Lib. Ill, Cap. XII.

24 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

is but one of many similar instances which might be ad-
duced from the lives of the women of Rome who took an
active part in politics. As we learn from Tacitus, their
counsels and assistance were considered of peculiar value
by the Commonwealth. For, when some of the sterner old
moralists wished to exclude women from all participation
in public affairs, the Senate, after a heated debate, decided
by a large majority that the cooperation of women in ques-
tions of administration, far from being a menace, as some
contended, was so beneficial to the state that it should be
continued.

Among other noteworthy makers of Roman history, be-
sides those just mentioned, is Livia, the wife of Augustus
and the mother of Tiberius. So great was her influence and
so persistent was her activity in government affairs, that
it is sometimes asserted that she was the prime mover
of most of the public acts of both these rulers. This
woman, whom Ovid describes as having the features of
Venus and the manner of Juno, and who, he declares, "held
her head above all vices, " was credited with having the
benevolence of Ceres, the purity of Diana and the wisdom
and craft of Minerva — "a woman/' as was said by one
of her contemporaries, "in all things more comparable to
the gods than to men, who knew how to use her power so
as to turn away peril and advance the most deserving. * '

Then there was the gracious, the virtuous, the self-sac-
rificing Octavia, sister of the Emperor Augustus, "who was
so successful in composing grave differences between her
brother and her husband, and who so exerted her influence
for peace during the troublous times in which she lived
that she lives in history as a peacemaker. In marked con-
trast to this gentle and sympathetic woman was the ener-
getic and heroic Agrippina, the wife of Germanicus. In
many respects she was the most commanding personality of
her age, and exhibited in an eminent degree those sterling
qualities which we are wont to associate with the strong,

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 25

dignified, courageous women of ancient Rome, who gave
to the world so many and so great men in every sphere of
human endeavor. "She was,'7 as Tacitus informs us, "a
greater power in the army than legates and commanders,
and she, a woman, had quelled a mutiny which the em-
peror's authority could not check/'1 She was, indeed, as
has well heen said, "a woman to whom one might address
an epic but never a sonnet."

I have referred to these distinguished women because
they are embodiments of the best types of the noble, patri-
cian families who made the great Roman empire the ad-
miration of all time, and because they exhibit the won-
derful advance that had been made in the general status
of women since the days of Pericles and Aspasia. I have
referred to them, also, to show what women are capable of
achieving in the difficult and complicated affairs of public
life, when they are accorded the necessary freedom of
action and when they are properly equipped for work by
education and by association with men of learning and
experience. Comparing the secluded and illiterate Greek
wife with the free and highly accomplished Roman matron,
we find almost as much difference between the two as there
is between a child and a fully developed woman — all the
difference there was between the unsophisticated young
wife, not quite fifteen, of whom Xenophon gives us such a
charming picture,2 and the highly educated and compe-
tent mother of the Gracchi.

Of the Greek maiden we are told that, before her mar-
riage she "had been most carefully brought up to see and
hear as little as possible and to ask the fewest questions";
that her whole experience before her marriage "consisted
in knowing how to take the wool and make a dress, and in

i"Potiorem iam apud exercitus Agrippinam quam legates, quara
duces; compressam a muliere seditionem, cui nomen principis obsis-
tere non quiverit. " Annales, Lib. I, Cap. 69.

*(Economicus, VII, 5, 6.

26 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

seeing how her mother 's handmaidens had their daily spin-
ning tasks assigned to them." Cornelia, on the contrary,
was not only, as we have seen, highly accomplished, but
also one who, after her husband 's death, was quite pre-
pared, as Plutarch assures us, to undertake the manage-
ment of the extensive property which he left his family,
and who, we may well believe, would also have been quali-
fied, had the occasion demanded it, to perform with dis-
tinction the same duties that fell to the lot of the gifted
wives of Germanicus and Augustus.

Nothing in the history of Greek and Roman womanhood
more strikingly illustrates than the two instances given
the vast difference in the status of the wives of Greece
and Rome, or exhibits more clearly the advantages ac-
cruing to early training and thorough mental development.
If there was any difference in talent or intellect between
the Greek and the Roman woman it was, so far as we can
determine, in favor of the Greek. The sole reason, then,
for such a marked difference in their capacity for work
and for achieving distinction in intellectual and adminis-
trative fields of action arose from the lack of education in
the Athenian wife and the fullest measure of educational
freedom enjoyed by the Roman. That Aspasia, in spite
of all the odds against her, was able to rise to such a
pinnacle of glory does not prove that she was the superior
of her countrywomen — the mothers of the greatest poets,
artists and philosophers of all time — but it exhibits rather
her good fortune in being able to effect a partnership with
the greatest statesman of Greece, and one who was at the
same time fully able to appreciate all her rare mental at-
tainments and give her marvelous genius free scope for
development by cooperating with him in making the
period during which he held the reign of power the most
brilliant one in the annals of human progress.

Plato, referring to the oriental seclusion to which Athe-
nian wives were condemned, speaks of them as "a race

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 27

used to living out of the sunshine," and that, too, among
a people that habitually lived out of doors. We have
already seen how much greater freedom Roman women en-
joyed and how much more important was the role they
played in public as well as private life; but we have not
told all. They not only went to, but presided over, public
games and religious ceremonies. They were admitted to
aristocratic clubs and had, under the empire, a regular
assembly or senate of their own, known as the Conventus
Matronarum. Hortensia, the daughter of the great orator
Hortensius, pleaded the cause of her sex before the tribu-
nal of the triumvirs, and so eloquent and effective was her
speech that she not only won her case, but also won the
praise of the critic, Quintilian, for her splendid oratorical
effort.

Yet more. A certain woman in the Roman possessions
in Africa had so impressed her fellow citizens by her intel-
lectual capacity and administrative ability that she was
chosen as one of the two chief magistrates of the place.
She is known in history as Messia Castula, duumvira. It
is true that the men of the older school, who would limit
woman's activities to the distaff and the loom, strongly
objected to the increasing freedom and power of women,
and endeavored to counteract their influence; but all to
no purpose. And it was the crabbed old Cato, the Censor,
who growled in undisguised disgust : — * ' We Romans rule
over all men and our wives rule over us."

But great as were the freedom and educational advan-
tages of the Roman women, the startling fact remains that,
with the exception of a few fragmentary verses of slight
merit and of questionable authenticity, we have absolutely
no tangible evidence of the Roman woman's literary abil-
ity while under pagan influence. We have seen, in con-
sidering her intellectual attainments — especially after the
introduction of Greek art and letters into the City of the

28 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

Seven Hills — that every woman who pretended to culture
was obliged to be familiar with the Greek as well as with
the Latin authors, that her education was deemed incom-
plete without a knowledge of Greek poetry, oratory, his-
tory and philosophy, but the fact is indisputable that
Roman women were not producers like their Greek sisters,
and that in no instance did their productions reach any-
thing like the supreme excellence of the creations of a
Corinna or a Sappho. There was, it is true, Sulpicia, of
whom Martial writes: "Let every girl, whose wish it is to
please a single man, read Sulpicia; let every man, whose
wish it is to please a single maid, read Sulpicia ;" but, if
the few amatory verses that are credited to her represent
the highest flights of the Roman women in the domain of
poetry, then, indeed, were they far behind not only Sap-
pho and Corinna, but also far behind scores of their pupils.
Martial does indeed speak of a young maiden in whom
were combined the eloquence of Plato with the austere
philosophy of the Porch, and who wrote verses worthy
of a chaste Sappho; but this was evidently a great exag-
geration, for we have no other evidence of her existence.

The creative work of Roman women was, so far as we
are able to judge, quite as limited in prose as it was in
poetry. Agrippina, the mother of Nero, was one of the
few prose writers whose name has come down to us. From
her memoirs it was that Tacitus received much of the
material incorporated in his Annals.

That some of the women had literary ability of a high
order is indicated by a letter of Pliny to one of his cor-
respondents, in which occurs the following passage :

"Pomponius Saturninus recently read me some letters
which he averred had been written by his wife. I believed
that Plautus or Terence was being read in prose. Whether
they were really his wife's, as he maintains, or his own,
which he denies, he deserves equal honor, either because he

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 29

composes them or because lie has made his wife, whom he
married when a mere girl, so learned and so polished."1

Scarcely less distinguished for her taste in literature,
and for her talent as a letter writer, was Pliny's wife,
Calphurnia, who, at his request, wrote to him in his ab-
sence every day and sometimes even twice a day. Accord-
ing to Cicero, his daughter Tulia was "the best and most
learned of women"; but her literary work, it is probable,
did not extend much beyond her letters to her illustrious
father. Nevertheless, what would we not give to possess
these letters — to have as complete a collection of them as
we have of those of the great orator and philosopher. They
would be of inestimable value and would be absolutely be-
yond compare, except, possibly, with the letters of Mme.
du Deffand or of Elizabeth Barrett Browning of a much
later age.

Considering the number of educated women that lived
in the latter days of the Republic and during the earlier
part of the Empire, and their well known culture and love
of letters, it is reasonable to suppose that they may have
written much in both prose and verse cf which we have
no record. Literary productions must have more than or-
dinary value to survive two thousand years, and especially
two thousand years of such revolutions and upheavals as
have convulsed the world since the time of the pax Romana,
when all the world was at peace under Augustus.

How much of the literary work of the women of to-day
will receive recognition twenty centuries hence? Some of
it may, it is true, find a place in the fireproof libraries
of the time; but who, outside of a few antiquarians, will
take the trouble to read it or estimate its value? A few
anthologies containing our gems of prose and poetry will
probably be all that our fortieth century readers will deem
worthy of notice. In view of the chaotic condition of
Europe for so many centuries, the wonder is not that we
lEpistolce, Lib. I, 16.

30 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

have so little of the literary remains of Greece and Rome,
but rather that we have anything at all.

As one might expect, the literary women of Rome, as
well as those who ventured to take part in public affairs,
had their critics. The satirists of the time were as un-
sparing of their ridicule as they were long afterward when
Moliere wrote his Femmes Savantes and his Precieuses
Ridicules. And as for men of the old conservative type, a
learned woman was as much an object of horror as is a
militant suffragette in conservative England to-day. "No
learned wife for me," exclaims Martial, "but rather a well-
fed slave."1

And Juvenal had no more love for educated women than
have some of our contemporaries for a blue-stocking house-
keeper. He gives his opinion of them in the following
characteristic fashion :

"That woman is a worse nuisance than usual who, as
soon as she reclines on her couch, praises Virgil; makes
excuses for doomed Dido; pits bards against one another
and compares them, and weighs Homer and Mars in the
balance. Teachers of literature give way, professors are
vanquished, the whole mob is hushed, and so great is the
torrent of words that no lawyer or auctioneer may speak,
nor any other woman." 2

But if learned women had their enemies and detractors
they also had friends and defenders. Among these was
the Stoic philosopher, C. Musonius Rufus, who lived in the
time of Nero. Like Plato, he contended that women should
have the same training as men and that the faculties of

*Sit mihi verna satur, sit non doctissima conjux. Epigrammata,
Lib. II, 90.

Martial's taste in this respect was the same as that of Heine,
who said of the woman he loved: "She has never read a line of
my writings and does not even know what a poet is," and the same
as that of Eousseau, who declared that his last flame, Therese Lavas-
seur, could not tell the time of day.

2 Satire VI, 434-440.

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 31

both should be equally developed. The gist of his teaching
is contained in the statement that :

''If the same virtues must pertain to men and women,
it follows, necessarily, that the same training and educa-
tion must be suitable for both.'7 1

Our brief sketch of women 's work in ancient Rome would
be incomplete without some reference to the famous Ec-
clesia Domestica — Church of the Household — on the Aven-
tine, and the distinguished women who were its chief
ornaments. During the time of Pope Damasus, and not
long before the sacking of Rome by Alaric, the Ecclesia
Domestica was a kind of conventual home to which had
retired, or in which were frequently gathered, some of the
most noble and learned women of the city. Among the
most notable of these were Marcella and her friends, Paula
and Eustochium.

For beauty of character and nobility of purpose and
rare mental endowments they recall the best traditions of
a Cornelia or a Calphurnia, while so great was their purity
of life and so unbounded was their charity to the poor
and suffering that they were honored by being numbered
among the saints of the early church. But what specially
distinguished them among all the great women of the
Roman world was their great and varied learning. In this
respect they probably were far in advance of all their
predecessors. For, in addition to a thorough knowledge
of Latin and Greek literature, history and philosophy, they
had, under the great theologian and orientalist, St. Jerome,
become proficient in Hebrew and deeply versed in Scrip-
ture.

Special mention should be made of Paula and her
daughter Eustochium; for it is probable that, had it not
been for their influence on Jerome, and their active co-
operation in his great life work, we should not have the

i Joannis Stobcei Florilegium, Vol. IV, p. 212, Teubner 's edi-
tion, 1857.

32 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

Latin version of the Scriptures that is to-day known as
the Vulgate. This is evinced from the letters of the saint
himself and from what we know of the lives of these two
remarkable women, who, as St. Jerome informs us in the
epitaph which he had engraved on Paula's tomb in the
Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, were descended
from the Scipios, the Gracchi and the Pauli on the mother 's
side, and on the father's side from the half-mythical kings
of Sparta and Mycenae.1

They aided him not only by their sympathy and by pur-
chasing for him, often at a great price, the manuscripts he
needed for his colossal undertaking, but also assisted him
by their thorough knowledge of Latin, Greek and Hebrew
in translating the Sacred Books from the original Hebrew
into Latin. So great was Jerome's confidence in their
scholarship and so high was his appreciation of their abil-
ity and judgment that he did not hesitate to submit his
translations to them for their criticism and approval.
After he had completed his version of the first Book of
Kings, he turned it over to them, saying : ' ' Read my Book
of Kings — read also the Latin and Greek translations and
compare them with my version." And they did read and
compare and criticise. And more than this, they fre-
quently suggested modifications and corrections which the
great man accepted with touching humility and incorpor-
ated in a revised copy.

More wonderful still, the Latin Psalter, as it has come
down to us, is not, as is generally supposed, the transla-
tion from the Hebrew of Jerome, but rather a corrected

*The following is the epitaph as written by St. Jerome, "the
Christian Cicero":

Scipio quam genuit, Pauli fudere parentes,
Gracchorum soboles, Agamemnonis inclyta proles,
Hoc jacet in tumulo, Paulam dixere priores,
Euxtochii genetrix, Romani prima senatus,
Pauperiem Christ! et Bethlehemitica rura secuta est.

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 33

version made from the Septuagint by his illustrious col-
laborators— Paula and Eustochium.

It is safe to say that no two women were ever engaged
in a more important or more difficult literary undertaking
- — one requiring keener critical sense or more profound
learning— than were Paula and Eustochium, or one in
which their efforts were crowned with more brilliant suc-
cess than were those of these two supreme exemplars of
the grace, the knowledge, the culture, the refinement of
Roman womanhood — the crowning glories of womanhood
throughout the ages.

St. Jerome showed his grateful recognition of the in-
valuable assistance received from his devoted and talented
co-workers by dedicating to them a great number of his
most important books. This scandalized the pharisaical
men of the time, who looked askance at all learned women
and resented particularly the preeminence given to Paula
and her accomplished daughter. But their reproaches
provoked a reply from the saint that was worthy of the
most chivalrous champion of woman, and revealed, at the
same time, all the nobility of soul of the roused "Lion of
Bethlehem. ' ' It is not only a defence of his course, but also
a splendid tribute to his two illustrious friends, and a
tribute also to the great and good women of all time.

"There are people, O Paula and Eustochium, " exclaims
the Christian Cicero, vibrant with emotion and in a burst
of eloquence that recalls one of the burning philippics of
Marcus Tullius, "who take offence at seeing your names at
the beginning of my works. These people do not know
that Olda prophesied when the men were mute ; that while
Barach was atremble, Deborah saved Israel; that Judith
and Esther delivered from supreme peril the children
of God. I pass over in silence Anna and Elizabeth and
the other holy women of the Gospel, but humble stars when
compared with the great luminary, Mary. Shall I speak
new of the illustrious women among the heathen? Does

34 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

not Plato have Aspasia speak in his dialogues? Does not
Sappho hold the lyre at the same time as Alcaeus and Pin-
dar? Did not Themista philosophize with the sages of
Greece? And the mother of the Gracchi, your Cornelia,
and the daughter of Cato, wife of Brutus, before whom
pale the austere virtue of the father and the courage of
the husband — are they not the pride of the whole of Rome ?
I shall add but one word more. Was not it women to
whom our Lord first appeared after His resurrection ? Yes,
men could then blush for not having sought what the
women had found. m

Time has spared a joint letter of Paula and Eustochium
to their friend Marcella — a letter which exhibits so well
the rare culture and literary ability of the writers that we
cannot but lament that we have not more of the corre-
spondence which was carried on between the learned in-
mates of the Church of the Household on the Aventine
and Paula 's convent home near the Church of the Nativity
in Bethlehem. Such a collection would be beyond price,
as it would complete the picture of the age so well sketched
by St. Jerome ; and, as a contribution to the literary world,
it would have a value not inferior to that of those exquisite
classics of a later age — the letters of Madame Sevigne to
her daughter.2

WOMAN AND EDUCATION DURING THE MIDDLE AGES

The period of nearly a thousand years intervening be-
tween the downfall of Rome in A.D. 476 and the taking
of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 is usually known

1 In his preface to the Commentary on Sophonius.

2 For an exhaustive account of the lives and achievements of S*.
Jerome and his noble friends, Paula and Eustochium, the reader is
referred to L'Histoire de Sainte Paule, by F. Lagrange, Paris, 1870,
and Saint Jerome, La Societe Chretienne a Eome et ^Emigration Eo~
maine en Terre Sainte, by A. Thierry, Paris, 1867. Cf . also Woman 's
Work in Bible Study and Translation, by A. H. Johns in The Cath-
olic World, New York, June, 1912.

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 35

in history as the Middle Ages. By some it is considered
as synonymous with the Dark Ages, because of the de-
cline of learning and civilization during this long interval
of time. The former designation seems preferable, for, as
we shall see, the latter is more or less misleading. During
the "wandering of the nations" in the fourth and fifth
centuries, and the long and fierce struggles between the
barbarian hordes from the north with the decadent peoples
of the once great Koman empire, there was, no doubt, a
partial eclipse of the sun of civilization; but the conse-
quent darkness was not so dense nor so general and long-
continued as is sometimes imagined. The progress of in-
tellectual culture was, indeed, greatly retarded, but there
was no time when the light of learning was entirely ex-
tinguished. For even during the most troublous times
there were centers of culture in one part of Europe or
another. At one time the center was in Italy, at another
in Gaul, and, at still another, it was in Britain or Ireland
or Germany.

But whether it was in the south, or the west or the north
of Europe that letters flourished, it was always the con-
vent or the monastery that was the home of learning and
culture. Within these holy precincts the literary treasures
of antiquity were preserved and multiplied. Here monks
and nuns labored and studied, always keeping lighted the
sacred torch of knowledge — Et quasi cursores vitai lam-
pada tradunt — and passing it on to the generations that
succeeded them. That any of the great literary master-
pieces of Greece and Rome have come to us, in spite of
the destructive agencies of time and the wreck of empires,
is due wholly to the unremitting toil through long ages of
the zealous and intelligent inmates of the cloister.

Of the monastic institutions for men there is no occa-
sion to speak, except in so far as they contributed to the
intellectual advancement of woman. In some cases the
women of the cloister owed much to ecclesiastics for their

86 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

literary training; but there are not wanting instances in
which the nuns took the lead in education and had the
direction of schools which gave to the church priests and
bishops of recognized scholarship.

Practically the only schools for girls during the Middle
Ages were the convents. Here were educated rich and
poor, gentle and simple. And in these homes of piety and
learning the inmates enjoyed a peace and a security that
it was impossible to find elsewhere. They were free from
the dangers and annoyances that so often menaced them
in their own homes and were able to pursue their studies
under the most favorable auspices.

Among the first convent schools to achieve distinction
were those of Aries and Poitiers in Gaul, in the latter part
of the sixth century. The Abbess of Poitiers is known to
us as St. Radegund. She not only had a knowledge of
letters rare for her age, but wrote poems of such merit
that they were until recently accepted as the productions
of her master, the poet Fortunatus,1 who subsequently be-
came bishop of Poitiers.

Far more notable, however, than the convents of Aries
and Poitiers was the celebrated convent of St. Hilda at
Whitby. Hilda, the foundress and first abbess of Whitby,
was a princess of the blood-royal and a grand-niece of
Edwin, the first Christian king of Northumbria. Her con-
vent and adjoining monastery for monks soon became the
most noted center of learning and culture in Britain. And
so great was her reputation for knowledge and wisdom
that not only priests and bishops, but also princes and
kings sought her counsel in important matters of church
and state.

As to the monks subject to her authority, she inspired
them with so great a love of knowledge, and urged them
to so thorough a study of the Scriptures, that her monas-

*See Histoire de Sainte Radegonde, Seine de France, in Chap.
XX, par Em. Briand, Paris, 1897.

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 37

tery became, as Venerable Bede informs us, a school not
only for missionaries but for bishops as well. He speaks
in particular of six ecclesiastical dignitaries who were
sent forth from this noble institution — all of whom were
bishops. Five of them he describes as men of singular
merit and sanctity — "singularis meriti et sanctitatis viros,"
while the sixth, he declared, was a man of rare ability and
learning — "doctissimus et excellentis ingenii." Of this
number was St. John of Beverly, who, we are told, "at-
tained a degree of popularity rare even in England, where
the saints of old were so universally and so readily popu-
lar."1 Hilda governed her double monastery with singu-
lar wisdom and success; and, so great was the love and
veneration she inspired among all classes that she merited
the epithet of "Mother of her Country."

Celebrated, however, as Hilda was for her great educa-
tional work at Whitby, she is probably better known to the
world as the one who first recognized and fostered the
rare gifts of the poet Caedmon. "It is on the lips of this
cowherd, " as Montalembert beautifully expresses it, "that
the Anglo-Saxon speech first bursts into poetry. Indeed,
nothing in the whole history of European literature is
more original or more religious than this first utterance
of the English muse."2

As soon as Hilda discovered the extraordinary poetic
faculty of Caedmon, she did not hesitate to regard it "as
a special gift of God, worthy of all respect and of the most
tender care." And, in order that she might the more
readily develop the splendid talents of this literary pro-
digy, the keen discerning abbess received Caedmon into
the monastery of monks, and had him translate the entire
Bible into Anglo-Saxon. "As soon as the Sacred Text
was read for him he forthwith," as Bede declares, "rumi-
nated it as a clean animal ruminates its food, and trans-

iHistoria Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, Lib. IV, Cap. 23.
2 The Monies of the West, Book XI, Chap. II.

38 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

formed it into songs so beautiful that all who heard were
delighted."

As his poetical faculty became more developed, his pro-
foundly original genius became more marked, and his
inspiration more earnest and impassioned. It was this
Northumbrian cowherd, transformed into a monk of
Whitby, who sang before the abbess Hilda the revolt of
Satan and Paradise Lost, a thousand years earlier than
Milton, in verses which may still be admired even beside
the immortal poem of the British Homer. So remarkable,
indeed, in some instances is the similarity in the produc-
tions of the two poets that F. Palgrave, one of the most
competent of English critics, does not hesitate to declare
that certain of Caedmon's verses resembled so closely cer-
tain passages of the Paradise Lost that some of Milton's
lines seem almost like a translation from the work of his
distinguished predecessor. And M. Taine, in his History
of English Literature, referring to the "string of short,
accumulated, passionate images, like a succession of light-
ning flashes," of the old Anglo-Saxon poet, asserts that
" Milton's Satan exists in Caedmon's as the picture exists
in the sketch."1

Well could Caedmon's first biographer, the Venerable
Bede, say of him, ' ' Many Englishmen after him have tried
to compose religious poems, but no one has ever equaled the
man who had only God for a master." And not without
warrant does the eloquent Montalembert, in the masterly
work just quoted, pen the following statement: "Apart
from the interest which attaches to Caadmon from a his-
torical and literary point of view, his life discloses to us
essential peculiarities in the outward organization and
intellectual life of those great communities which in the
seventh century studded the coast of Northumbria, and
which, with all their numerous dependents, found often a
more complete development under the crozier of such a

iVol. I, pp. 46 and 49, New York, 1871.

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 39

woman as Hilda than under the superiors of the other
sex."1

Space precludes my telling of other convents which were
centers of literary activity, and of nuns who distinguished
themselves by their learning and by the benign influence
which they exerted far beyond the walls of the cloister.
I cannot, however, refrain from referring to that group
of learned English nuns who are chiefly known by their
Latin correspondence with St. Boniface, the Apostle of
Germany, and by the assistance which they gave him in
his arduous labors. Conspicuous among these was St.
Lioba, who, at the request of Boniface, left her home in
England to found a convent at Bischopsheim in Germany,
which, under the direction of its learned and zealous ab-
bess, soon became the most important educational center
in that part of Europe. Teachers were formed here for
other schools in Germany and Lioba 's biographer tells us
that there were few monasteries feminarum — monasteries
of women — within the sphere of Boniface's missionary ac-
tivities for which Lioba 's pupils were not sought as in-
structresses.

Like her illustrious countrywoman, St. Hilda, the abbess
of Bischopsheim was the friend and counselor of spiritual
and temporal rulers. Charlemagne, that eminent patron
of scholars, had a great admiration for her and gave her
many substantial proofs of his esteem and veneration.
"Princes," writes her biographer, "loved her, noblemen
received her, and bishops gladly entertained her and con-
versed with her on the Scriptures and on the institutions
of religion, for she was familiar with many writings and
careful in giving advice. She was so bent on reading that

iQp. cit., Book XI, Chap. II.

It will interest the reader to know that Csedmon has a place
among the saints in the Ada Sanctorum of the Bollandists. See the
special article on him in Vol. II, p. 552, under the caption of "De
S. Cedmono, cantore theodidacto."

40 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

she never laid aside her book except to pray or to strength-
en her slight frame with food or sleep. ' ' 1 She was thor-
oughly conversant with the books of the Old and the New
Testaments and was, at the same time, familiar with the
writings of the Fathers. It is not surprising, then, that
she was regarded as an oracle, and that all classes nocked
to her as they did to the abbess of Whitby for guidance
and assistance.

From what has been said of the accomplishments and
achievements of the Anglo-Saxon nuns just mentioned, it
is evident that they were, of a truth, women of exceptional
worth and of sterling character. And it is equally clear
that their pupils must have shared in the education and
culture of their distinguished teachers.2 Many of them,
in addition to having a wide acquaintance with literature,
sacred and profane, were also mistresses of several lan-
guages. A woman's education, at this time, was not com-
plete unless she could write Latin and speak it fluently.
The author of that most interesting early English work,
Ancren Riwle — Kule of Anchoresses — presupposes in his
auditors, for whose benefit his instructions were given, a
knowledge of Latin and French, as well as of English. In
certain convents Latin was almost the sole medium of

1 Woman Under Monasticfem. Chapter IV, § 2, by Lina Eeken-
stein, Cambridge, 1896. In this chapter is an interesting account of
the Anglo-Saxon nuns who were among the correspondents of Boni-
face.

2 The reader will recall Chaucer 's account in the Canterbury Tales
of the wife of the well-to-do miller of Trumpyngton:

"A wyf he hadde y-comen of noble kyn;

She was y-fostred in a nonnerye.

There dorste no wight clepen hir but 'Dame;'

What for hire kynnrede and hir nortelrie,
That she had lerned in the nonnerie."

— Reeve's Tale.

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 41

communication, — to such an extent, indeed, that a special
rule was made prohibiting "the use of the Latin tongue
except under special circumstances."

' ' As long as the conventual system lasted the only schools
for girls in England were the convent schools where,
says Robert Aske, 'the daughters of gentlemen were
brought up in virtue. ' From an educational point of view,
the suppression of the convents was decidedly a blunder/'
Thus writes Georgiana Hill in her instructive work on
Women in English Life, and there are, we fancy, but few
readers of her instructive pages who will not be inclined
to agree with her conclusions.1 Lecky speaks of the dis-
solution of convents at the time of the Reformation as ' ' far
from a benefit to women or the world. ' ' 2 And Dom Gas-
quet declares ' ' that destruction by Henry VIII of the con-
ventual schools where the female population, the rich as
well as the poor, found their only teachers, was the abso-
lute extinction of any systematic education of women for
a long period. ' ' 3

But this is not all. The strangest and saddest result,
consequent on the suppression of the convents, was that
men were made to profit by the loss which women had
sustained. The revenues of the houses that were sup-
pressed had been intended for the sole use and behoof of
women, and had been administered by them in this sense
for centuries. When they were appropriated by Henry
VIII, it never occurred to him or his ministers to make
any provision for the education of women in lieu of that
which had so ruthlessly been wrested from them. Thus the
nunnery of St. Radegund, together with its revenues and
possessions, was transformed into Jesus College, Cam-
bridge, while from the suppressed convents of Bromhall in
Berkshire and Lillechurch in Kent funds were secured for

1 Pp. 78, 79, London, 1897.

2 History of European Morals, Vol. II, p. 369, New York, 1905.
9 Henry VIII and the English Monasteries, London, 1895.

42 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

the foundation and endowment of St. John's College, also
at Cambridge. Similarly, the properties of other nun-
neries, large and small, were appropriated for the founda-
tion of collegiate institutions at Oxford, all of which were
for the benefit of men.

And so it was that, in a few short years, the great work
of centuries was undone and women were left little better
educational facilities than when the Anglo-Saxon nuns
began their noble work in a land that was enveloped in
1 1 one dark night of unillumined barbarism. ? '

One would have thought that Elizabeth, who was so
highly educated, and who did so much for the supremacy
of her country on land and sea, would have bethought her-
self of the necessity of doing something for the education
of her female subjects. But no. She did nothing for
them, and the founders of the endowed grammar schools,
during her reign, gave never a thought to the educational
necessities of the girls. They made provision only for the
boys. In this respect, however, the "Virgin Queen" was
but following in the footsteps of the male sovereigns and
legislators who had preceded her, and who, although af-
fecting an interest in having women 1 1 sensible and virtuous,
seem by their conduct toward the sex to have entered into
a general conspiracy to order it otherwise. "

The truth is, when anything was achieved for the intel-
lectual advancement of women it was due either to private
instruction or to the result of a protracted struggle on
the part of women themselves for what they deemed their
indefeasible rights. Had they relied on the spontaneous
action of men and on legislation in favor of female educa-
tion to which men had given the initiative, they would to-
day be in the same condition of ignorance and seclusion
and servitude as was the Athenian woman twenty-five cen-
turies ago, and would occupy a status but little above that
of the inmates of oriental harems and zenanas.

The Anglo-Saxon nuns were, as we have seen, specially

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 43

distinguished for their learning and for the splendid work
they performed for the education of their sex during the
long period of the Middle Ages. But however great their
preeminence in these respects, they were not without rivals.
There were, besides the schools, already named, conducted
by St. Lioba and her companions, also flourishing schools
in Germany under the direction of native nuns, whose suc-
cess as educators was as marked as that of Lioba or Hilda,
and who, in addition to their labors in the class-room,
achieved distinction by their productive work. The Anglo-
Saxon convents developed few writers, whereas those of
Germany produced several who not only shed luster on
their sex but who also showed what woman is capable of
accomplishing when accorded some measure of encourage-
ment and full liberty of action.

One of the most noted writers of her age was the famous
nun of Gandersheim, Hroswitha, who was born in the
early part of the tenth century. She was the pupil of the
abbess Gerberg, who was of royal lineage, and one of the
most zealous promoters of learning and culture in Saxony
during the forty-two years of her rule in the convent to
which she and her favorite pupil gave undying renown.

Hroswitha 's literary work consists of legends and con-
temporary history in metrical form and of her dramas
written in the style of Terence. As a writer of history and
legends she ranks with the best authors of her time, while
as a writer of dramas she stands absolutely alone. Hers,
indeed, were the first dramatic compositions given to the
world during the long interval that elapsed between the
last comedies of classic antiquity and the first of the mir-
acle plays which had such a vogue between the twelfth and
the sixteenth century.

Her dramas, which, of all her works, have attracted the
most attention, are seven in number. They deal with the
moral and mental conflicts which characterized the period
of transition from heathendom to Christianity. Some of

44 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

them exhibit poetic talent of a high order as well as the
inspiration and courage of genius. They reveal also a
wide acquaintance with the classic authors of Rome and
Greece, besides a knowledge of many of the Christian
writers. They are, likewise, distinguished by originality
of treatment, complete mastery of the material used, as
well as by genuine beauty of rhyme and rhythm. In form,
all the plays preserve the simple directness of their model,
Terence, while, in conception, they embody the noblest
ideals of Christian teaching. In marked contrast to her
model, who invariably exhibits the frailties and lapses of
woman, Hroswitha 's plays turn on the resistance of her sex
to temptation, and on their steadfast adherence to duty
and to vows voluntarily assumed. A recent English writer,
W. H. Hudson, in an appreciative estimate of the work of
this learned Benedictine nun expresses himself as follows :
"It is on the literary side alone that Hroswitha belongs
to the classic school. The spirit and essence of her work
belong entirely to the Middle Ages; for beneath the rigid
garb of a dead language" — she wrote in Latin — "beats the
warm heart of a new era. Everything in her plays that
is not formal but essential, everything that is original and
individual, belongs wholly to the Christianized Germany
of the tenth century. Everywhere we can trace the influ-
ence of the atmosphere in which she lived; every thought
and every motive is colored by the spiritual conditions of
her time. The keynote of all her works is the conflict of
Christianity with paganism; and it is worthy of remark
that in Hroswitha 's hands Christianity is throughout rep-
resented by the purity and gentleness of woman, while
paganism is embodied in what she describes as the vigor of
men — virile robur." 1

1 The English Historical Review, July, 1888.

Another recent writer affirms without hesitation that "Hroswitha
has earned a place apart in the Pantheon of women poets and writers.
She alone in those troublous times of the tenth century recalls to

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 45

Among her legends the one entitled The Lapse and Con-
version of Theophilus has a special interest as being the
precursor of the well-known legend of Faust.

In Hroswitha's time, as in our own, there were people
who were strongly opposed to the higher education of
women. There were others who would deny them even the
elements of an education — who declared that they should
be taught anything rather than reading and writing, which
were a cause of temptation and sin — that their knowledge
should be confined solely to the duties of an ordinary house-
wife, that their books should consist solely of thimble,
thread and needles — "Et leurs livres, un de, du fil et des
aguilles." Some, it is true, were willing to make an ex-
ception in favor of nuns; but, as to all others, the less
they knew the better it was for their spiritual, if not
for their temporal, welfare also.1 To those who were
thus minded, Hroswitha pithily replied that it was not
knowledge itself but the bad use of it that was danger-
ous— "Nee scientia scibilis Deum offendit, sed injustitia
scientis."

Among other women who were Hroswitha's equals in
knowledge, if not in literary attainments, were several
other nuns who illumined the closing centuries of the Mid-
dle Ages. Chief among these were St. Hildegard, "the
sybil of the Rhine"; Herrad, the noted author of the

our minds the existence of dramatic art; her name, indeed, deserves
to be rescued from oblivion and to become a household word." Fort-
nightly Review, p. 450, March, 1896.

1 Histoire de I' Education de Femmes en France, Tom. I, p. 72
et seq. par Paul Kousselot, Paris, 1883.

A certain jurisconsult of the thirteenth century, one Pierre de
Navarre, expressed the sentiment of many of his contemporaries when
he wrote the following paragraph:

"Toutes fames doivent savoir filer et coudre; car la pauvre en
aura mestier et la riche conoistra mieux 1'ceuvre des autres. A
fame ne doit-on apprendre lettre ni escrire, si ce n' est espeeiaument
pour estre nonain, car par lire est escrire, de fame sont maint mal
avenu. ' '

46 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

Hortus Deliciarum — Garden of Delights — and Matilda and
Gertrude, those remarkable mystical writers, whose de-
scriptions of heaven and hell so closely resemble those in
the Divina Commedia that many writers are of the opinion
that the great Florentine poet must have been familiar
with the accounts which they gave of their visions.

St. Hildegard was for a third of a century the abbess of
the convent of St. Rupert at Bingen. So great was her
reputation for sanctity and for the extent and variety of
her attainments that she was called "the marvel of Ger-
many." She is without doubt one of the most beautiful
and imposing as well as one of the greatest figures of the
Middle Ages — great beside such eminent contemporaries
as Abelard, Martin of Tours and Bernard of Clairvaux.
People from all parts of the Christian world sought her
counsel ; and her convent at Bingen became a Mecca for all
classes and conditions of men and women. But nothing
shows better the immense influence which she wielded than
her letters of which nearly three hundred have been pre-
served.

Among her correspondents were people of the humble
walks of life as well as the highest representatives of
Church and State. There were simple monks and noble
abbots; dukes, kings and queens; archbishops and cardi-
nals and no fewer than four Popes. Letters came to her
from the orient and the Occident, from the patriarch of
Jerusalem, from Queen Bertha of Greece, from Frederick
Barbarossa, Philip the Count of Flanders, St. Bernard,
the professors of the University of Paris; from Henry II
of England, and from his grand-daughter Eleonora, "The
Damsel of Brittany. " It is safe to say that no woman
during the Middle Ages exercised a wider or more benefi-
cent influence than did this humble Benedictine abbess of
Bingen on the Rhine and had unsought so large a number
of distinguished correspondents. And, if we accept the
criterion that influence is measured by the number and

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 47

nature of one 's relations, it would be difficult to find in any
age relations that were more select or more cosmopolitan.

But her astonishing collection of letters is the slightest
product of her intellectual activity. She is without doubt
the most voluminous woman writer of the Middle Ages.
Her works on theology, Scripture and science make no less
than six or eight large octavo volumes. The Bollandists,
than whom there is no more competent authority, express
their amazement at the amount and quality of Hildegard 's
work. Witness the following language of one of their num-
ber: ''Although we may not be surprised that our saint
was interrogated regarding secret things by so many men
eminent both by reason of their dignity and their learning,
I am nevertheless forced to recognize with stupefaction
that a woman without instruction, and who had not ac-
quired knowledge by study, was consulted concerning the
most difficult questions of theology and the most subtle of
Holy Scriptures, and that she gave, without hesitation, the
answers that were demanded by theology and Scripture. ' ' 1

Is it, then, surprising that the famous William of
Auxerre, after a critical examination of her works, should
compare her with Peter Lombard, the celebrated "Master
of the Sentences, ' ' 2 and one of the most learned of the

i Opera Omnia S. Hildegardis, Tom. 197, Col. 48 of Migne's Pa-
trologicB Cursus Completus. Cf. also Nova 8. Hildegardis Opera,
editlit Cardinalis Pitra, Paris, 1882, and Das Leben und Wirken der
Reiligen Hildegardis, von J. P. Schmelzeis, Freiburg im Breisgau,
1878.

a It was Peter Lombard, whose Sentences l ' became the very canon
of orthodoxy for all succeeding ages/' who, in marked contrast with
those of ancient and modern times that regarded woman as the in--
ferior or slave of man, asserted her equality with him in a sentence
that should be written in letters of gold. "Woman," he declares,
Sententiarum, Lib. II, Disp. 18, "was not taken from the head of
man, for she was not intended to be his ruler, nor from his foot, for
she was not intended to be his slave, but from his side, for she was
intended to be his companion and comfort."

In this view the great Schoolman but follows the teachings of

48 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

Schoolmen, and write that Hildegard is Sententiarum
Magistra — Mistress of the Sentences — and that "in her
works the words are not human but divine' '? Has any
woman writer ever received higher praise, and from one
so competent to express an opinion as the scholarly divine
of Auxerre?

Herrad, the gifted abbess of Hohenburg in Alsace, was
a contemporary of Hildegard, and, like her, was noted for
her culture and wide range of knowledge. She is chiefly
known for her Hortus Deliciarum, a remarkable work, en-
cyclopaedic in character, which she wrote for the nuns of
her convent and which was designed to embody in words
and in pictures the knowledge of her age.

Nothing that time has bequeathed to us gives us a clearer
conception of the manifold activities of a mediaeval nun-
nery, of the industry, talents and enthusiastic love of learn-
ing of its inmates, than Herrad 's wonderful Garden of De-
lights. Nor is there any other work that gives us a better
knowledge of the manners, customs and ideals of the
twelfth century, or one that, in its particular sphere, is of
more value to the student of art, philology and archgeology.
It exhibits Herrad 's intense interest in the intellectual
advancement of her nuns and pupils as well as her supe-
rior talent and acquirements. Unfortunately the manu-
script copy of this work was destroyed at the time of the
bombardment of Strasburg by the Germans in 1870, and
our knowledge of it is limited to portions of it which had
previously been transcribed or to accounts left of it by
those who had examined it before its destruction. Of such

St. Augustine. For in his commentary, De Genesi ad Litteram,
Lib. 9, Cap. 13, the learned bishop of Hippo writes : ' ' Quia igitur viro
nee domina nee ancilla parabatur, sed socia, nee de capite, nee de
pedibus, sed de latere fuerat producenda, ut juxta se produeendam
cognosceret, quam de suo latere sumptam didecisset." Again the
same illustrious doctor declares that woman was formed from man's
side in order that it might be manifest that she was created to be
united with him in love — in consortium creabatur dilectionis.

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 49

exceptional value was this unique work that the editor of
the great collection of pictures, which illustrates this re-
markable book, does not hesitate to declare that "Few il-
luminated manuscripts had acquired a fame so well de-
served as the Hortus Deliciarum of Herrad. ' ' 1

No sketch, however brief, of the literary nuns of medi-
aeval Germany would be complete without some reference
to the learned religious of the convent of Helfta, near
Eisleben in Saxony. Of the abbess Gertrude we read that
her enthusiasm for knowledge was so great that she not
only inspired others with the same enthusiasm, but that
she was an incessant collector of books, which she had her
nuns transcribe. Among her most distinguished subjects
were two religious by the name of Matilda, one of whom
was her sister, and a third, who, to distinguish her from
the abbess, is known as ' ' Gertrude the Great. ' '

The writings of these nuns were inspired by that great
mystic movement which then prevailed in various parts of
Europe and are among the most impassioned productions
of the age. For this reason they still have a special claim
on the attention of students of art and literature, as well
as those of theology and mysticism. Impressed by the simi-
larity of their ideas and descriptions as compared with

1Cf. Hortus Deliciarum, by Herrad de Lansberg, folio with one
hundred and ten plates, Strasburg, 1901, and Herrade de Lands~
berg, by Charles Schmidt, Strasburg.

The erudite academician, Charles Jourdain, says of Herrad '9
great work " L 'encyclopedic qu'on lui doit, I 'Hortus Deliciarum,
embrasse toutes les parties des connaissances humaines, depuis la
science divine jusqu'a 1 'agriculture et la metrologie, et on
s'etonne a bon droit qu'un tel ouvrage, qui supposait une erudi-
tion si variee et si methodique, soit sorti d'une plume feminine.
Quelle impression produirait aujourd'hui 1'annonee d'une encyclo-
pedic qui aurait pour auteur une simple, religieuse? Parlerons-nous
des femmes du monde? II n'existe d'elles, au XXe siecle, non plus
que dans les siecles precedents aucun ouvrage comparable a I'Hortus
Deliciarum. ' ' Excursions Historiques et Philosophiques, p. 480, Paris,
1888.

50 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

those found in Dante's great masterpiece, there are not
wanting scholars who contend that the prototype of the
Matelda in the earthly paradise of the Purgatorio was
none other than one of the Matildas of the famous convent
of Helfta.1

The writings of Hroswitha, Hildegard, Herrad, Gertrude
and the Matildas, to speak of no others, are the best evi-
dence of the studious character of the nuns of mediaeval
times, and of their devotion to the cause of education. They
command, likewise, our admiration for the system of train-
ing which made such development possible, and show that,
in certain departments, the schools as then conducted were
on as high a plane as any we have to-day.2 They show us,
too, that nuns and convent-bred women of the age in
question were of quite different mental calibre from that
of the "gentle lady of chivalry living in her bower, play-
ing upon her lute and waiting patiently for the return of

*See Bevelationes Mechtildiana ac Gertrudiance, edit, Oudin, for
the Benedictines at Solesmes, 1875.

2 In her scholarly work on Woman Under Monasticism, p. 479,
Lina Eckenstein writes as follows regarding the studies pursued in
the convents of the Middle Ages:

"The contributions of nuns to literature, as well as incidental
remarks, show that the curriculum of study in the nunnery was as
liberal as that accepted by the monks, and embraced all available
writing whether by Christian or profane authors. While Scripture
and the writing of the Fathers of the Church at all times formed
the groundwork of monastic studies, Cicero at this period was read
by the side of Boethus, Virgil by the side of Martianus Capella,
Terence by the side of Isidore of Seville. Prom remarks made by
Hroswitha we see that the coarseness of the Latin dramatists made
no reason for their being forbidden to nuns, though she would have
seen it otherwise; and, Herrad was so far impressed by the wisdom
of the heathen philosophers of antiquity that she pronounced this
wisdom to be the 'product of the Holy Spirit also/ Throughout
the literary world, as represented by convents, the use of Latin was
general, and made possible the even spread of culture in districts
that were widely remote from each other and practically without
intercourse. ' '

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 51

her triumphant knight, ' ' and quite different, too, from that
of the castle lady-loves — whose sole attractions were often
no more than youth and beauty — who inspired the impas-
sioned lyrics of troubadour and minnesinger.

A recent writer sums up in a few words the status and
the accomplishments of the lady of the abbey in the follow-
ing paragraph :

' ' No institution of Europe has ever won for the lady the
freedom and development that she enjoyed in the con-
vent in early days. The modern college for women only
feebly reproduces it, since the college for women has arisen
at a time when colleges in general are under a cloud. The
lady-abbess, on the other hand, was part of the two great
social forces of her time, feudalism and the Church. Great
spiritual rewards and great worldly prizes were alike with-
in her grasp. She was treated as an equal by the men of
her class, as is witnessed by letters we still have from
popes and emperors to abbesses. She had the stimulus of
competition with men in executive capacity, in scholarship,
and in artistic production, since her work was freely set
before the general public ; but she was relieved by the cir-
cumstances of her environment from the ceaseless competi-
tion in common life of woman with woman for the favor of
the individual man. In the cloister of the great days, as
on a small scale in the college for women to-day, women
were judged by each other as men are everywhere judged
by each other, for sterling qualities of head and heart and
character. ' ' 1

Nor is this all. Never was woman more highly hon-
ored, never was her power and influence greater than dur-
ing the period of conventual life extending from Hilda of
Whitby to Gertrude and the Matildas of Helfta, and espe-
cially during that golden period of monasticism and chiv-
alry when cloister and court were the radiant centers of
learning and culture. Abbesses took part in ecclesiastical
i The Lady, p. 71, by Emily James Putnam, New York, 1910.

52 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

synods and councils and assisted in the deliberations of
national assemblies. In England, they ranked with lords
temporal and spiritual, and had the right to attend the
king's council or to send proxies to represent them, while
in Germany, where they held property directly from the
king or emperor, they enjoyed the rights and privileges of
barons and, as such, took part in the proceedings of the
imperial diet either in person or through their accredited
representatives. In Saxony, the abbesses had the right to
strike coins bearing their own portraits, notably the ab-
besses of Gandersheim and Quedlinburg. In England
they were invested with extraordinary powers, and in cer-
tain cases owed obedience to none save the Pope. In Kent
abbesses, as representatives of religion, came immediately
after bishops.

Possessing such power and prestige, it is not surprising
to learn that abbesses wielded great influence in temporal
as well as spiritual matters; that it pervaded politics and
extended to the courts of kings and emperors. Thus,
Matilda, the abbess of Quedlinburg, together with Adel-
heid, the mother of Otto III who was but three years old
at the time of his father's death, practically ruled the
empire. At a later period during the prolonged absence
in Italy of Otto III, the control of affairs was entrusted to
the abbess alone ; and so successful was her administration,
and so vigorous were the measures which she adopted
against the invading Wends, that she commanded the ad-
miration of all. In view of these facts, the learned author-
ess of Woman Under Monasticism is fully warranted in
declaring as she does "The career open to the inmates of
convents in England and on the Continent was greater
than any other ever thrown open to women in the course
of modern European history. ' ' 1

"The educational influence of convents during cen-
turies," continues the same writer, "cannot be rated too

i Eckenstein, op. cit., p. 478.

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 53

highly. Not only did their inmates attain considerable
knowledge but education in a nunnery, as we see from
Chaucer and others, secured an improved standing for
those who were not professed." * It prepared the way for,
if it did not train, those highly educated women who ap-
peared during the time of the transition between the Mid-
dle Ages and what is now designated as the Modern Period.
Among these were Christine de Pisan, who was a prolific
writer on many subjects in both prose and verse, and who,
it is said, was the first woman to earn a livelihood by her
pen.2 There were also some of those remarkable women
who lectured on law in the University of Bologna, among
whom were Bettina Gozzadini,3 who, some writers will
have it, occupied the chairs of law in her alma mater as
early as 1236, and the celebrated Novella d 'Andrea, of the
following century, who frequently acted as a substitute for
her father, a professor of canon law in the university, and
who, by reason of her varied and profound knowledge, held
a prominent place among the most learned men of her
time. Both of these noted women were worthy prototypes
of that long list of learned Italian women who, during the
Renaissance, won such honor for themselves and such un-
dying glory for their country. Not less remarkable were
several women of the school of Salerno, who, during its
palmiest days, distinguished themselves as teachers, writers
and medical practitioners,* and the still more remarkable

iUt. Sup., 479-480.

2 See Womankind in Western Europe, p. 288 et seq., by Thomas
Wright, London, 1869.

3 ' ' Pertinere videtur ad haee tempora Betisia Gozzadini non minus

generis claritate quam eloquentia ac legum professione illustris

Betisiam Ghirardaccius et nostrl ab eo deinceps scriptores eximiis
laudibus certatim extulerunt. ' ' De Claris ArcMgymnasii Bononiensis
Professoribus a Sceculo XI usque ad Sceculum XIV, Tom. I, p. 171,
Bologna, 1888-1896.

*L'Ecole de Salerne, p. 18, par C. Meaux, Paris, 1880. Among
the most noted of these women was Trotula, who, about the middle

54 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

daughters of one Mangord, a professor of Paris, whose
daughters taught Sacred Scripture.1 There were few in
number, it is true, but they were the worthy prototypes
of those learned and brilliant women who achieved such
distinction and glory for their sex during that most inter-
esting period of history known as the Renaissance.

WOMAN AND EDUCATION DURING THE RENAISSANCE

By the Renaissance we understand not only a phase in
the development of the nations of Europe but also that
period of transition between the mediaeval and the modern
world during which the latent spiritual energies of the
Middle Ages developed into the intellectual forces and
moral habits of thought which now pervade the civilized
world. Various dates are assigned for its starting point.
Among them is the fall of Constantinople in 1453, when
there was a great influx of scholars from the famed metrop-
olis on the Bosphorus to the Italian peninsula, who brought
with them those forgotten treasures of science and litera-

of the eleventh century, wrote on the diseases of women as well as
on other medical subjects. Compare the attitude of the school of
Salerno towards women with that of the University of London, eight
hundred years later. When, in the latter half of the nineteenth cen-
tury, women applied to this university for degrees in medicine, they
were informed, as H. Eashdall writes in The Universities of Eu-
rope in the Middle Ages, Vol. II, Part II, p. 712, Oxford, 1895, that
"the University of London, although it had been empowered by Royal
Charter to do all things that could be done by any University, was
legally advised that it could not grant degrees to women without a
fresh Charter, because no University had ever granted such de-
grees. ' ' Cf . also Haeser 's Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Medicin, Band
I, p. 645, et seq., Jena, 1875. Verily, the so-called dark ages have
risen up to condemn our vaunted age of enlightenment!

*Die Entstehung der Universitdten des Mittelalters bis 1400, Band
I, p. 233, Berlin, 1885, von P. Heinrick Denifle, assistant archivist of
the Vatican Library, and Histoire Literaire de la France, Commence
par des Eeligieux Benedictins de S. Maur et Continue par des Mem-
bres de I'Institut, Tom. IX, 281, Paris, 1733-1906.

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 55

ture which, were so instrumental in producing that inter-
esting phenomenon known in history as the Eevival of
Learning. But whatever date be assigned for the begin-
ning of the Eenaissance, whether it be the year when Con-
stantinople fell into the hands of the Turk or the fateful
millennial year which was to witness the termination of all
things, there certainly was never at any period a distinct
breach of historical continuity between the old order and
the new.

This is particularly true of Italy where the Renaissance
had its origin. For here, during the entire mediaeval pe-
riod, there never was a time when the study of antiquity
was completely neglected; when the traditions of the old
Roman culture had died out, or when the art and the
literature of the classical ages of the past had ceased to
exert an influence on artists and scholars. Ozanam was,
then, right when he declared that the night of the Dark
Age, which in Italy intervened between "the intellectual
daylight of antiquity and the dawn of the Renaissance,"
was, in reality, like ' ' one of those luminous nights in which
the fading brightness of evening is prolonged into the
first beaming of the morning. ' ' 1

So much, indeed, was this the case that those who have
made the most profound study of the Middle Ages recog-
nize a first Renaissance in the twelfth century, which was
not less real than the Renaissance par excellence of the
fifteenth century, a renaissance which counts such masters
of Latinity as Abelard, John of Salisbury and Hildebert
of Tours, and such schools as that of Chartres, where clas-
sical Latin was taught with as much thoroughness as in
the great universities of Europe during the brilliant age
of the humanists. It was then, as Rashdall truly observes,
that "a revival of architecture heralded, as it usually

i"Une de ces nuits lumineuses ou les derni&res claries du soir
se prolongent jusqu'aux premieres blancheurs du matin." Documents
Inedits, p. 78, Paris, 1850.

£6 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

does, a wider revival of Art. The schools of Christendom
became thronged as they were never thronged before. A
passion for enquiry took the place of the old routine. The
Crusades brought different parts of Europe into contact
with one another and into contact with the new world of
the East — with a new religion and a new philosophy, with
the Arabic Aristotle, with the Arabic commentators on
Aristotle, and eventually even with Aristotle in the original
Greek. "*

Roughly speaking, the Renaissance attained its culmina-
tion during the second half of the fifteenth century. It
was during this period that gunpowder and printing with
movable types were invented — the first completely revolu-
tionizing the methods of warfare and the second marvel-
ously facilitating the diffusion of knowledge. And it was
during the same period also that Vasca da Gama doubled
the Cape of Good Hope, that Columbus crossed the Sea of
Darkness and that Copernicus laid the foundation of mod-
ern astronomy.

But this wonderful half-century constituted only a small
portion of the period embraced by the Renaissance. From
the fall of Constantinople until it attained the highest
phase of development in England, the Renaissance covers
a period of nearly two centuries. The progress of the
intellectual and moral movement which it represented, from
the land of its birth, to the northern and western parts of
Europe, was comparatively slow. Thus, while Italy was
exhibiting the full effulgence of the re-birth, England was
still in the feudal condition of the Middle Ages. A strik-
ing illustration of this truth is seen in the fact that "a
brother of the Black Prince banqueted with Petrarch in
the palace of Galeazzo Visconti — that is to say, the founder
of Italian humanism, the representative of Italian despotic
state-craft, and the companion of Froissart's heroes met

i The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, Vol. I, p. 31,
Oxford, 1895.

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE

57

together at a marriage feast." "In Italy," as Symonds
has shown, "the keynote was struck by the Novella, as in
England by the drama. ' ' x The supreme exponents of the
Kenaissance as manifested in literature were, without
doubt, Ariosto in Italy, Rabelais in France, Cervantes in
Spain, Camoens in Portugal, Erasmus in the Netherlands
and Shakespeare in England.

Considering the splendid achievements of men during the
Kenaissance in every department of intellectual activity,
one would imagine that women also would have attained to
a somewhat proportionate distinction, at least in literature
and the arts. But, outside of Italy, this was far from be-
ing the case. In France, Spain, Portugal and England
there were, it is true, a certain number of women who won
distinction by their talents and learning, but these were
the exceptions which but served to throw into greater re-
lief the prevailing ignorance of the great mass of their sex,
which had few, if any, of the advantages of instruction,
even in the most elementary branches of knowledge.

The Italian women, as we have already seen, had com-
manded marked recognition for their talents and learning
even before the close of the Middle Ages. The most famous
of these were among those who, having obtained the doc-
torate, became lecturers and professors in the great univer-
sity of Bologna. The existence and accomplishments of
some of these may, perhaps, be more or less legendary, but
there can be no doubt that many of them, some before the
time of the Renaissance, had gained a European reputation
for the breadth and variety of their attainments. But it
was during the Renaissance that the remarkable flowering
of the intellect of the Italian woman was seen at its best.
While the women in the other parts of Europe, especially
in England and Germany, were suffering the ill effects
consequent on the suppression of the convents, which, for

i A Short History of the Renaissance in Italy, p. 277, London,
1893.

58 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

centuries, had been almost the only schools available for
girls, the women of Italy were taking an active part in the
great educational movement inaugurated by the revival of
learning, and winning the highest honors for their sex in
every department of science, art and literature. Not since
the days of Sappho and Aspasia had woman attained such
prominence, and never were they, irrespective of class-
condition, accorded greater liberty, privileges or honor.
The universities, which had been opened to them at the close
of the Middle Ages, gladly conferred upon them the doc-
torate, and eagerly welcomed them to the chairs of some
of their most important faculties. The Renaissance was,
indeed, the heydey of the intellectual woman throughout
the whole of the Italian peninsula — a time when woman
enjoyed the same scholastic freedom as men, and when
Mme. de StaeVs dictum, Le genie n'a pas de sexe, ex-
pressed a doctrine admitted in practice and not an
academic theory.

It would require a large volume, or rather many vol-
umes, to do justice to the learned women of Italy who
conferred such honor upon their sex during the period we
are considering. Suffice it to mention a few of those who
achieved special distinction and whose memories are still
green in the land which had been made so illustrious by
their talent and genius.

That which the modern reader finds the most surprising
in the Italian women of the Renaissance is their enthusiasm
for the literce Jiumaniores — the Latin and Greek classics —
and the proficiency which so many of them, even at an
early age, attained in the literature and philosophy of
antiquity. It was no uncommon thing for a girl in her
teens to write and speak Latin, while many of them were
almost equally familiar with Greek.1 Thus Laura Bren-

i Cecelia Gonzaga, a pupil of the celebrated humanist, Vittorino
da Feltre, read the Gospels in Greek when she was only seven years
old. Isotta and Ginevra Nogorola, pupils of the humanist, Guarino

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 59

zoni, of Verona, had such a mastery of these two languages
that she wrote and spoke them with ease, while Alessandra
Scala was so familiar with them that she employed them
in writing poetry. Lorenza Strozzi, who was educated in
a convent and eventually became a nun, was distinguished
for her great versatility, for her profound knowledge of
science and art, as well as for her proficiency in Latin and
Greek. Her Latin poems were so highly valued that they
were translated into foreign languages. Livia Chiavello,
of Fabriano, was celebrated as one of the most brilliant
representatives of the Petrarchan school. Her style was
so pure and noble that, had Petrarch not lived, she alone
would have upheld the honor of the vulgar tongue. So suc-
cessful was Isotta of Rimini in the cultivation of the
Muses that she was hailed as another Sappho. Cassandra
Fedele, of Venice, deserved, according to Polizian, the
noted Florentine humanist, to be ranked with that famous
universal genius, Pico de la Mirandola. So extensive were
her attainments that in addition to being a thorough mis-
tress of Latin and Greek, she was likewise distinguished
in music, eloquence, philosophy and even theology. Leo X,
Louis XII of France, and Isabella of Spain were eager to
have her as an ornament for their courts, but the Venetian
senate was so proud of its treasure that it was unwilling
to have her depart. Catarina Cibo, of Genoa, was another

Verronese, likewise distinguished themselves at an early age by their
rare knowledge of Latin and Greek. In later years all three en-
joyed great celebrity for their learning, and were, like Battista di
Montefeltro, women of genuine humanist sympathies. Cecelia Gon-
zaga's scholarship was in no wise inferior to that of her learned
brothers, who were among the most noted students of the famous Casa
Zoyosa in Mantua, where Vittorino da Feltre achieved such distinc-
tion as an educator in the early part of the Italian Eenaissance. The
learned Italian writer, Sabbadini, beautifully expressed the relation
of women to Humanism, when he declares, in his Vida di Guarino,
"L'Humanismo si sposa alia gentilezza feminile," — humanism weds
feminine gentility.

60 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

prodigy of learning ; for, besides a knowledge of Latin and
Greek, philosophy and theology, she was well acquainted
with Hebrew. Donna Felice Rasponi, of Ravenna, devoted
herself to the study of Plato and Aristotle, of Scripture
and the Fathers. But, for the extent and variety of her
attainments, Tarquinia Molza seems to have eclipsed all
her contemporaries. She had as teachers the ablest schol-
ars of an age of distinguished scholars. Not only did she
excel in poetry and the fine arts, but she also had a rare
knowledge of astronomy and mathematics, Latin, Greek
and Hebrew. And so great was the esteem in which she
was held that the senate of Rome conferred on her the
singular honor of Roman citizenship, transmissible in per-
petuity to her descendants. The Sovereign Pontiff and
the flower of the Roman prelacy begged her to take up her
residence in the Eternal City, but she could not be pre-
vailed upon to leave the land of her birth.

In the arts of sculpture and painting the women of Italy,
during the Renaissance, were no less illustrious than they
were in science, literature and philosophy. Indeed, many
of the treasures in the Italian churches and art galleries
that still delight all lovers of the beautiful are from the
chisel and the brush of women who achieved distinction
between three and four centuries ago.1

Probably the most famous sculptress was Properzia de
Rossi, whose ability was so remarkable that she excited
the envy of the men who were her competitors.2 Among
painters there was Suor Plantilla Nelli, who was a nun
and prioress in the convent of Santa Catarina in Florence.
Both Lanzi and Vasari bestow high praise on her work
and declare some of her productions to be of rare excel-

1 Among them are the pictures of Caterina Vigri, which are pre-
served in the Pinacoteca of Bologna and in the Academia of Venice.

2 No less an authority than the illustrious sculptor, Canova, de-
clared that her early death was one of the greatest losses ever suf-
fered by Italian art.

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 61

lence. There were also Maria Angela Crisculo, of whose
splendid work many examples are still preserved in the
churches of Naples, and Lavinia Fontana of Bologna, who
exhibited such extraordinary ability as an artist that some
of her pictures passed for the work of her great contem-
porary, Guido Reni.1 Still more remarkable were the
achievements of four sisters of the noted family Anguisci-
ola of Cremona. So admirable was the work of the eldest
sister, Sofonisba, that Philip II invited her to his court in
Spain, where she excited the amazement of every one by
the splendid canvases which she executed for her illus-
trious patron and for the members of the royal family.

Of the fifty female poets who flourished in Italy during
the Renaissance the most eminent were Gaspara Stampa,
Veronica Gambara, and Vittoria Colonna. Of such merit
and exquisite finish were the productions of their Muse
that they are still read with never failing pleasure. So
highly did Cardinal Bembo, — the famous "dictator of let-
ters"— value the scholarship and critical acumen of Vero-
nica Gambara that he never published anything without
previously submitting it to her judgment. But far more
eminent as a poet was the noble and accomplished Marchesa
of Pescara, Vittoria Colonna, who, on account of her talents
and virtues, was named La Divina. The friend and ad-
viser of scholars and the confidante of princes, she repre-
sented, as has truly been said, "the best phases of the Re-
naissance, its learning, its intelligence, its enthusiasm, its
subtle Platonism, combined with a profound religious faith
and the trace of the mysticism of a simpler age." The
chorus of universal praise which was sung by her contem-
poraries is well echoed by Ariosto when he writes of her:
"She has not only made herself immortal by her beauti-
ful style, of which I have heard not better, but she can

i It was also said of the Venetian artist, Irene di Spilimbergo,
that her pictures were of such excellence that they were frequently
mistaken for those of her illustrious master, Titian.

62 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

raise from the tomb those of whom she speaks or writes and
make them live forever. " But it was as the friend and
inspirer of Michaelangelo that she is best known to us to-
day. ' l Without wings, ' ' he writes to her, 1 1 1 fly with your
wings; by your genius I am raised to the skies; in your
soul my thought is born."

Among those who specially distinguished themselves for
their profound scholarship, as exhibited in the halls of uni-
versities, were Dorotea Bucca, who occupied a chair of
medicine in the University of Bologna, where, by reason
of her rare eloquence and learning, she had students from
all parts of Europe; Laura Ceretta, of Brescia, who, dur-
ing seven years, gave public lectures on philosophy; Bat-
tista Malatesta, of Urbino, who taught philosophy with
such marked success that the most distinguished professors
of the day were forced to recognize themselves as her in-
feriors; and Fulvia Olympia Morati, who "at the age of
fourteen wrote Latin letters and dialogues in Greek and
Latin in the style of Plato and Cicero, ' ' and who, when she
was scarcely sixteen, "was invited to give lectures in the
University of Ferrara on the philosophical problems of
the Paradoxes of Cicero." So great, indeed, was her
knowledge of the ancient languages that she was offered
the professorship of Greek in the University of Heidelberg ;
but death cut short her brilliant career before she could
enter upon her duties in this famed institution of learning.
It was female professors of this type — masters of Greek
and Latin letters, who in the words of a recent writer,
"sent forth from Italy such students as Moritz von Spiegel-
berg and Rudolph Agricola, to reform the instruction of
Deventer and Zwoll and prepare the way for Erasmus and
Reuchlin."

In the preceding list of learned women — and but a few
only have been named of the many who in every city of
importance conferred undying glory on their sex — it is
clear that the Renaissance in Italy was, indeed, the golden

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 63

age of women. Never in history had they greater freedom
of action in things of the mind; never were they, except
probably in the case of the English and German abbesses
of the Middle Ages, treated with more marked deference
and consideration or fairness ; never were their efforts more
highly appreciated or more generously rewarded, and never
was their success more highly and enthusiastically ap-
plauded. Temporal and spiritual rulers, princes and car-
dinals, Popes and emperors vied with one another in paying
just tribute to woman's genius as well as to woman's vir-
tue. The nun in the cloister as well as the lady in the
palace shared in the general enthusiasm for learning, and
they enjoyed throughout the peninsula the same opportuni-
ties as men and received the same recognition for their
work. Everywhere the intellectual arena was open to them
on the same terms as to men. Incapacity and not sex was
the only bar to entrance.

But the men of those days, especially scholars of the
type of Bembo, Politian and Ariosto, were liberal and
broad-minded men, who never for a moment imagined that
a woman was out of her sphere or unsexed because she wore
a doctor's cap or occupied a university chair. And far
from stigmatizing her as a singular or strong-minded
woman, they recognized her as one who had but enhanced
the graces and virtues of her sex by the added attractions
of a cultivated mind and a developed intellect. Not only
did she escape the shafts of satire and ridicule, which are
so frequently aimed at the educated woman of to-day, but
she was called into the councils of temporal and spiritual
rulers as well.

Woe betide the ill-advised misogynist who should venture
to declaim against the inferiority of the female sex, or to
protest against the honors which an appreciative and a
chivalrous age bestowed upon it with so lavish a hand. The
women of Italy, unlike those of other nations, knew how
to defend themselves, and were not afraid to take, when

64 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

occasion demanded, the pen in self-defense. This is evi-
denced by numerous works which were written in response
to certain narrow-minded pamphleteers — miseri pedanti,
pitiful pedants, — who would have the activities of women
limited to the nursery or the kitchen.1

A striking characteristic of these learned women was
the entire absence of all priggism or pedantry. Whether
lecturing on law or philosophy, or discoursing in Latin be-
fore Popes and cardinals, or taking part in discussions on
art and literature with the eminent humanists of the day,
they ever retained that beautiful simplicity which gives
such a charm to true greatness of mind and is the best in-
dex of true scholarship and noble, symmetrical womanhood.

Nor did the rare intellectual attainments of these daugh-
ters of Italy destroy that harmony of creation which, some
will have it, is sure to be jeopardized by giving women the
same educational advantages as men. So far was this from
being the case that there were never more loyal and help-
ful wives nor more devoted and stimulating mothers than
there were among those women who wrote verses in the lan-
guage of Sappho, or delivered public addresses in the
tongue of Cicero. Still less did their serious and long-pro-
tracted studies entail any of the dangers we hear so much
of nowadays. The large and healthy families of many of
them prove that intellectual work, even of the highest or-
der, is not incompatible with motherhood; and still less
that it, per se, conduces, as is so often asserted, to race-

i Among these works may be mentioned 27 Merito delle Donne, by
Modesta Pozzo di Zorgi, Venice, 1600; La Nobilitd e VExcellenza
delle Donne, by Lucrezia Marinelli, Venice, 1601; De Ingenii Mulie-
bris ad Doctrinam et Meliores Litteras Aptitudine, by Anna van
Schurman, Leyden, 1641; Les Dames Illustres, by Jaquette Guillame,
Paris, 1665, and L'Egalite des Hommes et des Femmes, by Marie le
Jars de Gournay, Paris, 1622. The last named work was by the cele-
brated fille d' alliance — adopted daughter — of Montaigne. It is to her
that we owe the textut receptus of the Essais of the illustrious lit-
terateur,

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 65

suicide. These facts are commended to the consideration
of our modern opponents of the higher education of women
and to those militant conservatives and old-time reaction-
aries who are still averse to opening the doors of some of
our older universities to women — even such universities as
Oxford, several of whose colleges were founded on the reve-
nues derived from suppressed educational institutions
which had been built and used for generations for the sole
behoof of women.

But distinguished as were the women of Italy for their
culture and scholarship, they were yet more distinguished
as patrons of learning, as leaders and inspirers of the emi-
nent men who were the chief representatives of the Renais-
sance. Reference has already been made to the influence of
Vittoria Colonna on Michaelangelo — "who saw with her
eyes, acted by her inspiration, was lifted by her beyond
the stars" — but this is only one of many similar instances
that might be adduced. Indeed, to the student of the Ital-
ian Renaissance, the most interesting feature of it was, not
its women doctors and professors, but those noble and ac-
complished ladies who made the courts of Ferrara, Mantua,
Milan and Urbino the most noted intellectual centers of
Europe.

The most beautiful ornaments of the first three courts
were Renee, duchess of Ferrara ; Isabella d 'Este, marchion-
ess of Mantua, and Beatrice d'Este, duchess of Milan.
They were all women of exceptional learning and culture,
and each was the center of a galaxy of talent such as is
rarely witnessed in any one place.

Among the men attracted to their courts were the most
illustrious scholars, artists, poets and musicians of the
Renaissance. Here they found congenial homes and
breathed an atmosphere made fragrant by the appreciation
shown by their charming hostesses for their power and
genius. Here they found inspiration and a stimulus that
spurred them on to their greatest achievements. In Fer-

66 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

rara, where it was said that " there were as many poets as
there were frogs in the country round about, " were gath-
ered the most gifted poets of the Eenaissance who had
been attracted there to recite their latest masterpieces.
Among them were Clement Marot, the first poet of modern
France, and Ariosto, the immortal author of Orlando Furi-
oso. There were the great painters, Titian and Bellini,
and the illustrious poet, Torquato Tasso, whose love sub-
sequently immortalized ReneVs youngest daughter Leo-
nora.

A similar artistic and intellectual supremacy was held by
Isabelle d'Este. For portrait painters she had Titian and
Leonardo da Vinci, while, as decorators of her home, she
had Bellini and Perugino, whose compositions she herself
arranged, even in the minutest details. So it was likewise
in the gay and brilliant court of Beatrice d'Este, in Milan,
— a place where artists and scholars of all nationalities
were always sure of a cordial welcome.

But the ideal center of intellectual culture was the court
of Urbino, the central figure of which was the learned and
accomplished Elizabetta Gonzaga. This picturesque city of
the eastern slope of the Apennines was then to Italy what
Athens had been to Greece in the days of Pericles; and
Elizabetta was to its court what Aspasia was in her own
matchless salon — the magnet which attracted all the artists
and men of letters of the age.

Castiglione, whose great work, The Courtier, was partly
written as a memorial of the peerless woman who inspired
it, gives us a vivid picture of "the fair ladies, with their
quick intelligence and ready sympathy," discussing ques-
tions of art, literature, philosophy and Platonism, with the
most eminent scholars and artists of Europe. But Cas-
tiglione confesses that he is unable to give us more than the
mere outline of the picture. ' ' To paint the polished society
of Urbino," as has been well said, "we should need colors
no palette contains — transparencies of the Grecian sky, the

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 67

indigo of certain seas, the liquid azure of certain eyes.
For more than a century the court of Urbino was regarded
as the supreme exemplar. In the seventeenth century, the
Hotel de Rambouillet was still striving to make itself a
copy of it; unluckily such things as these are not easily
copied. ' n

We are not surprised, then, at being told that "men
moulded by Italian ladies" — such ladies as graced the court
of Urbino — "could be distinguished among a thousand. "
Still less are we surprised to note the immense difference
between the refined and brilliant discussions of The Cour-
tier as compared with the coarse tales of the Decameron
and Heptameron. And we can understand the marvelous
influence which Castiglione 's matchless work — inspired by
the beloved Duchess Elizabetta — had upon the masters of
English literature — on Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Spenser,
Marlow, Shelley.

Cardinal Bembo, who was one of the most assiduous fre-
quenters of this famous court, in writing of Elizabetta, does
not hesitate to declare : "I have seen many excellent and
noble women, and have heard of some who were as illus-
trious for certain qualities, but in her alone among women,
all virtues were united and brought together. I have never
seen nor heard of any one who was her equal, and know
very few who have even come near her. ' '

It was Castiglione 's experience at the court of Urbino,
where he was a daily witness of the irresistible influence of
Elizabetta, that made him give expression to the sentiment,
"Man has for his portion physical strength and external
activities ; all doing must be his, all inspiration must come
from woman." It was also this keen student of the mys-
terious workings of woman's genius and of her secret, all-
pervading influence, at times and in places least suspected,
who penned the notable statement — worthy of the Renais-

*The Women of the Renaissance, p. 290, by E. de Maulde la
Claviere, New York, 1901.

68 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

sance — "Without women nothing is possible, either in
military courage, or art, or poetry, or music, or philosophy,
or even religion. God is truly seen only through them. ' '

Only a few words are necessary to tell of the learned
women of the Renaissance outside of Italy. On account of
its intimate connection with the Italian peninsula, Spain
was the second country in Europe to experience the effects
of the new intellectual movement. Among the educated
Italians whom Isabella, the Catholic, had attracted to her
court were the brothers Geraldini, whom she appointed as
teachers of her children. Of her daughter, Juana, Juan
Vives, the eminent Spanish scholar, says she was able to
make impromptu speeches in Latin, while Catherine, who
became the wife of Henry VIII, excited the admiration of
Erasmus by the extent and accuracy of her knowledge. It
was from Salamanca that Isabella summoned her own
teacher of Latin, the learned Beatrix Galindo,1 who was a
professor of rhetoric in the university long before Eliza-
beth of England had studied the language of Virgil under
Ascham.

Then there was Francisca de Lebrixa who often filled
the chair of her father, who was professor of history and
rhetoric in the University of Alcala, and Isabella Losa, of
Cordova, who, among her other acquirements, counted a
knowledge of Greek and Hebrew. To his learned daugh-
ters, Gregoria and Luisa, Antonio Perez, minister of Philip
II, wrote saying : "Do not imagine, when you are writing
to me, that you are addressing Cicero or some Greek au-
thor; lower your style to my level." There were also Isa-
bella de Joya, who commented on Scotus Erigena; Cath-
erine Bibera, the bard of love and faith; Dona Maria
Pacheco de Mendoza; Bernarda Ferreyra, to whom, on
account of her rare scholarship, Lopez de Vega dedicated
his beautiful elegy Phillis; Juana Morella, who, besides

Called La Latina, because of her thorough knowledge of the
Latin language.

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 69

having a profound knowledge of music, philosophy, divin-
ity and jurisprudence, was the mistress of fourteen lan-
guages; Juana de la Cruz, the famous Mexican nun whose
poetry of superior merit, as well as her exceptional attain-
ments in many branches of knowledge, won for her the
epithet of the " Tenth Muse"; Luisa Sigea, who besides
being a poet was a mistress of the classical and several
oriental languages, including Hebrew and Syro-Chaldaic,
and other learned women whom * ' no one was astonished to
see taking by main force the first rank in the spheres of
literature, philosophy and theology."

So profoundly had the Renaissance affected the women
of a limited circle in England, that Erasmus could declare
without exaggeration: "It is charming to see the female
sex demand classical instruction. The queen is remarkably
learned and her daughter writes good Latin. The home
of More is truly the abode of the Muses."

The queen of whom Erasmus speaks is Catherine of Ara-
gon, who was educated in Spain, who was a pupil of Vives,
and who, besides having a thorough knowledge of Latin
and Greek, was well acquainted with several modern lan-
guages. The daughters of Sir Thomas More were among
the most learned women of their time and were, indeed,
worthy of dwelling in "the home of the Muses."

Lady Jane Grey read Plato in the original at the age of
thirteen.1 Anne, Margaret and Jane Seymour were like-
wise celebrated for their knowledge of the classics, as were
Anne Boleyn and Mary Stuart, who both received their
education in France, and especially Queen Elizabeth, who

iThe famous Hellenist, Eoger Ascham, tells of his astonishment
on finding Lady Jane Grey, when she was only fourteen years of age,
reading Plato's Phaedo in Greek, when all the other members of
the family were amusing themselves in the park. On his inquiry why
she did not join the others in their pastime, she smilingly replied:
"I wit all their sport in the park is but a shadow to that pleasure
I find in Plato. Alas, good folk, they never knew what true pleasure
meant. ' '

70 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

was not only one of the most learned women of her time but
was probably also the most learned queen England has ever
produced. There were, however, no university professors
or poets of eminence among the English women, as there
were in Italy and Spain, and their creative work was prac-
tically nothing.

Since the time of Hroswitha, Gertrude, the Matildas and
Hildegard, the learned woman has never been the ideal
woman in Germany. When Olympia Morati was on her
way from Ferrara to Heidelberg to take the chair of Greek,
she found the daughters of professors and humanists de-
voting themselves to sewing and embroidery instead of art
and literature. Anna, the eldest daughter of Melanchthon,
was almost alone among the German women of the Renais-
sance who had a knowledge of Latin.

In Prance the most learned woman of her time was un-
doubtedly Margaret of Angouleme, queen of Navarre. So
great was her knowledge and so enthusiastic was she in
promoting the study of the Latin and Greek classics that
Michelet, with something of exaggeration, perhaps, calls
her "the amiable mother of the Renaissance in France." x
She was noted for her devotion to the study of Scripture
and theology as well as Greek and Hebrew. She always
had around her, or was in correspondence with, the most
distinguished scholars, poets, artists, philosophers and the-
ologians of the age, and undoubtedly did much, as a patron-
ess of men of letters, toward furthering the literary move-
ment in France. She is, however, chiefly known to modern
readers by her Heptameron — a work which reveals too
clearly the tastes of her associates and the manners and cus-
toms of the time.

iTo the poet Eonsard, she was a woman beyond compare, as is
evinced by the following lines of a pastoral ode addressed to her:

"La Eoyne Marguerite,
La plus belle fleur d 'elite
Qu'onques la terre enfanta."

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 71

With the exception of Margaret of Navarre, there were
but few literary women of more than ephemeral reputa-
tion during the French Renaissance. Among these Louise
Labe deserves mention, as she was the most distinguished
poetess in France during the sixteenth century.1 She, like
Margaret, was the center of a coterie of men of letters ; but
the reunions over which she presided, as well as those of
the author of the Heptameron, were entirely lacking in the
dignity and refinement of those of the polished court of
Urbino in the days of the peerless Elizabetta Gonzaga.

From what has been said respecting the rare learning of
the women of the Renaissance, one might infer that women
in general enjoyed special educational facilities during this
period of intellectual activity. Paradoxical as it may seem,
the very contrary was the case. For, as history tells us,
the education of the Renaissance was essentially aristo-
cratic. It was only for the women of the nobility and for
the wives and daughters of scholars, while the great ma-
jority of the sex remained in a state of complete illiteracy.

The environment of the daughters of scholars was pe-
culiarly favorable to their intellectual development, and
learning was in a certain measure their natural heritage.
They did not receive their education in schools, for there
were then few or no schools for girls, but from their fathers
or from the men of letters who frequented their homes. A
typical home of this kind was that of the noted savant,
Robert Estienne of Paris, printer to Francis I. Here the
language of conversation was Latin, not only for the mem-
bers of the family but also for the servants as well.2 Under

1 Cf . (Euvres de Lovize Labe, nouvelle edition emprimee en carac-
teres dits de civilite, Paris, 1871.

2 The French poet, Jean Dorat, who was then professor of Latin
in the College de France, expresses this fact in the following strophe :

"Nempe uxor, ancillse, clientes, liberi;

Non segnis examen domus,
Quo Plautus ore, quo Terentius, Solent
Quotidiane loqui. "

72 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

such conditions we are not surprised to be informed that
the girls, as well as the boys, learned to speak Latin as well
as their mother tongue. And listening, as they did, to the
daily discussions on art and literature by the most learned
men of a most learned age, it was inevitable that they
should acquire those vast stores of knowledge on all sub-
jects that so excite the astonishment of our less studious
women of to-day.

With the daughters of the nobility it was the same. In
their youth they had, under the paternal roof, the benefit
of the instruction of the most eminent masters of the time.
And as they grew up their constant intercourse with
learned men and the part they took in all literary and
social assemblies, which were so prominent a feature of the
period, enabled them to complete their education under the
most favorable auspices, and to have, before they were out
of their teens, a fund of information on all subjects that
could not be obtained so well, even in the best of our mod-
ern institutions of learning.

It was to these daughters of the elite — ingenuce puellce —
that Erasmus and Vives addressed their treatises on educa-
tion. They were the privileged class at whose disposition
were placed all the treasures of Greek and Latin letters.
It was, then, an easy matter for them to write poetry and
dissertations in the languages of Horace and Plato. And
it was often a necessity for them to speak Latin, for it was
then the universal language of the learned — the language
that was understood everywhere — in England as in Italy,
in Germany as in France, in Flanders as well as in Spain
and Portugal.

It was then that The Republic of Letters was a reality as
never before; that the man of letters was, of a truth, "a
citizen of the world"; that his country was wherever the
cult of letters had priests or devotees. He was what the
ballad singer was during the Middle Ages, but with more
dignity and seriousness. He was the agent and represen-

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 73

tative of intellectual life, the living symbol of the unity
and solidarity of the human mind. And as in time he
linked the past to the present so likewise in space he bound
all peoples together and belonged equally to all. Such was
Erasmus of Holland, who was equally at home in France
and Switzerland, in Italy and England — everywhere re-
ceived with the honor accorded to princes of the blood
royal. Such was Vives, of Spain, the teacher of Catherine
of Aragon, of Mary, the daughter of Henry VIII — at one
time professor in Louvain, at another in Oxford — always
and everywhere an ardent exponent of humanism for
women as well as for men. Such was Politian and such
were scores of his contemporaries, who carried the torch of
knowledge from castle to castle and from court to court,
where maidens equally with youths enjoyed all the advan-
tages derivable from the lessons of such distinguished
teachers and such eminent leaders of culture.

For it was a peculiarity of the scholar of the Renais-
sance that he was a great traveler — seeking knowledge
wherever it was to be found — and carrying it with him
whithersoever he went. He journeyed from university to
university, everywhere exchanging views with his intellec-
tual compeers, and everywhere diffusing the knowledge he
had so laboriously acquired. The consequence was a won-
derful uniformity of education among the higher classes —
among women as well as among men — something that was
never known before. Through the generally diffused
knowledge of Latin, the common literary medium of com-
munication, all the nations of Europe, even those at war
with one another, were brought together in an intellectual
brotherhood and in a way which gave scholarship a power
and a prestige that accrued to the benefit of women and
men alike.

But the educational advantages enjoyed by the women of
the Renaissance were not for the bourgeoisie — not for the
daughters of peasants, tradesmen and artisans. They were

74 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

solely, as has been stated, for the benefit of the children of
princes or of scholars — of those only who could claim either
nobility of birth or nobility of genius.1 Even the most
zealous of the humanists would have been surprised if
they had been asked to diffuse a portion of their light
among the women of the masses. For education, as they
viewed it, was something solely for the elect — for ladies of
the court and not for women of a lower condition. So far
as the rest of womankind was concerned, their occupation
was limited, according to a Breton saying, to looking after
altar, hearth, and children — "La, femme se doit garder
I'autel, le feu, les enfants."

It was about this time, too, that men began, especially in
France and Germany, to revive the anti-feminist crusade
which had so retarded the literary movement among the
women of ancient Greece and Home. They refused to hear
women and intellect spoken of together. The Germans
recognized no intelligence in them apart from domestic
duties, and seemed to belong to that strange race, that has
not yet died out, which believes woman to be * * afflicted with
the radical incapacity to acquire an individual idea."
"What the Italians called intelligence a German would
call tittle-tattle, trickery, the spirit of opposition. They
rejected such gratifications and had no intention of allow-
ing Delilah to shear them."2

iA prominent writer of the time, Jean Bouchet, expressed the
prevailing opinion regarding the education of the women of the
masses in the following quaint sentence: "Je suis bien d 'opinion
que les femmes de bas estat, et qui sont contrainctes vaquer aux
choses familieres et domestiques, ne doivent vaquer aux lettres,
parce que c'est chose repugnante a rusticite; mais, les roynes, prin-
cesses et aultres dames qui ne se doibvent pour reverence de leur
estat, appliquer a mesnage." Cf. Bousellot's Histoire ds I'Educa-
tion des Femmes en France, Tom. I, p. 109, Paris, 1883.

His ideal of a woman of the peasant type was apparently Joan
of Arc, who, according to her own declaration, did not know a
from b — "elle declarait ne savoir ni a ni b."

2 Claviere, op. cit., p. 415.

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 75

In the estimation of Luther, the intellectual aspirations
of women were not only an absurdity, but were also a
positive peril. "Take them," he says, "from their house-
wifery and they are good for nothing." He treated the
humanist Vives, preceptor of Mary Tudor, as " a dangerous
spirit, ' ' because the learned Spaniard was an ardent advo-
cate of the higher education of women. As to abstract and
severe studies they were for girls, according to one of Luth-
er's contemporaries, but "vain and futile quackeries."
For an accomplished woman to quote the Fathers or the
ancient classical writers was to provoke ridicule, because to
do so was considered an indication of pedantry or affecta-
tion. Montaigne gave expression to the age-old prejudice
against woman by refusing to regard her as anything but a
pretty animal, while Rabelais, the coryphaeus of the French
Renaissance, declared that ' ' Nature in creating woman lost
the good sense which she had displayed in the creation of
all other things. ' '

Such being the views of the great leaders of thought and
formers of public opinion respecting the mental inferiority
of woman — views which, outside of Italy, had, with few
exceptions, the cordial approval of the supercilious, cocka-
hoop male — is it necessary to add that the Renaissance did
nothing for popular education? The masses of women, es-
pecially after the suppression of the convent schools in
England and Germany, were, in many parts of Europe,
and notably in the two countries mentioned, in a worse
condition than they were during the Dark Ages.1

i The noted English divine, Thomas Fuller, chaplain to Charles II,
recognized the irreparable loss to women occasioned by the destruc-
tion of the nunneries by the Eef onners. ' * There were, ' ' he tells us in
his quaint language, "good she schools wherein the girls and maids

of the neyghborhood were taught to read and work Yea, give

me leave to say, if such feminine foundations had still continued,
haply the weaker sex, besides the avoiding modern inconveni-
ences, might be heyghtened to a higher perfection than hitherto hath
been attained." Church History, Vol. Ill, p. 336, 1845.

76 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

WOMAN AND EDUCATION BETWEEN THE RENAISSANCE AND THE
TWENTIETH CENTURY

The period following the Renaissance was not a brilliant
one for woman, especially outside of Italy. For in this fa-
vored land, even after the decadence in literature that fol-
lowed the glorious cinquecento, intellectual life opposed so
effective a barrier to the forces of extinction which were at
work in other parts of Europe, notably Germany and Eng-
land, that there were still in every part of the peninsula
from the fertile plains of Lombardy to the sunny Ionian
sea, learned and cultured women who were eager to emu-
late the achievements of their illustrious sisters of Italy's
golden age of art, and letters. We do not, it is true, find
among them a Properzia de Rossi, a Veronica Gambara, or
a Vittoria Colonna ; but we find many earnest and enthusi-
astic students in every department of knowledge.

That which most impresses the student of education dur-
ing this period of Italian history is not the splendor of art
and letters in court and castle, which so dazzled Europe
during the time of Renee of Ferrara and Elizabetta Gon-
zaga of Urbino. We find, it is true, a goodly number of
women who won distinction as poets and artists; but it is
rather those who were devoted to more serious studies that
arrest our attention — women who attained eminence in
physical and natural science, in mathematics, in the class-
ical and oriental languages, in philosophy, law and theol-
ogy. Space precludes the mention of more than a few of
these, but these few may be accepted as typical of many
others almost equally distinguished.

Chief among those of whom their countrymen are special-
ly proud are Rosanna Somaglia Landi, of Milan, linguist
and translator of Anacreon; Maria Selvaggia Borghini, of
Pisa, translator of the works of Tertullian ; Eleonora Bar-
bapiccola, of Salerno, who translated into Italian the Prin-
cipa Philosophic^ of Descartes; Maria Angela Arginghelli,

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 77

of Naples, who was famed for her profound knowledge of
physics and the higher mathematics and who gave an Ital-
ian version of Stephen Hales* Vegetable Statics. Then
there was Clelia Grillo Borromeo, of Genoa, who was so
distinguished in science, mathematics, mechanics and lan-
guages that a medal was struck in her honor bearing the
inscription, Gloria Genuensium — glory of the Genoese ; and
the still more famous Elena Cornaro Piscopia, of Venice,
who was truly a prodigy of learning as well as a paragon
of virtue. In addition to a knowledge of many modern,
classical and oriental tongues, she exhibited remarkable
proficiency in astronomy, mathematics, music, philosophy
and theology. After a course of study in the University of
Padua and after the usual examination and discourse in
classic Latin on some of the questions of Aristotelian phi-
losophy, she had the doctorate of philosophy conferred on
her in the cathedral of Padua, in the presence of thousands
of learned men and applauding students from all parts of
Europe. But not content with conferring on this extraor-
dinary woman the ring, wreath of laurel and the ermine
mozetta — the usual insignia of the doctorate — the Univer-
sity, as a special mark of distinction, had a medal coined in
honor of the illustrious graduate bearing her effigy, with
the words, as the decree of the University expressed it,
ad perpetuam rei memoriam. That there was nothing
superficial about this young woman's knowledge of lan-
guages, it suffices to state that she was able to speak Latin
and Greek as fluently as her own Italian, and that so pro-
found was her knowledge of divinity that there were many
distinguished ecclesiastics in both Italy and France who
favored conferring on her the doctorate in theology.

Among other young women who obtained the doctorate
in various universities were Maddalena Canedi-Noe and
Maria Vittoria Dosi who, after the usual course of study
in the university of Bologna, obtained the degree of doctor
of civil law, and Maria Pellegrina Amoretti, who received

78 JVOMAN IN SCIENCE

the degree of doctor in both canon and civil law in the
University of Pavia and with it the doctor 's cap — berreto
dottorale. But more remarkable for learning than any of
these university graduates was Maria Gaetana Agnesi, one
of the most extraordinary women scholars of all time. On
account of her wonderful knowledge of languages she was
called "The Oracle of Seven Tongues." This, however, is
not her chief title to fame. It is rather her marvelous
achievements in the domain of the higher mathematics.
After the appearance of her most noted work, Instituzioni
Analytiche, she would at once have been elected a member
of the French Academy of Sciences had not the laws of this
learned body precluded the admission of women.1 That
great Maecenas of learning, Benedict XIV, showed his ap-
preciation of Maria Gaetana 's exceptional attainments by
appointing her — motu proprio — to the chair of higher
mathematics in the University of Bologna. A similar hon-
or had, in the preceding century, been conferred on Marta
Marchina, of Naples, when, on account of her rare knowl-
edge of letters, philosophy and theology, she was offered a
chair in the Sapienza, in Rome, an honor which her modesty
and love of retirement caused her to decline.

We have seen that women professors achieved distinction
in the Italian universities even as early as the closing cen-
turies of the Middle Ages. The same was true during the
Renaissance, and it has been equally true during the period
that has elapsed since the cinquecento.

Among the most eminent of those who taught in the uni-
versities were Laura Bassi, who had the chair of physics
in the University of Bologna, and Clotilde Tambroni, pro-
fessor of the Greek language and literature in the same
institution of learning. So thorough was her knowledge
of the language of Plato that it was the opinion of her con-
temporaries that there were then only three persons in

iM. Thureau Dangin, the perpetual secretary of the French
Academy, wrote, "La tradition ne veut pas d 'academieiennes. ' ;

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 79

Europe who equaled her in her mastery of this classic
tongue. It was this distinguished Hellenist who graciously
delivered the address when one of her countrywomen,
Maria dalle Donne, received her doctorate in medicine and
surgery. After her graduation Dr. dalle Donne was given
charge of a school for midwives in which she rendered the
greatest service to her sex. Even the chair of anatomy in
the University of Bologna was held by a woman, Anna
Morandi-Menzolini, and her work was of the highest order.
The same position was held by another woman, Maria Pet-
raccini-Terretti, in the University of Ferrara.

What a contrast between the attitude of the universities
of Italy and those of other parts of the world toward
women as students and professors! For a thousand years
the doors of the Italian universities have been open to
women, as well as to men ; and for a thousand years women,
as well as men, have received their degrees from these noble
and liberal institutions, and occupied the most important
positions in their gift, and that, too, with the approval and
encouragement of both spiritual and temporal rulers. For
these wise and broad-minded men did not regard it un-
womanly for Laura Bassi to teach physics, for Clotilde
Tambroni to teach Greek, for Dorotea Bucca to teach med-
icine, for Maria Gaetana to teach differential and integral
calculus, for Anna Morandi to teach anatomy, for Novella
d 'Andrea to teach canon law, or even, if we may believe
Denifle, one of the best of authorities, for the daughters of
a Paris professor to teach theology.1 Yes, what a contrast,
indeed, between the Universities of Bologna and Padua,
with their long and honored list of women graduates and

1 Carlyle, in a lecture on Dante, and the Divina Commedia, de-
clares that " Italy has produced a greater number of great men than
any other nation, men distinguished in art, thinking, conduct, and
everywhere in the departments of intellect." He could with equal
truth have said that Italy has produced more great women than any
other nation.

80 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

professors, and the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford
from which women have always been and are still excluded,
both as students and professors.

Contrast, also, the honors shown to women as students
and professors of medicine in Salerno, in the thirteenth
century, with the riots excited among the chivalrous male
students of the University of Edinburgh, when, less than a
half century ago, seven young women applied for the privi-
lege of attending the courses of lectures on medicine and
surgery in that institution. And contrast the sympathy
and encouragement of Italy with the almost brutal opposi-
tion which women in our own country encountered when,
but a few decades ago, they applied for admittance to the
medical schools of New York and Philadelphia. The dif-
ference between the Italian and the Anglo-Saxon attitude
toward women in the all-important matters in question re-
quires no comment.1 V

One reason for the great difference between the women
of Italy and those of other parts of Europe in the matter
of higher education during the period we have been consid-
ering was the old Eoman spirit of independence of the
former and their always insisting on what they regarded
as their natural and indefeasible rights. Following the
example of the matrons of ancient Rome, they insisted on
being treated as the equals of men, and, as a consequence,
they demanded in the intellectual order all the advantages
that were accorded to men. They would never admit their
mental inferiority to man, and woe betide the luckless
wight who even insinuated such inferiority. The shafts
of satire and ridicule were at once directed against him by
a score of women who were able to use the pen as well as,
if not better than, himself. Sometimes, however, such an
one was taken seriously, and then the result was a book by

i Medical Women, p. 63, et seq., by Sophia Jex-Blake, Edin-
burgh, 1886, and Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession
to Women, Chap. Ill, by Elizabeth Blackwell, London, 1895.

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 81

some clever woman to prove that there was no difference in
the intellectual power of the two sexes — that, if there was
a difference, it was in favor of the gentler sex. There is
quite a large number of such works in Italian ; and it must
be said that the women always met the arguments of their
adversaries in a manner that does them the greatest credit.

It was probably because of their insistence on the equal-
ity of the sexes, as well as because of their achievements in
every department of mental activity, that the educated
women of Italy enjoyed so many privileges denied their
sisters in other parts of Europe. Thus, in addition to
being treated as the equals of men in the universities, they
met them on an equal footing in the art, literary and scien-
tific societies and academies, in the proceedings of which
they always exhibited an active and enthusiastic interest.
In these reunions the women gained strength of mind and
independence of character from the men, while the men
imbibed refinement and gentleness from the women. Com-
pare this condition with the systematic exclusion of women
from similar societies in other countries — even in this twen-
tieth century of ours — and one of the not least potent rea-
sons for the intellectual supremacy of the women of Italy
will be apparent.

Next after Italy, France was the country in which, dur-
ing the post-Renaissance period, women enjoyed the great-
est advantages of mental development. But we look in
vain, even during the age of Louis XIV, for that flowering
of the female intellect that, at the same period, rendered
the daughters of Italy so famous. It is true that there was
a certain number of learned women in France during the
seventeenth century, and notably during the golden age of
Louis XIV, for during this period the traditions of the
Renaissance were perpetuated and there was still a lin-
gering love of letters, at least among certain classes of the
aristocracy.

Prominent among those who attracted attention for their

82 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

learning were Gilberte and Jaqueline Pascal, of the cele-
brated convent of Port Royal; Marie-Eleonore de Rohan
and Gabrielle de Rochechouart, both, like the Pascal sisters,
inmates of the cloister ; Marie Cramoisy, wife of the first
director of the royal printing office, and Mile, de Luynes,
a friend of Pascal. All these counted among their attain-
ments a writing knowledge of Latin, but were far from
being able, like the Italian women above mentioned, to
speak it with the same fluency as they did their mother
tongue.

In addition to the learned French women just named,
there was Elisabeth de Rochechouart, a niece of Mme. de
Montespan, who was able to read Plato in Greek, and Anne
de Rohan, Princess of Guemene, who surprised her country-
men by studying Hebrew. Then there were Mme. de Grig-
nan, Marie Dupre, Louise Serment, Anne de La Vigne,
who, like the Princess Palatine, Elisabeth, and Christine
of Sweden, were ardent disciples of Descartes, and took
the lead among the femmes philosophes of their time.

But for profound and varied scholarship Mme. Dacier,
the daughter of the erudite Tanquil Le Fevre, was the
most famous of all the women of her time in France. Pos-
sessed of rare power of eloquence and beauty of style, to-
gether with an extraordinary capacity for criticism, there
was not a man in Europe who did not respect her judgment
in matters of literature and culture. But that for which
she was specially celebrated was her exceptional knowledge
of Latin and Greek. She not only translated the Iliad and
the Odyssey but also several other of the ancient classics.
None of her contemporaries had a more thorough mastery
of the tongues of Homer and Virgil, nor did any of her
countrymen contribute more than she toward the advance-
ment of the knowledge of the literature of ancient Greece
and Rome. So highly prized was her version of the Iliad
that it was translated by Ozell into English. Her version
of Plato's Phaedo was also translated into English and

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 83

published by a New York bookseller more than a century
after her death. The scholarly Menagius, in his Historia
Mulierum Philosopharum, did not hesitate to pronounce
her the most learned woman of all time — Feminarum quot
sunt, quot fuere doctissima.1

To Mme. de Maintenon, the morganatic wife of the Great
Monarch, is due the Institut de Saint-Cyr, the first state
school for girls founded in France. It was, however, solely
for the daughters of the nobility. And, although it was
from the first under the direction of the foundress, a
woman who was before all else a teacher as well as one of
the most enlightened women of the most literary and philo-
sophic age France ever knew — the age when the French
language was perfected, the age of the Academy, of Boileau,
Moliere, Kacine, Bossuet, Descartes — the studies prescribed
in this institution, which was under the special patronage
of the king, were of the most elementary character. They
comprised reading, writing, arithmetic, grammar, music,
drawing, dancing, and the elements of history, mythology
and geography. As to history, Mme. de Maintenon was
satisfied if the pupils of Saint-Cyr knew enough not to con-
found the kings of France with those of other nations, and
were able to avoid mistaking a Roman emperor for the
Emperor of China or Japan ; or the King of Spain or Eng-
land for the King of Persia or Siam. And yet, restricted
as it was, her programme of studies was more complete
than that of any other girls' school in the kingdom. One
of her reasons for not insisting on a more thorough course
was that ' ' women never know but by halves, and the little
that they do know usually makes them proud, haughty and
talkative and disgusted with solid things."2

i Mme. Dacier was a remarkable exception chiefly because she was
the daughter and pupil of one Hellenist before becoming the wife
of another.

^Lettres et Entretiens sur I'Education de Filles, Tom. I, pp.
225-231.

Compare this superficial course of study at Saint-Cyr with the

84, WOMAN IN SCIENCE

In Saint- Cyr, the best girls' school in the kingdom, there
was not a word about the first principles of philosophy, nor
about the physical and natural sciences recommended by
Fenelon. The elements just referred to, combined with a
goodly amount of esprit — bien de I' esprit — were considered
quite sufficient to prepare the future wives of the nobility
for all the duties they would be called upon to perform.

Mme. de Maintenon had probably been unconsciously in-
fluenced by what she had seen at the court of her liege
lord, where the greater part of the women were extremely
ignorant. Even Mme. de Montespan, the king's favorite,
and for years the leading figure at the court, was no excep-
tion. So ignorant was she that she was not even able to
spell the simplest and most common words.1

elaborate course mapped out by Lionardo d'Arezzo in a letter ad-
dressed to the illustrious lady, Baptista Malatesta. In the broad
programme of education for women recommended by this eminent
man of letters, "poet, orator, historian, and the rest, all must be
studied, each must contribute a share. Our learning thus becomes
full, ready, varied, elegant, available for action or for discourse on
all subjects."

Lionardo fs curriculum of studies for women was quite as com-
prehensive as that required for men, ' ' with perhaps a little less stress
upon rhetoric and more upon religion. There was no assumption that
a lower standard of attainment is inevitably a consequence of smaller
capacity. ' '

Nor was this thorough study of letters by the women of Italy
"unfavorably regarded by social opinion"; neither did it introduce
"a new standard of womanly activity. Women, indeed, at this epoch,
seem to have preserved their moral and intellectual balance under
the stress of the new enthusiasm better than men. The learned
ladies were, in actual life, good wives and mothers, domestic and
virtuous women of strong judgment and not seldom of marked
capacity in affairs." Cf. Vittorino da Feltre and Other Humanist
Educators, pp. 122, 132, 197, by W. H. Woodward, Cambridge, 1905.

iThus, in a letter of hers to Mme. de Lauzun occurs a sentence
like the following: "11 lia sy lontant que je n'ay antandu parler
de vous. ' ' The duchess of Monpensier, daughter of Gaston d 'Orleans,
in a letter to her father exhibits a similar ignorance of her own Ian-

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 85

And so it was with the most illustrious ladies of France.
Many of them were so devoid of instruction that they were
unable either to read or to write. Even the teachers in
Saint-Cyr were so deficient in the simplest rudiments of
an education that Mme. de Maintenon found it necessary
to correct their letters, in order to teach them the most
essential rules of epistolary correspondence. In reality,
the women of the age of Louis XIV did not trouble them-
selves about an education as we understand it. Endowed
with esprit, with a natural and acquired taste for things
intellectual, they were satisfied with such knowledge as
they could glean from reading or conversation, and with
comparatively few exceptions, showed no disposition to de-
vote long years to study in school, much less in a university,
as did their sisters to the south of the Alps.

The foundress of Saint-Cyr had likewise been influenced
by her environment as well as by the court — an environ-
ment which was becoming daily more and more unfavorable
to the education, especially anything approaching the high-
er education, of women. A young woman's education was
considered complete when she was able to read, write, dance
and play some musical instrument. Anything more was
deemed superfluous and deserving of censure and ridicule
rather than praise.

It was at this time that Moliere's two celebrated plays,
Les Femmes Savantes and Les Precieuses Ridicules, were
given to the world. These well-known productions, replete
with the author 's brightest flashes of wit, and abounding in
his most effective shafts of satire, produced at once an im-
mense sensation. As soon as published, they were in the
hands of everybody. Those who were opposed to the edu-
cation of women — and the number was daily increasing —

guage, when she writes: "J'ai cru que Votre Altesse seret Men e"se
de savoir sete istoire." Quoted by Eousselot in his Histoire d&
I'Education des Femmes en France, Tom. I, p. 287.

86 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

had recourse to them as to arsenals which supplied them
with just the arms they had so long needed to decide in
their favor the long warfare which they had been conduct-
ing against the gentler sex. The views of the bourgeois
Chrysale as expressed to his sister, Belise, were so in har-
mony with their own that they loved on every occasion to
repeat with him:

"No,

It isn't decent, and for many reasons,
That womankind should study and know too much.
To teach her children what is right and wrong,
Manage her household, oversee her servants,
And keep expenses within bounds, should be
Her only study and philosophy.

Our fathers, on this point, showed great good sense;
They said a woman always knows enough
If but her understanding reaches
To telling, one from t'other, coat and breeches.
Their wives, who couldn't read, led honest lives,
Their households were their only learned theme,
And all their books were thimble, thread and needles.
With which they made their daughters' wedding outfits,
But now our women scorn to live like that;
They want to write and all be authoresses.
They think no knowledge is too deep for them."1

Holier e's intention in writing these justly famous come-
dies was not, as is so often asserted, to ridicule women of
learning, but only those superficial pedants who affected
knowledge or loved to make a display of the little knowl-
edge they happened to possess. The result, however, was
quite different from what had been intended, for the poet 's
pleasantries were taken so seriously, that even women of
real learning, in order to avoid ridicule, were condemned
to absolute silence. The comic dramatist, Destouches, ex-
pressed the prevailing opinion when he wrote :

iLes Femmes Savantes, Act II, Scene 7.

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 87

"Une femme savante
Doit cacher son savoir, ou c'est une imprudente." *

Few French women thereafter had the courage to defend
their sex, as did their sisters in Italy, and the result was
that, with a few exceptions, like Mme. du Chatelet, Sophie
Germain, and Mme. Lepaute, there were no more learned
women in France for fully two centuries.

Never did satire and ridicule accomplish more, except
probably in the case of Don Quixote — that masterly crea-
tion of Cervantes which dealt the death-blow to knight-
errantry — than did Les Femmes Savantes and Les Pre-
cieuses Ridicules. The learned woman became as much an
object of derision in France as was the knight-errant in
Spain.

It was not, however, in the nature of the French woman,
with all her vivacity and energy, to be suppressed entirely
or to be relegated for long to the background in things of

1 Destouches, in his L 'Homme singulier, makes one of his female
characters, who loves study, speak in the following pathetic fashion:

"A learned woman ought — so I surmise —
Conceal her knowledge, or she'll be unwise.
If pedantry a mental blemish be
At all times outlawed by society,
If 'gainst a pedant all the world inveighs,
Shall pass unchecked in woman pedant's ways?
I hold it sure, condemned my sex is quite
To trifling nothings as its sole birthright;
Eidiculous 'tis thought outside its ' sphere';
The learned woman dare not such appear;
Nay, she must even cloak her brilliancy
So envy leave in peace stupidity;
Must keep the level of the common kind,
To subjects commonplace devote her mind,
And treating these she must be like the rest.
Lo, in such garb refinement must be dressed:
That knowledge shall not make her seem unwise,
She must herself in foolishness disguise. ' '

—Act III, Scene 7.

88 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

the mind. But, not then daring to face the ridicule which
was inevitable, if she devoted herself to science or philos-
ophy, she sought a substitute for her intellectual activity
in the salon.

The first salon was established by an Italian woman, the
Marquise de Rambouillet, in 1617, and was modeled after
the famous reunions held at the court of Urbino under
Elizabetta Gonzaga, a century before. Although it never
exhibited the splendor of its Italian prototype, the Hotel
de Rambouillet was for more than fifty years the most im-
portant literary center of the kind in France. Here, owing
to the tact, esprit, and magnetic personality of Mme. de
Rambouillet, were gathered the most distinguished men
and women of the time. Among them were poets, philos-
ophers, statesmen, ecclesiastics and ladies of rank, whose
names still dazzle us by their brilliancy. Bossuet, Moliere,
La Fontaine, Corneille and the great Conde were there;
so were Flechier, Balzac, Voiture, Saint-Evremont, Des-
cartes and La Rochefoucauld; and so, too, were Mme. de
Sevigne, the Duchess of Montpensier, Madeleine de Scu-
dery, La Comtesse de La Fayette, Charlotte de Montmor-
ency, and Cardinal Richelieu who got from this noted salon
the idea which led to his greatest foundation— the French
Academy.

It was Mme. de Rambouillet who, through her reunions
in her exquisite Chavribre Bleue, for the first time brought
together elements that were previously considered as be-
longing to different castes. It was she, also, who created
modern society with its purely intellectual hierarchy, by
having the representatives of the nobility meet men of
science and letters on an equal footing. It seems to us
now the most natural thing in the world for a great savant,
a great poet, or a great philosopher, to be received in the
same salon with the Duchess of Montpensier — La Grande
Mademoiselle — but it was far from being so when the bril-
liant young Italian matron — for she was a daughter of the

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 89

noble Roman family of the Savelli — began her epoch-
making work in the Hotel de Rambouillet, where, after
overcoming countless difficulties and prejudices, she even-
tually succeeded in bringing together, and in enlisting in
a common cause, the nobility of birth and the nobility of
intellect, and introducing into the exclusive set of Paris
the same kind of social coteries that had so long been popu-
lar in Urbino and Ferrara.

The Hotel de Rambouillet was the exemplar of that long
series of salons which, for two centuries, were the favorite
trysting-places of the talent, the wit, the beauty of Europe,
and which exerted such a potent influence on society and
on the progress of science and literature. The mistress of
the salon was supreme, and she maintained her supremacy
by her tact, sympathy, intelligence and mental alertness,
rather than by learning and superior mental power.

Indeed, it is a singular fact that very few of the salon-
ieres were learned women. The most gifted and the most
learned of them were Mile. Lespinasse, Mme. de Stael, and
Mme. Swetchine. Mme. Geoffrin, who was of bourgeois
origin, was so devoid of education that Voltaire said she
was unable to write two lines correctly. And yet, despite
her educational limitations, she became, by her own un-
aided efforts, the queen of intellectual Europe.

And, if we may judge by their portraits, most of the
great leaders of salons were homely, if not positively ugly,
and many of them were advanced in years. Thus, Mme.
du Deffand — the female Voltaire — was sixty-eight years
old and blind when her friendship with Horace Walpole,
one of the wittiest Englishmen who ever lived, began — a
friendship that endured until her death at the age of
eighty-three. The face of Mile, de Lespinasse was disfig-
ured by smallpox and her eyesight was impaired ; and yet,
without rank, wealth or beauty, she was the pivot around
which circled the talent and fashion of Paris, and whose
personal magnetism was so great that the state, the church,

90 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

the court, as well as foreign countries, had their most dis-
tinguished representatives in her salon.

Here she received and entertained her friends every
evening from five until nine o 'clock. ' ' It was, ' ' writes La
Harpe, "almost a title to consideration to be received into
this society. " So great was the influence exerted by Mile,
de Lespinasse that she bent savants to her will by the sheer
force of genius. Her salon became known as "the ante-
chamber of the French Academy ' ' ; for it was asserted that
half the academicians of her time owed their fauteuils to
her active canvass in their behalf. And so successful was
she in opening the lips and minds of her habitues, whether
an historian like Hume, a philosopher like Condillac, a
statesman like Turgot, a mathematician like d'Alembert, a
litterateur like Marmontel or an encyclopedist like Con-
dorcet, that it was said of her that she made "marble feel
and matter think."

She was a veritable enchantress of the great and the
learned of her time. She did not, however, wield her
magic wand through her learning, or the accident of birth,
or the physical attractions of person, but solely by reason
of her wonderful vivacity, charm of mind, and exquisite
tact, which consisted, as those who knew her well tell us,
"in the art of saying to each that which suits him," and
in "making the best of the minds of others, of interesting
them, and of bringing them into play without any appear-
ance of constraint or effort." This rare faculty it was
which secured for her a supremacy in the world of thought
and action that has been accorded to but few women in
the world 's history. Vibrant with emotion and passion, she
reminds one of the gifted but hapless Heloise. Marmontel,
who had such a high opinion of her judgment that he sub-
mitted his works for her criticism, as Moliere had sub-
mitted his to Ninon de Lenclos, describes her as "the
keenest intelligence, the most ardent soul, the most inflam-
mable imagination that has existed since Sappho."

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 91

But aside from what she achieved indirectly through the
habitues of her salon, what has this supremely clever woman
left to the world? Only a few love letters to a heartless
coxcomh.

And what have the other noted salonieres from the time
of the Marquise de Eamhouillet to that of Mme. Swetchine
— full two centuries — bequeathed to us that is worth pre-
serving? With the exception of the works of Mme. de
Stael, whom Lord Jeffrey declared to be "the greatest fe-
male writer in any age or country," we have little more
than certain Memoires and Correspondences whose chief
claims to fame rest on the vivid pictures which they pre-
sent of the manners and customs of the time and of the
celebrities who were regarded as the chief ornaments of
the salons which they severally frequented. Most of these
works were posthumous; for few women, after Moliere's
merciless scoring of learned women, had the courage to
appear in print. Even Mme. de Scudery, one of the most
gifted and prolific writers of the period, gave her first
novel to the world under her brother's name. And so
tabooed was female authorship that Mme. de La Fayette,
one of the most brilliant of the precieuses, disclaimed all
knowledge of her Princesse de Cleves, while her master-
piece, Histoire d'Henriette d'Angleterre, was not published
until after her death.

The truth is that the period of the salon was for the
most part a period of contrasts and contradictions. At
first the better educated salonieres were chiefly interested
in belles-lettres. Then they devoted themselves more to
science and philosophy, and finally, during the years im-
mediately preceding the Revolution, they found their
greatest pleasure in politics. As for the men, while pro-
fessing to adore women, they had little esteem for them,
and still less respect. Often, it is true, the women who
frequented the salons were deserving neither of respect nor
of esteem.

92 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

Sydney Smith spoke of those under the old regime as
" women of brilliant talents who violated all the common
duties of life and gave very pleasant little suppers." It
was certainly true of many of them — even of some of the
most distinguished — such, for instance, as Mme. d'Epinay,
Mme. du Deffand, Ninon de Lenclos and Mme. Tencin, the
mother of D'Alembert. There was little in their manner
of life to distinguish them from the hetcerce of ancient
Athens, and it was probably owing to this fact, as well as
their wit and brilliancy, that many of them attained such
preeminence as social leaders. The statesmen, philoso-
phers, men of science and letters of France, like those of
Greece more than two thousand years before, wanted dis-
traction and amusement. That the mistresses of the salons
should be women of learning was of little moment. The all
important thing for their habitues was that they should
be good entertainers — that they should be witty, tactful
and sympathetic — and, if ignorant, that they should be
brilliantly ignorant, and, at the same time, enchantingly
frank and nai've.

Strange as it may appear there was as much hostility
to learned women at the close of the eighteenth century as
there was in the time of Louis XIV. And the remarkable
fact is that the strongest opponents of women's education
were found among the most prominent writers and schol-
ars of the day — men who, like their predecessors of old,
based their opposition on the assumed mental inferiority
of woman. Thus, to Rousseau, woman was at best but ' ' an
imperfect man, " and, in many respects, little more than
"a grown-up child. " Search after abstract and specula-
tive truths, principles and axioms in science, " everything
that tends to generalize ideas is outside of her compe-
tence. " That means that women are to be excluded from
the study of mathematics and the physical sciences, because
they are incapable of generalization, abstraction, and the
mental concentration that these subjects demand. Even

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE

93

the masterpieces of literature, according to him, are beyond
their comprehension. In a word, feminine studies, Rous-
seau will have it, should relate exclusively to practical and
domestic matters and he endorses the words of Moliere
that

"It is not seemly, and for many reasons,
That a woman should study and know so many things."

Diderot, Montesquieu, Voltaire and the Encyclopedists
share the views of Rousseau. Diderot declares that serious
studies do not comport with woman's sex, while Montes-
quieu would limit female education to mere accomplish-
ments.

But this is not all. Antagonistic as these men were to
the education of the daughters of the nobility and the well-
to-do, they were entirely opposed to the education of the
children of the poor. "The good of society," it was
averred, "demands that the instruction of the people ex-
tend not beyond their occupations. ' ' " The poor, ' ' declares
Rousseau, ' ' have no need of instruction, ' ' and Voltaire and
the Encyclopedists say, "Amen."1

Very little need be said about the education of women in
Germany during the period we have been considering.
When there was any at all, it was of the most rudimentary-
character, while as to books, they were limited to the kind
recommended by Byron for the women of modern Greece

i No one, however, went so far in his opposition to the education
of women as the notorious Silvain Marechal, the author of Projet
d'une Loi portant Defense d'Apprendre a Lire aux Femmes, who
would have a law passed forbidding women to learn to read. He
maintained that a knowledge of science and letters interfered with
their being good housekeepers. "Keason," he avers, "does not
approve of women studying chemistry. Women who are unable to
read make the best soup. I would rather," he declares in the words
of Balzac, ' ' have a wife with a beard than a wife who is educated. ' '
See pp. 40, 50 and 51, of the edition of this strange work, published
at Brussels, 1847.

94 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

— 'books of piety and cookery. " The attitude of the Ger-
mans generally toward female education, for centuries past,
was clearly defined by the Kaiser Wilhelm II, when, a few
years ago, he publicly stated: "I agree with my wife.
She says women have no business to interfere with any-
thing outside of the four K's, that is, Kinder, Kirche,
Kuche, Kleider — children, church, kitchen, clothes."

There was, however, during the period we are now con-
sidering, one remarkable example of a learned woman of
Teutonic origin. This was the famous Anna Maria van
Schurman, who was one of the most gifted women that
ever lived. She was, probably, as near to being a universal
genius as any one of her sex of whom we have knowledge.
Artist, musician, poet, philosopher, theologian, linguist,
she was the admiration of the scholars of the world and
the pride of the Low Countries — the land of her birth.
She lived when Holland was in the van of human progress
and amidst of the splendors of the Dutch Eenaissance. She
was the friend and correspondent of the most distinguished
scholars and most noted celebrities of her time. Among
these were Voet, Spanheim, Descartes, Gassendi, Constan-
tine Huyghens, Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, Queen
Christina of Sweden, and Cardinal Richelieu. To go to the
Netherlands, it was then said, without seeing Anna van
Schurman, was like going to Paris without seeing the king.
She was hailed as "The Tenth Muse," "The Sappho of
Holland," "The Oracle of Art," "The Star of Utrecht."

That, however, which gave the greatest renown to the
"Learned Maid," as Anna was called, was her extraordi-
nary knowledge of languages. For, besides being profi-
cient in the chief modern tongues of Europe, she was well
acquainted with Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syro-Chaldaic and
Ethiopic. The oriental languages she studied as an aid to
the better understanding of Holy Scripture.

She was the author of several works, among which was
an Ethiopic grammar which was acclaimed by the profes-

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 95

sors of the Dutch, universities as a marvelous achievement.
Her best known volume is designated Opuscula. It was
brought out by the Elzevirs in Leyden and went through
several editions. It is composed of letters and short
treatises in French, Latin, Greek and Hebrew — in verse as
well as prose.

Of more value, if less striking, than the productions
named were the ' ' Learned Maid 's ' ' writings in favor of the
intellectual enfranchisement of her own sex. In a letter to
Dr. Rivet, Professor of Theology in Leyden, she declares:

"My deep regard for learning, my conviction that equal
justice is the right of all, impel me to protest against the
theory which would allow only a minority of my sex to
attain to what is in the opinion of all men most worth
having. For, since wisdom is admitted to be the crown of
human achievement, and is within every man's right to
aim at in proportion to his opportunities, I cannot see why
a young girl, in whom we admit a desire of self-improve-
ment, should not be encouraged to acquire the best that
life affords."

To those who objected that the distaff and the needle
were sufficient to occupy women 's minds, Anna Maria made
answer that the words of Plutarch — "It becomes a perfect
man to know what is to be known and to do what is to be
done" — applied with equal truth to a perfect woman.1

In England, until the latter part of the nineteenth cen-

iln her Problema Practicum, addressed to Dr. Eivet, Anna van
Schurman states and develops in true syllogistic form a series of
propositions in defense of her thesis in favor of the higher educa-
tion of women. Two of these propositions are here given as illustra-
tive of her points of view:

I. Cui natura inest scientiarum artiumque desiderium, ei con-
veniunt scientiae et artes. Atque feminsB natura inest scientiarum
artiumque desiderium. Ergo.

II. Quidquid intellectum hominis perficit et exornat, id femmse
Christianas convenit. Atqui seientise et artes intellectum hominis
perficiunt et exornant. Ergo. See Nobiliss. Virginis Annce Schur-

96 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

tury, the educational status of women was but little better
than in Germany. During the Stuart period schools for
girls were so scarce that most of those who received any
education at all obtained it at home under private tutors.
Even then it rarely embraced more than reading, writing,
needlework, singing, dancing and playing on the lute or
virginal.1

As to the higher studies for women, Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu writes as follows: "My sex is usually forbid
studies of this nature and folly reckoned so much our
proper sphere that we are sooner pardoned any excesses of
that than the least pretensions to reading or good sense.
We are permitted no books but such as tend to the weaken-
ing or effeminating of the mind. Our natural defects are
in every way indulged, and it is looked upon as in a degree
criminal to improve our reason or fancy we have any. . . .
There is hardly a creature in the world more despicable
or more liable to universal ridicule than that of a learned
woman: these words imply, according to the received
sense, a tattling, impertinent, vain and conceited crea-
ture/'2

man Opuscula, pp. 35 and 41, Leyden, 1656, and her De Ingenii
Muliebris ad Doctrinam et Meliores Literas Aptitudine, Leyden,
1641. Cf. also Anna van Schurman, Chap. IV, by Una Birch, London,
1909.

1 A writer of the seventeenth century gives the following as the
popular programme of female study : ' ' To learn alle pointes of good
housewifery, spinning of linen, the ordering of dairies, to see to the
salting of meate, brewing, bakery, and to understand the common
prices of all houshold provisions. To keepe account of all things,
to know the condition of the poultry — for it misbecomes no woman
to be a hen-wife. To know how to order your clothes and with fru-
gality to mend them and to buy but what is necessary with ready
money. To love to keep at home." How like the German four K's
and the words on the sarcophagus of a Koman matron — lanifica, frugi,
domiseda — a diligent plyer of the distaff, thrifty and a stay-at-home.

2 The Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Vol.
II, p. 5, Bohn Edition, 1887.

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 97

Higher studies for their daughters were regarded by the
generality of men, the same writer tells us, "as great a
profanation as the clergy would do if the laity would pre-
sume to exercise the functions of the priesthood."

Eeferring to the handicaps suffered by the women of
England in the pursuit of knowledge, the same writer de-
clares: "We are educated in the grossest ignorance, and
no art is omitted to stifle our natural reason; if some few
get above their nurses' instructions, our knowledge must
be concealed and be as useless to the world as gold in the
mine. ' '

Lord Chesterfield, in His Letters to His Son, expresses
the opinion of his contemporaries when he writes on the
same subject as follows: "Women are only children of a
larger growth ; they have an entertaining tattle, sometimes
wit; but, for solid reasoning, good sense, I never in my
life knew one who had it, or who reasoned or acted conse-
quentially for twenty-four hours together. ... A man of
sense only trifles with them, plays with them, humors and
flatters them as he does a sprightly forward child ; but he
neither consults them about nor trusts them with serious
matters, though he often makes them believe he does both,
which is the thing in the world which they are proud of;
for they love mightily to be dabbling in business, which,
by the way, they always spoil, and, being distrustful that
men in general look upon them in a trifling light, they
almost adore that man who talks to them seriously and
seems to consult and trust them."1

i Letter XLIX, London, Sept. 5, O. S., 1748.

Walpole, writing in 1773, makes the following curious declaration :
"I made a discovery — Lady Nuneham is a poetess, and writes with
great ease and sense some poetry, but is as afraid of the character,
as if it was a sin to make verses." And Lord Granville tells us of
an eminent statesman and man of letters who, in the early part of
the last century, was so troubled on discovering in his daughter
a talent for poetry that he "appealed to her affection for him, and
made a request to her never to write verses again. He was not

98 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

And this was written by that "mirror of politeness and
chivalry" whose name has for two centuries been synony-
mous with that of a perfect gentleman! And Lady Mon-
tagu was compelled to pen her caustic and pathetic plaints
during the age of Pope, Steele, Addison, Swift,1 Johnson,
Dryden and Goldsmith — the most brilliant pleiad of liter-
ary men that England had known since the days of Shake-
speare.

So unnatural for women were literary and scientific
pursuits regarded by all classes that the few who attained
any eminence in them were classed as abnormal creatures
who deserved no more consideration than did the Pre-
cieuses across the Channel. And so great was the power
of public sentiment against women writers that Fanny
Burney was afraid to acknowledge the authorship of Eve-
lina. Even in Jane Austen's days, the feeling that a
woman, in writing a book, was overstepping the limitations
of her sex was so pronounced that she never actually
avowed the authorship of those charming works which
have been the delight of three generations of readers. It
was this same sentiment that caused the Bronte sisters and
George Eliot, as well as many other notable women, to
write under pseudonyms. They feared to disclose their

afraid of her becoming a good poetess, but he was afraid of the
disadvantages which were likely to be suffered by her, if she were
supposed to be a lady of literary attainments. ' '

i It was Swift who had such a low opinion of woman 's intellect
that in writing to one of his fair correspondents he told her that she
could "never arrive in point of learning to the perfection of a
schoolboy. J; Lady Pennington, strange to say, seems to have shared
his views, for in a manual of advice to young ladies, she declares:
"A sensible woman will soon be convinced that all the learning the
utmost application can make her master of will be in many points
inferior to that of the schoolboy.'7 "At the time the Tatler first
appeared in the female world any acquaintance with books was dis-
tinguished only to be censured," and it was then considered "more
important for a woman to dance a minuet well than to know a for-
eign language."

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 99

sex lest their works, if known as the productions of women,
should be ipso facto branded as of inferior merit.

During the period in question women fared no better in
the United States than in England. They were subject to
the same educational debarment and were the victims of
the same snobbery and intolerance. The Pilgrim Fathers
and their descendants for many generations made no secret
of their belief in the mental inferiority of woman, and
applied to her the gospel of liberty contained in the fol-
lowing words of Eve to Adam as given in Paradise Lost:

"My author and dispenser, what thou bidst
Unargued I obey; so God ordains;
God is thy law, thou mine: to know no more
Is woman's happiest knowledge and her praise."

To the Puritan of New England, as to the Puritan Mil-
ton, the relative attainments of woman and man were
tersely expressed in Tennyson's couplet:

"She knows but matters of the house,
And he, he knows a thousand things."

To us one of the most astounding facts in the educa-
tional history of New England is the long time during
which girls were without free school opportunities. Thus,
although schools had been established within twenty years
after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, it was not
until a century and a half later that their doors were
opened to girls. The public schools of Boston were estab-
lished in 1642, but were not opened for girls until 1789;
and then only for instruction in spelling, reading and com-
position, and that but one half of the year. There was
no high school in Boston, the vaunted Athens of America,
until 1852.

Harvard College was founded in 1636 for the education
of ' l ye English and Indian youth of this country in knowl-
edge and godlyness," but in this institution no provision

100 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

was made for women and its doors are still closed to
them.

"The prevailing notion of the purpose of education,"
declares Charles Francis Adams, in speaking of Harvard
College, "was attended with one remarkable consequence
— the cultivation of the female mind was regarded with
utter indifference; as Mrs. Abigail Adams says in one of
her letters, ' it was fashionable to ridicule learning. ' " 1

It was not until 1865 that Matthew Vassar, "recogniz-
ing in women the same intellectual constitution as in man, ' '
founded the first woman's college in the United States.
This was soon followed by similar institutions in various
parts of this country and Europe. In less than ten years
thereafter Girton and Newnham colleges were founded at
Cambridge, England, in order that women might be en-
abled to enter upon a regular university career.

In all the universities of England, Scotland and Ireland,
except Oxford, Cambridge 2 and Trinity College, Dublin,

1 The wife of President John Adams, descended from the most
illustrious colonial families, writing in 1817, regarding the educa-
tional opportunities of the girls of her time and rank, expressed
herself as follows:

"Female education in the best families went no farther than
writing and arithmetic, and, in some few and rare instances, music
and dancing." According to her grandson, Charles Francis Adams,
' ' The only chance for much intellectual improvement in the female
sex was to be found in the families of the educated class, and in
occasional intercourse with the learned of the day. Whatever of
useful instruction was secured in the practical conduct of life came
from maternal lips; and, what of farther mental development de-
pended more upon the eagerness with which the casual teachings of
daily conversation were treasured up than upon any labor expended
purposely to promote it. ' ' Familiar Letters of John Adams and His
Wife, Abigail Adams, During the devolution, With a Memoir of Mrs.
Adams, by Charles Francis Adams, pp. X and XI, New York, 1876.

2 When the students of Girton and Newnham in 1897, after pass-
ing the Cambridge examinations — many of them with the highest
honors — applied for degrees, "the undergraduate world was stirred
to a fine frenzy of wrath against ail womankind/' and an aston-

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 101

women are now admitted to all departments, pass the same
examinations as the men and receive the same academic
degrees. Germany, whose institutions for the higher edu-
cation of men have so long been justly famous, was ex-
ceedingly slow to open its universities to women, and then
only after the most stubborn opposition of those who still
maintained that the studies of women should be limited to
the three R's and their occupations confined to the four
K's. But even in this conservative country the cause of
woman has at length triumphed, and she now enjoys edu-
cational advantages that a few decades ago were deemed
forever impossible.

And so it is in every civilized country. Woman's long
struggle for complete intellectual freedom is almost ended,
and certain victory is already in sight. In spite of the
sarcasm and ridicule of satirists and comic poets, in spite
of the antipathy of philosophers and the antagonism of
legislators who persisted in treating women as inferior
beings, they are finally in view of the goal toward which
they have through so many long ages been bending their
best efforts. Moreover, so effective and so concentrated
has been their work during recent years that they have
accomplished more toward securing complete intellectual
enfranchisement than during the previous thirty centuries.

From the former home of the Vikings to the romantic
land of the Cid, from the capital of Holy Russia to the
fair metropolis of the Golden Gate, women are now wel-
comed to the very institutions from which but a few years
ago they were so systematically excluded. They attend
the same courses as men, pass the same examinations and
receive the same degrees and honors. Their sex is no
longer a bar to positions and employment that only a

ished world saw re-enacted scenes scarcely less disgraceful than those
which characterized the riotous demonstrations which, seventeen years
before, had greeted seven young women at the portals of the Uni-
versity of Edinburgh.

102 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

generation ago were considered proper only for the proud
and imperious male. They have proved beyond cavil that
genius knows not sex, and that, given a fair opportunity,
they are competent to achieve success in every department
of human effort.

Thus, to speak only of Europe, there are to-day women
professors in the universities of Norway, Sweden, Switzer-
land, France, Greece and Russia, as there have been in
Italy since the closing years of the Dark Ages. They
lecture on science, literature, law and medicine, and in a
manner to extort the admiration of their erstwhile antag-
onists. In Germany and Hungary there are women chem-
ists and architects, while it is a matter of record that the
best construction work done on the trans-Siberian railroad
was that in charge of a woman engineer.

As an illustration of the marvelous change which has
been brought about during the last three-quarters of a
century in the educational status of woman, I can do no
better than transcribe a few passages from a work by Sir
Walter Besant describing the transformation of woman
during the reign of Queen Victoria; for it applies to all
civilized countries as well as to England.

"The young lady of 1837 has been to a fashionable
school; she has learned accomplishments, deportment and
dress. She is full of sentiment; there was an amazing
amount of sentiment in the air about that time; she loves
to talk and read about gallant knights, crusaders and
troubadors; she gently touches the guitar; her sentiment,
or her little affectation, has touched her with a graceful
melancholy, a becoming stoop, a sweet pensiveness. She
loves the aristocracy, even although her home is in that
part of London called Bloomsbury, whither the belted earl
cometh not, even though her papa goes into the City; she
reads a deal of poetry, especially those poems which deal
with the affections, of which there are many at this time.
On Sunday she goes to church religiously and pensively,

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 103

followed by a footman carrying her prayerbook and a long
stick ; she can play on the guitar and the piano a few easy
pieces which she has learned. She knows a few words of
French, which she produces at frequent intervals; as to
history, geography, science, the condition of the people,
her mind is an entire blank; she knows nothing of these
things. Her conversation is commonplace, as her ideas are
limited; she can not reason on any subject whatever be-
cause of her ignorance; or, as she herself would say, be-
cause she is a woman. In her presence, and indeed in the
presence of ladies generally, men talk trivialities. There
was indeed a general belief that women were creatures
incapable of argument, or of reason, or of connected
thought. It was no use arguing about the matter. The
Lord had made them so. Women, said the philosophers,
can not understand logic; they see things, if they do see
them at all, by instinctive perception. This theory ac-
counted for everything, for those cases when women un-
doubtedly did 'see things.' Also it fully justified people
in withholding from women any kind of education worthy
the name. A quite needless expense, you understand. ' '

Her amusements, we are told, were "those of an ama-
teur— a few pieces on the guitar and the piano and some
slight power of sketching or flower painting in water-
colors." The literature she read "endeavored to mold
woman on the theory of recognized intellectual inferiority
to man. She was considered beneath him in intellect as
in physical strength ; she was exhorted to defer to man ; to
acknowledge his superiority; not to show herself anxious
to combat his opinions. . . .

"This system of artificial restraints certainly produced
faithful wives, gentle mothers, loving sisters, able house-
wives. God forbid that we should say otherwise, but it is
certain that the intellectual attainments of women were
then what we should call contemptible, and the range of
subjects of which they knew nothing was absurdly narrow

104 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

and limited. I detect the woman of 1840 in the character
of Mrs. Clive Newcome, and, indeed, in Mrs. George Os-
borne, and in other familiar characters of Thackeray."

Then Sir Walter, turning to the young Englishwoman
of 1897, thus describes her:

"She is educated. Whatsoever things are taught to the
young man are taught to the young woman; the keys of
knowledge are given to her; she gathers of the famous
tree; if she wants to explore the wickedness of the world
she can do so, for it is all in the books. The secrets of
nature are not closed to her; she can learn the structure
of the body if she wishes. The secrets of science are all
open to her if she cares to study them.

"At school, at college, she studies just as the young man
studies, but harder and with greater concentration. She
has proved her ability in the Honors Tripos of every
branch ; she has beaten the senior wrangler in mathematics ;
she has taken a l first-class' in classics, in history, in sci-
ence, in languages. She has proved, not that she is a man's
equal in intellect, though she claims so much, because she
has not yet advanced any branch of learning, of science,
one single step, but she has proved her capacity to take her
place beside the young men who are the flower of their
generation — the young men who stand in the first class of
honors when they take their degree. . . .

1 1 Personal independence — that is the keynote of the situ-
ation. Mothers no longer attempt the old control over
their daughters; they would find it impossible. The girls
go off by themselves on their bicycles; they go about as
they please; they neither compromise themselves nor get
talked about; for the first time in man's history it is re-
garded as a right and proper thing to trust a girl as a
boy insists upon being trusted. Out of this personal free-
dom will come, I dare say, a change in the old feelings of
young man to maiden. He will not see in her a frail,
tender plant which must be protected from cold winds;

WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 105

she can protect herself perfectly well. He will not see in
her any longer a creature of sweet emotions and pure
aspirations, coupled with a complete ignorance of the
world, because she already knows all that she wants to
know. . . .

" Perhaps the greatest change is that woman now does
thoroughly what before she only did as an amateur."1

Yes, the world is beginning at last to realize the truth
of the proposition which the learned Maria Gastana Agnesi
so eloquently defended nearly two centuries ago — to wit,
that nature has endowed the female mind with a capacity
for all knowledge, and that, in depriving women of an
opportunity of acquiring knowledge, men work against the
best interests of the public weal.2

We are at the long last near that millennium which Emer-
son had in mind when, in 1822, he predicted "a time when
higher institutions for the education of young women
would be as needful as colleges for young men" — that mil-
lennium for which women have hoped and striven ever
since Sappho sang and Aspasia inspired the brightest, the
noblest minds of Greece.

1 The Queen's Eeign, Chap. V, London, 1897.

2 Proposition third, of her Propositiones Philosophicce, Milan,
1738, reads as follows:

"Optime etiam de universa Philosophia infirmiorem sexum meru-
isse nullus infirmabitur ; nam prater septuaginta fere eruditissimas,
Mulieres, quas recenset Menagius, complures alias quovis tempore
floruisse novimus, quaB in philosophieis disciplinis maximam ingenii
laudem sunt assecutae. Ad omnem igitur doctrinam, eruditionemque
etiam muliebres animos Natura comparavit: quare paulo injuriosius
cum feminis agunt qui eis bonarum artium cultu omnino interdicunt,
eo vel maxime, quod haec illarum studia privatis, publicisque rebus
non modo haud noxia f utura sint verum etiam perutilia. ' '

This admirable work, with its one hundred and ninety-one propo-
sitions, is commended to those who may have any doubt regarding the
learning or capacity of the Italian women who have been referred to
in the preceding pages.

CHAPTER II

WOMAN'S CAPACITY FOR SCIENTIFIC PURSUITS

In a curious old black-letter volume entitled The BoJce of
the Cyte of Ladyes, published in England in 1521 by
Henry Pepwell, occurs the following passage: "I mer-
vayle gretely of the opynyon of some men that say they
wolde in no wyse that theyr daughters or wyves or kynnes-
women sholde lerne scyences, and that it sholde apayre
theyr codycyons. This thing is not to say ne to sustayne.
That the woman apayreth by conynge it is not well to
beleve. As the proverb saythe, 'that nature gyveth may
not be taken away.' !

The book from which this remarkable quotation is taken
is a translation of Christine de Pisan 's La Cite des Dames,
which was written early in the fifteenth century. It is a
capital defence against the slanderers of the gentler sex
and an armory of arguments for all time against those
men who declare that "women are fit for nothing but to
bear children and spin." It shows conclusively that
conynge — knowledge — far from tending to injure women 's
character — apayre theyr condycyons — as was asserted by
Christine's antagonists, contributes, on the contrary, to
elevate and ennoble them and to render them better mothers
and more useful members of society.

Notwithstanding that it was written five hundred years
ago, and notwithstanding its "antiquated allegorical dress
and its quaint pre-Renaissance notions of history, " it is
in many of its aspects a surprisingly modern production.
The line of argument adopted by the writer is virtually the

106

CAPACITY FOR SCIENTIFIC PURSUITS 107

same as that which is adopted to-day in the discussion of
the same questions which are so ably treated in this long-
forgotten book1 and show that Christine de Pisan was in
every way a worthy champion of her sex.

No woman of her time was more competent to discuss
the capacity of her sex for science as well as for other
intellectual pursuits than was this learned daughter of
Italy. She was not only a woman of profound and varied
knowledge, but was also, as stated in the preceding chap-
ter, the first woman to earn her living by her pen. Be-
sides writing The City of Ladies and more verses — mostly
ballads and virelays — than are contained in the Divina
Commedia, she was also the author of many other works
on the most diverse subjects. She is best known to his-
torians as the author of Livre des Fais et Bonnes Meurs
du sage Roy Charles V, which is a graphic account of the
court and policy of this monarch, and of the Livre des
Faits d'Armes et de Chevalerie. The latter work is not,
as might be imagined from its title, a collection of tales of
chivalry, but, incredible as it may seem, a profound and
systematic treatise on military tactics and international
law. It deals with "many topics of the highest policy,
from the manners of a good general and the minutiaB of
siege operations to the wager of battle, safe-conducts and
letters of marque," and was deemed so important by
Henry VII that at his expressed desire it was translated
into English and published by Caxton under the title of
The Boke of Fayettes of Armes and Chyvalrye. Even so

1 An edition of this work, based on an old manuscript in La
Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris, in French, is announced to appear
in France at an early date. An interesting account of this precious
volume has recently been published by Mile. Mathilde Laigle, Ph. D.,
under the title of Le Livre de Trois Vertus de Christine de Pisan et
son Milieu Historique et Litteraire. It is to be hoped that some
enterprising English publisher will soon favor us with a reprint of
the quaint old, but none the less valuable, volume, The BoJce of the
Cyte of Ladyes.

108 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

late as the time of Henry VIII it was regarded as an
authoritative manual on the topics treated.

So great, indeed, was the extent and variety of Chris-
tine's attainments, so thoroughly had she studied the Latin
and Greek authors, sacred and profane, and so profound
was her knowledge of all the subjects which she dealt with
in her numerous books that "one cannot but feel a certain
astonishment when one finds in a woman in the fourteenth
century an erudition such as is hardly possessed by the
most laborious of men."

When we read the eloquent plea which this learned
woman of five centuries ago makes in behalf of her sex,
when we note the examples she quotes of women ' ' illumined
of great sciences," and consider the arguments by which
she demonstrated the capacity of women for all scientific
pursuits, we can easily fancy that we are reading the brief
of some modern exponent of the woman's rights movement
and are almost disposed to believe that La Bruyiere was
right when he declared, Les anciens out tout dit. For so
cogent is Christine's reasoning and so thoroughly does she
traverse her subject from every point of view that she
has left later writers little to add to the controversy except
matters of detail which were not available in her time.

In spite, however, of Christine's Cyte of Ladyes, "in
which," according to our mediaeval paragon, "women,
hitherto scattered and defenceless, were forever to find
refuge against all their slanderers," in spite of the fact
that the foundations of this city were laid by Reason,
that its walls and cloisters were built on Righteousness, and
its battlements and high towers on Justice, in spite of the
fact that the material entering into its construction was
"stronger and more durable than any marble," and that
it was, as our author declares, "a city right fair, without
fear and of perpetual during to the world — a city that
should never be brought to nought," Christine's work was
soon lost sight of, and the right of women to the same in-

CAPACITY FOR SCIENTIFIC PURSUITS 109

tellectual advantages as men was as strongly denied as it
had been before she had so valiantly championed their
cause, and denied, too, on the assumed ground of their
innate incapacity.

It mattered not that during the succeeding centuries
other women took up the cause for which the author of
La Cite des Dames had so nobly battled; it mattered not
that countless women in every civilized country of the
globe distinguished themselves by their achievements in
every department of science and gave evidence of talent
and genius of the highest order ; it mattered not that chiv-
alrous representatives of the sterner sex, like John Stuart
Mill, came forward to plead the case of that half of human-
ity which had so long been held in cruel subjection. The
attitude of the world toward the intellectually disfran-
chised sex remained unchanged almost until our own time.

But, although women now enjoy advantages in the pur-
suit of science which were undreamed of only a generation
ago, the age-old prejudices respecting woman's mental
powers and her capacity for the more abstract branches of
science still prevail. It is useless to cite instances of
women who have attained eminence in astronomy, mathe-
matics, archaeology, or in any other science whatever. Such
instances, we are assured, are only exceptions and prove
nothing. Men like Lombroso are willing to admit the
existence of an occasional woman of talent, but they deny
the existence of genius in one who is truly a womanly
woman.1 For, with Goncourt, they flippantly assert, II n'y
a pas de femmes de genie: lorsqu'elles sont des genies,
elles sont des hommes — there are no women of genius;
when they have genius they are men.

The reasons that now influence men for affirming the
intellectual disparity of the sexes are, it must be observed,

1Quando la genialita compare nella donna & sempre associata a
grand! anomalie: e la piu grande e la somiglianza coi maschi — la
virilita. L'Uomo di Genio, sesta edizione, p. 261, Torino, 1894.

110 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

quite different from what they were in the time of Chris-
tine de Pisan — quite different from what they were half
a century ago. Our forebears, in their endless disputa-
tions regarding woman's mental inferiority, based their
arguments on a priori deductions, or on metaphysical con-
siderations which proved nothing and which were often
irrelevant, if not absurd.

Thus the Aristotelians, accepting as true the doctrine of
the four elements as well as the superimposed doctrine of
the four elemental qualities, sought to explain the proper-
ties of all compound bodies by these primal qualities. In
this way they explained the various virtues of drugs and
medicines. And by the same process of reasoning they
explained the assumed difference between male and female
brains. They assumed, to begin with, that there was a
difference between the intellectual capacities of men and
women. They then assumed that this difference in capacity
was due to the difference in character and texture of the
female as compared with those of the male brain. They
next further assumed that the doctrines of the four ele-
ments and of the four elemental qualities were established
beyond question, and then assumed again that the reason
of woman's inferior capacity was due to the fact that her
brain was moister and softer, and, therefore, more impres-
sionable than that of man. No wonder that the old Span-
ish Benedictine, Benito Jeronimo Feijoo, in his chivalrous
Defensa de la Mujer, lost all patience with such fantastic
theorizers and wrote: "Did I write ... to display my
wit, I could easily, by deducting a chain of consequences
from received principles, shew that man's understanding,
weighed in the balance with female capacity, would be
found so light as to kick the beam."1

Abandoning the Aristotelian method of envisaging the
question under discussion, our modern philosophers have

iAn Essay on the Learning, Genius and Abilities of the Fair
Sex, Proving Them Not Inferior to Man, p. 142, London, 1774.

CAPACITY FOR SCIENTIFIC PURSUITS 111

recourse to the recent sciences of biology and psycho-physi-
ology to prove what they, too, assume to be true — viz.,
woman's incurable mental weakness. Like their predeces-
sors, they are dominated by passion, prejudice, the errors
of countless centuries, and, like them, they approach the
subject on which they are to pronounce judgment, with
minds warped by long ages of imperious instincts, ignorant
preconceptions and social bias. They will quote the opin-
ions of Proudhon and Schopenhauer — as if they had the
value of mathematical demonstrations — on the mental in-
feriority of women, and will declare with unblushing as-
surance that no woman has ever produced a single work of
any kind of enduring worth. With the German pessimist,
they will blatantly declare, taken as a whole, " women are
and remain thoroughgoing Philistines and quite incur-
able."1 With the French socialist they will assert, as if
it were an axiomatic truth, that "thought in every living
being is proportional to force" — that "physical force is
not less necessary for thought than for muscular labor. ' '

They have apparently no more doubt respecting the
truth of these assumptions than had their predecessors,
the Aristotelians, respecting their assumptions of the four
elements and their first qualities. Their process of reason-
ing is somewhat as follows: "Woman is smaller and
weaker than man. This is a matter of simple observation,
confirmed by the teachings of physiology. Therefore,
woman is physically and intellectually inferior to man.
Therefore she is incapable of any of those great concep-
tions and achievements in science or philosophy which have
so distinguished the male sex in every age of the world's^
history. That she is thus weaker and inferior physically
and intellectually and forever incapacitated from success-
fully competing with man in the intellectual arena is a
fatality for which, we are gravely told, there is no remedy,
i Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism, p. 115, London, 1891.

Ii<-

cc>

WOMAN IN SCIENCE

and to which women, consequently, must resign themselves
as to one of the inexorable laws of nature."

It would be difficult to cite a more preposterous example
of ratiocination. If it were true that there is a necessary
relation between vigor of body and vigor of mind; that
mental power is proportional to physical power; that
thought is but a special form of energy and capable of
transformation, like heat, light and electricity; that it,
like the various physical forces, has its chemical and me-
chanical equivalents; that psychic work corresponds to a
certain amount of chemical or thermic action; that in-
tellectual capacity in man is proportional to muscular
strength ; it would follow that the great leaders of thought
and action through the ages have been Goliaths in stature
and Herculeses in strength. But so far is this conclusion
from being warranted that it is almost the reverse of the
truth. For many, if not the majority, of the great geniuses
of the world in every age have been either men of small
frame or men of delicate and precarious health.

Among the men of genius who were noted for their
diminutive stature were Plato, Aristotle, Alexander the
Great, Archimedes, Epicurus, Horace, Albertus Magnus,
Montaigne, Lipsius, Spinoza, Erasmus, Lalande, Charles
Lamb, Keats, Balzac and Thiers. Many others were re-
markable for their spare form. Among these in the prime
of life were Aristotle, Demosthenes, Cicero, St. Paul, Kep-
ler, Pascal, Boileau, Fenelon, D'Alembert, Napoleon, Lin-
coln and Leo XIII. Others, like ^Esop, Brunelleschi,
Leopardi, Magliabecchi, Parini, Scarron, Talleyrand, Pope,
Goldsmith, Byron, Sir Walter Scott, to mention only a
few of the most eminent, were either hunchbacked, lame,
rachitic or clubfooted.

Others, still, were the victims of chronic ill health, or
of nervous disorders of the most serious character. Virgil
was of a delicate and frail constitution. He essayed the
bar, but shrank from it and turned to the "contemplation

CAPACITY FOR SCIENTIFIC PURSUITS

of diviner things." Nor was Horace, though less com-
pletely a recluse and more of a bon vivant, a strong man.
.Both of them, as scholars will rememher, sought the couch,
while Maecenas went off to the tennis court. Pope's life,
says Johnson, was a long disease. Johnson himself, though
large and muscular, had queer health and a tormenting
constitution. Schiller wrote most of his best work while
struggling against a painful malady, and Heine's " mat-
tress grave" is proverbial. France furnishes an excellent
example in Pascal.1

Some of the most noted leaders of thought in our own
era were likewise chronic invalids. Among these were the
scholarly theologian, E. B. Pusey, and J. A. Symonds, the
historian of the Renaissance. There was also Herbert Spen-
cer, who was frequently forced by nervous breakdowns to
take long periods of absolute rest. More remarkable still
was the case of the famous naturalist, Charles Darwin. ' ' It
is, ' ' writes his son, ' ' a principal feature of his life that for
nearly forty years he never knew one day of the health
of ordinary men, and that thus his life was one long
struggle against the weariness and the strain of sickness. ' ''
But, notwithstanding his continued ill health and the spinal
anemia from which he suffered, he was able to conduct
those epoch-making researches which put him in the fore-
front of men of science, and to write those famous books
which have completely revolutionized our views of nature
and nature 's laws.

But a still more remarkable illustration of the fact that
there is no necessary relation between muscular and mental
power, between physical wellbeing and intellectual energy,
is afforded by the illustrious discoverer of the world of the
infinitely little, Louis Pasteur. Stricken by hemiplegia

1 The Literary Advantages of Weak Health, in the Spectator for
October, 1894.

2 The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, edited by his son,
Francis Darwin, Vol. I, p. 136, New York, 1888.

WOMAN IN SCIENCE

shortly after he had begun those brilliant investigations
which have rendered him immortal, he remained affected
by partial paralysis until the end of his life. His friends
had reason to fear that this attack, even if he should sur-
vive it, would weaken or extinguish his spirit of initiative,
if it did not make further work entirely impossible. But
this was far from the case. For a quarter of a century he
continued with unabated activity those marvelous labors
which are forever associated with his name. And it was
after, not before, his misfortune that he made his most
famous discoveries in the domain of microbian life, and
placed in the hands of physicians and surgeons those in-
fallible means of combatting disease which have made him
one of the greatest benefactors of suffering humanity. The
complete separation of the intellectual from the motor
faculties was never more clearly exhibited than in this case,
nor was it ever more completely demonstrated by an ex-
periment, whose validity no one could question, that power
of mind does not necessarily depend on strength or health
of body. It proved, also, in the most telling manner that
it is not muscular but psychic force which avails most,
whether to the individual or to society. And it showed, at
the same time, the utter absurdity of those theories which
would fatally connect intellectual with physical debility in
woman, and would forever adjudge the physically weaker
sex to be of hopeless inferiority in all things of the mind.
What has been said of men achieving renown, notwith-
standing ill health, may likewise be affirmed of women.
The case of Elizabeth Barrett Browning is scarcely less
remarkable than that of Darwin. In spite of being a
chronic invalid the greater part of her life, she attained a
position in letters reached by but few of her contempo-
raries. The same almost may be said of the three Bronte
sisters. The deadly seeds of consumption were sown in
their systems in early youth, but, although fully aware that
life had "passed them by with averted head/' they were,

CAPACITY FOR SCIENTIFIC PURSUITS 115

through their indomitable wills, able to send forth from
their bleak home in the wild Yorkshire moors works of
genius that still instruct and delight the world.

From the foregoing it is clear that valetudinarianism, if
it prove anything, proves not that it renders intellectual
effort impossible, but that it serves as a discipline for the
soul. It forces the mind to husband its strength, and thus
enables it to accomplish by economy and concentration of
effort that which the same mind in a healthy body, with the
distractions of society and the allurements of life, would
be unable to accomplish. It exemplifies in the most strik-
ing manner the truth of what Socrates says in Plato 's Re-
public about the beneficent action of the " bridle of
Theages," preventing an infirm friend of his from em-
bracing politics and keeping him true to his first love —
philosophy.

Failing to show any necessary connection between supe-
rior physique and intellectual capacity, between health of
body and mental activity, between the amount of food
consumed and the degree of intelligence, the class of think-
ers whose theories are now under consideration found them-
selves forced to abandon the argument based on robust
health and physical strength and seek elsewhere for sup-
port of their views. This, they soon announced, was found
in the greater cranial capacity and greater brain weight of
the male as compared with that of the female. Following
up this fancied clew, anthropologists the world over be-
gan measuring skulls and weighing brains in order to de-
termine the supposed ratio of sex-difference.

The results of these investigations were far from cor-
roborating the preconceived notions of those who had fan-
cied a necessary correlation between mental capacity and
size of cranium, between the weight of encephalon and de-
gree of intelligence. For it was soon discovered that cran-
ial capacity depended on many causes — many of them un-
known— and that people having the largest skulls were

116 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

often far from being the ones dowered with the greatest
intellectual power. It was found, for instance, that cli-
mate was a determining factor — that the inhabitants of
northern regions have larger heads than those who live
farther south. Thus the Lapps, in proportion to their
stature, have the largest heads in Europe. After these
come in order the Scandinavians, the Germans, the French,
the Italians, the Arabs.

It was found also that the least cranial capacity of the
ancient Egyptians coincides with the most brilliant period
of their civilization — that of the eighteenth dynasty. Meas-
urements of skulls unearthed at Pompeii showed that the
heads of the Komans who lived two thousand years ago
were larger than the heads of the Romans of to-day.
Similarly, the skulls of the lake-dwellers of Switzerland
were larger than those of the Swiss people of the present
time, while the average circumference of the skulls meas-
ured in the catacombs of Paris is more than an inch greater
than that of the Parisians who have died during the last
half century. The circumference of the skulls of a large
number of mound-builders, excavated some years ago near
Carrollton, Illinois, exceeded that of the average head of
white men in New York of our day by nearly three inches.
This shows that the culture of the white race during long
centuries has not developed its cranial capacity to equal
that of the uncultured Indians who flourished in the Mis-
sissippi valley untold generations ago.

The skulls of Quaternary men were likewise very volu-
minous, although they belonged to a race whose mental
manifestations were infantile in the extreme. Even the
celebrated Engis skull, one of the most ancient in existence,
has been described by the late Professor Huxley as well
formed and considerably larger than the average of the
European skulls of to-day, not only in the width and
height of the forehead, but also in the cubic capacity of
the whole. Furthermore, the eminent craniologist, Broca,

CAPACITY FOR SCIENTIFIC PURSUITS 117

has proved that the illiterate peasants of Auvergne have a
much greater cranial capacity than that of the learned and
cultured denizens of Paris. And, as if to show conclusively
that there is no necessary connection between intellectual
capacity and size of cranium, authentic measurements dis-
close the fact that some of the most gifted men the world
has known had small heads. Among these were Dante and
Voltaire. The skull of the latter is one of the smallest
which has thus far been observed.

What has been said regarding the relation of cranial
volume to intellectual capacity, as revealed by the measure-
ments of the skulls of ancient and modern, savage and
civilized peoples may likewise be predicated of the dif-
ferences in the sizes of the crania of men and women. No
argument as to the greater or less intelligence of either
sex can be based on mere craniometric determinations. ' ' At
the best, cranial capacity is but a rough indication of brain
size ; and to measure brain size by the external size of the
skull furnishes still rougher and more fallacious approxi-
mations, since the male skull is more massive than the
female."

Even the slight morphological differences between male
and female skulls — some anthropologists deny that there
are any at all — afford no more ground for conclusions in
favor of the superiority of one or the other sex than the
relative differences in size. Such trifling differences as do
exist exhibit, as Virchow has pointed out, an approxima-
tion of men to the savage, simian and senile type, and an
approach of women to the infantile type. Havelock Ellis,
commenting on this difference, pertinently remarks, "It is
open to a man in a Pharisaic mood to thank God that his
cranial type is far removed from the infantile. It is
equally open to woman in such a mood to be thankful that
her cranial type does not approach the senile. ' n

But much stress as has been laid on physical power,
i Man and Woman, p. 94, London, 1898.

118 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

health and cranial capacity, as determining factors of in-
tellectual capacity and sexual differences, far greater stress
has been laid on conclusions deducible from the relative
brain weights of different classes of people as well as of
different sexes. It was assumed that by a critical study
of the brain, by careful weighings of many brains of both
sexes and of many races, it would be easy to secure con-
clusive evidence that the size and weight of the brain in-
crease with the amount of intelligence of the individual.
It was also assumed that function not only makes the or-
gan, but also develops it. Brain became synonymous with
mind. A large brain implied vigor of thought; a small
brain was evidence of mental inferiority.

Physiology had demonstrated unquestionably that the
muscles of the body are enlarged by exercise. It was
assumed by those who are wont to measure mind in terms
of matter that the brain, being the organ of thought, was
also developed by exercise. It was also assumed that the
development of the brain was in a direct ratio to its activ-
ity. The greater its activity the greater its mass, and the
greater the mass the greater the degree of intelligence. In
other words, it was assumed that there was an exact and
invariable proportion between weight of brain and amount
of brain power.

None of the theories which have already been adverted to
have been so full of assumptions and prejudices or vitiated
by so many fallacies and over-hasty generalizations as this.
No subject has possessed a greater fascination for anthro-
pologists, and no subject has been prolific in more diverse
and conflicting conclusions. Many men of science who, in
other matters, were noted for their care in weighing evi-
dence, before formulating theories, completely lost the sci-
entific spirit when they began to weigh brains and to draw
conclusions respecting the relations of brain weight and
mental power, and to establish ratios between the charac-

CAPACITY FOR SCIENTIFIC PURSUITS 119

ter of the convolutions of the organ of thought and the
degree of intelligence of its possessor.

Contrary to what is generally believed, a large brain is
not always an indication of superior capacity or intelli-
gence. There have been, it is true, a number of men of
genius who were the possessors of large brains, but there
have also been others whose brains were of but medium
weight.

The largest known brains of intellectual workers were
those of Cuvier, the noted zoologist, and Turgenieff, the
distinguished novelist. The brain of the Frenchman
weighed 1830 grams, while that of the Russian totaled 2012
grams. Among other large brains — even larger than Cu-
vier 's — were those of a bricklayer, which weighed 1900
grams, and of an ordinary laborer, which reached 1924
grams. The largest brains on record were that of an igno-
rant laborer named Rustan, which weighed 2222 grams;
that of a weak-minded London newsboy, which weighed
2268 grams, and that of a twenty-one-year-old epileptic
idiot, which had the unheard of weight of 2850 grams.1

The seven largest recorded female brains were three
weighing 1580 grams each, one of which belonged to a
medical student of marked ability, while the other two
belonged to quite undistinguished women. There were two
others weighing 1587 each, one of which belonged to an
insane woman. Still heavier than these by far were the
brains of an insane woman who died of consumption, and
of a dwarfed Indian squaw. The brain of the first weighed
1742 grams; while that of the second was no less than
2084 grams.

From the foregoing examples it is evident that a large
brain is far from being a certain index of mental capacity
or of superior intelligence. It is frequently the very re-

i Cf . Das Eirngewicht des Menschen, pp. 21 and 137, by Theodor L.
W. von Bischoff, Bonn, 1880, and Dr. G. van Walsem in Neurolo-
gisches Centralblatt, pp. 578-580, Leipsic, July 1, 1899.

120 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

verse. If, for instance, it fail to receive the necessary
supply of blood, it will be inert or disordered and will
prove to be a dangerous possession rather than a precious
endowment. Epileptics usually have brains that are large
relatively to the size of the body. And, while it is probably
true that the great thinkers and men of action of the world
have, in most instances, had comparatively large brains, it
is also true that the brain weights of but few of them ex-
ceeded 1500 grams, while those of many fall below 1200
grams.

Thus the brain of Gambetta, "the foremost Frenchman
of his time," weighed only 1159 grams, while the weight
of the brain of Napoleon I was 1502 grams — barely equal
to that of a negro described by the anthropologist Broca,
and but little superior to that of a Hottentot mentioned
by Dr. Jeffries Wyman.1

The late Dr. Joseph Simms found the average brain
weight of sixty persons who were either imbeciles, idiots,
criminals or men of ordinary mind to be 1792 grams, while
that of sixty famous men was 1454 grams, a difference in
favor of men not noted for intellectual greatness of 338
grams. These figures are far from showing that large
brains are a necessary concomitant of mental capacity.

In view of these and many similar facts, we are not
surprised that the eminent German anatomist and anthro-
pologist, Eudolph Wagner, should declare that ' ' very intel-
ligent men do not differ strikingly in brain weight from
less gifted men/' and that the noted French physician,
Esquirol, should assert that "no size or form of head or
brain is incident to idiocy or superior talent."

So far as civilized races are concerned, there can be no
doubt that the absolute weight of the male is greater than
that of the female brain. According to the investigations
of seven of the most notable anthropologists, who have
given special attention to the subject under consideration,

iL'Anthropologie, pp. 336-337, by Paul Topinard, Paris, 1876.

CAPACITY FOR SCIENTIFIC PURSUITS

and who, collectively, have carefully weighed many thou-
sands of brains, the average brain weight of men in Europe
is 1381 grams, while that of women is 1237 grams. This
shows a difference between the average weight of the brain
in man and woman of 144 grams.

But, if it must be conceded that the absolute weight of
man 's brain is greater than woman 's, is it likewise true that
the relative weight is greater? This is a question which
demands an answer, as it is impossible to come to any
just conclusion respecting the intellectual capacity of
woman expressed in terms of brain weight, unless we can
affirm with certainty that men's brains are relatively, as
well as absolutely, larger than those of women.

Speaking of the relative weight of brain in man implies
a term of comparison. Several methods of estimating the
sexual proportions of brain mass have been suggested, but
only two of them have met with any favor. These are de-
termining the ratio of brain weight to body weight or body
height.

According to the investigations of anthropologists of ac-
knowledged authority, the average brain weight of woman
is to that of man in England and France as 90 is to 100.
The average stature of men and women in the same coun-
tries is as 93 to 100. This gives man an excess of brain
weight over that of woman of something more than an
ounce. But this slight difference in weight has been con-
sidered sufficient to constitute it "a fundamental sexual
distinction." When, however, it is considered that men
are not only taller but also larger than women, this appar-
ent advantage of an ounce in favor of the male entirely
disappears, and the result is that the relative amount of
brain mass in the two sexes is practically equal.

Because of the manifest inaccuracy of the stature cri-
terion, many eminent anthropologists have prepared to
estimate sexual differences in brain weight by adopting the
method based on the ratio of brain mass to body weight.

122 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

According to this method, women are found to possess
brains which are equal to or even somewhat larger than
those of men. If the comparative excess of non- vital tissue
in the form of fat in woman be eliminated and estimates be
based only on the active organic mass of her body, as com-
pared with the same mass in man, the excess of brain
weight in woman over that in man will be still more marked.

A careful study, then, of the brain as a whole, far from
proving woman's inferiority to man, rather proves her
superiority. The same may be said regarding sexual dis-
tinctions based on certain parts of the brain.

Some years ago it was positively asserted that the de-
velopment of the frontal lobe exhibited a pronounced dif-
ference in the two sexes. It was said to be much greater
in man than in woman and was regarded as a distinguish-
ing characteristic of the male sex. This was in keeping
with the generally accepted assumption that this portion
of the brain is the seat of the higher intellectual pro-
cesses. Further investigation, however, showed that there
was practically no sexual difference in the frontal lobe of
the brain, or, if there was a difference, it was probably in
favor of woman.

It has also become recognized that there is no valid
reason for considering the anterior portion of the brain as
the seat of the higher mental functions. It is possible,
but in the present state of science it can neither be affirmed
nor denied. So far as our present knowledge goes, it seems
more likely that the whole of the brain, especially the
sensori-motor regions of its middle part, have a part in
mental operations. At all events, it can certainly be
affirmed that Huschke 's distinction of man and woman into
homo frontalis et homo parietalis is utterly devoid of foun-
dation in fact.

Many anthropologists have fancied that a certain index
of the degree of intelligence is to be found in the convolu-
tions of the brain. The tortuous foldings of the female

CAPACITY FOR SCIENTIFIC PURSUITS

brain, it is asserted, are less ample, less pronounced and
less beautiful. "Behold," they exclaim, "a, most positive
evidence of inferiority. ' ' These men overlook the fact that
certain animals, notably the elephant and divers species of
cetaceans, have cerebral convolutions that are more com-
plex than those of man. If, then, brain convolutions were,
as claimed, a certain index of the degree of intelligence,
the whale or the elephant, and not man — pace Shakespeare
— would be ' ' the paragon of animals. ' '

But men of science are by no means at one on this
alleged sexual difference in brain convolutions. On the
contrary, there are many eminent physiologists and anato-
mists who contend that the superficies of brain convolu-
tions in women is relatively greater than in men. For
those who believe — and they are probably the majority at
present — that the seat of mental activity is in the gray
matter of the brain, this greater brain surface, due to its
convolutions, would be a decided compensation for woman's
relatively smaller brain volume.1

In whatever way, then, we consider the brains of men
and women, whether we compare the ratio of brain weight
to height of body or to weight of body, or compare the
relative amounts of gray matter in the two sexes, the
advantage, in spite of her smaller body, is distinctly in
favor of woman.

From the preceding considerations it seems clear that
there is no ground from the point of view of brain anat-
omy for considering one sex as superior to the other. They
evince, too, that quality as well as quantity of brain tissue
must be considered in all our discussions on the relations

iThe importance of gray matter in mental processes has evi-
dently been greatly overestimated, for it has been found to be thicker
in the brains of negroes, murderers and ignorant persons than it was
in the encephalon of Daniel Webster. It is also much thicker in the
brains of dolphins, porpoises and other cetaceans than it is in the
most intellectual of men.

124 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

between the volume of brain and the intelligence of its
possessor. Whales and elephants have much larger brains
than men, but they nevertheless stand far below him in
intelligence.

It must be remembered, also, that the brain is not only
an organ of mental function. It is likewise the center of
the entire nervous system, and its volume, therefore, must
correspond with the size and number of nerve trunks under
its control. In man, as in animals, the brain elements are
to a great extent but sensori-motor delegates whose func-
tion is the regulation and government of every part of the
body. The superior size of the whale 's brain, as compared
with that of man, can readily be understood when we
reflect on the much greater amount of territory which these
sensori-motor delegates represent. When this fact is borne
in mind it will be found that the whale's brain, relatively
to that of man, is extremely small. For while the ratio
of man's brain weight to that of his body is as 1 to 36,
the ratio of the whale's brain weight to its immense body
is but 1 to 3,000.

As an evidence that quality often counts for more than
quantity, brain anatomists would do well to reflect on the
marvelous intelligence displayed by ants and termites,
those mites of animated nature which so excited the admira-
tion of the naturalist Pliny and caused Darwin to declare,
"The brain of an ant is one of the most marvelous atoms
of matter in the world, perhaps more so than the brain of
man. ' ' 1

Moreover, when discussing the relative brain weights of
the two sexes, we must not lose sight of the fact that we
have, with the solitary exception of the eminent Russian
mathematician, Sonya Kovalevsky,2 no record of the brain

1 The Descent of Man, Vol. I, p. 145, London, 1871.

2 The brain of Sonya KovaleVsky was not weighed until it had
been four years in alcohol. Prof. Gustaf Eetzius then wrote an
elaborate account of it and estimated that its weight, at the time

CAPACITY FOR SCIENTIFIC PURSUITS 125

weights of any eminently intellectual woman. The brains
of scores of men of genius and exceptional mentality have
been weighed, but we are utterly ignorant of the weight of
brain of such women as Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Madame de
Stael, Maria Theresa, Sophie Germain, George Sand, Har-
riet Martineau, George Eliot, Eleanor Ormerod, Mary
Somerville, and others of the same caliber. The only data
so far available, regarding the average brain weight of
women, are such as have been obtained from the inmates
of hospitals, prisons and pauper institutions. And yet we
are asked to accept the average based on such data as a
fair term of comparison with the average male brain weight
as increased by the superior weight of brain of such men as
Cuvier and Turgenieff. And this is called science ! *

The attempt, then, to prove by weighing and measuring
and studying brains that man is the intellectual superior
of woman has been an ignominious failure. The old belief
that woman is by nature and cerebral organization less

of Sonya's death, was 1385 grams. The brain- weight of her illus-
trious contemporary, Hermann von Helmholtz, was 1440 grams. But
when the body-weights of these two eminent mathematicians are borne
in mind — Sonya was short and slender — it will be seen that the rela-
tive amount of brain tissue was greater in the woman than in the
man. Cf. Das Gehirn des Mathematikers Sonja Kovalewski m
Biologische Untersuchungen, von Prof. Dr. Gustaf Eetzius, pp. 1-17,
Stockholm, 1900.

i The reader who desires more detailed information respecting
the brain-weights of men and women of various races and the rela-
tion of brain-weight to intelligence may consult with profit the fol-
lowing works and articles : Memoires d ' Anthropologie de Paul Broca,
5 Vols., Paris, 1871-1888; Alte und Neue Gehirn Probleme nebst einer
1078 Falle umfassenden Gehirngewichstatistik aus den Kgl. patho-
logisch-anatomischen Institut zu Munchen, von W. W. Wendt, Miin-
chen, 1909; Gehirngewicht und Intelligenz, by Dr. F. K. Walter,
Rostok, 1911 ; Gehirngewicht und Intelligent, by Dr. J. Draseke, Ham-
burg, in Archiv fur Eassen und Gesellschafts Biologe, pp. 499-522,
1906; Brain Weights and Intellectual Capacity, by Joseph Simms,
M. D., in the Popular Science Monthly, December, 1898, and The
Growth of the Brain, by H. H. Donaldson, London, 1895.

126 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

intelligent than man is not borne out by the investigations
of those best qualified to pronounce an opinion on the sub-
ject. To assert, as so many do, that woman was created
man's intellectual inferior is begging the question. Science
can adduce no proof of such a gratuitous statement. Broca,
the most eminent of French anthropologists, regarded as
an absurdity the attempt to establish a necessary relation
between the development of intelligence and the volume
and weight of the encephalon. With the ripe knowledge
of his mature years he was inclined to believe that the ap-
parent difference in intelligence in the two sexes was owing,
not to a difference of brain organization, but rather to a
difference of education, physical as well as mental, and
that, with equal opportunities for intellectual and physical
development, the present sexual differences that we have
been considering — differences which are due not to nature
but to the long ages of restraint and subjection under which
women have lived — would gradually be lessened, and that
men and women would eventually approach that equality
which characterizes them in the state of nature.1

Realizing the impossibility of arriving, by the study of
brain sizes and structure, at any satisfactory conclusion
respecting the relative intellectual capacities of men and
women, seekers after truth cast about for other methods
that were free from the errors and fallacies of those which
had proved so unreliable. The attempt to base the alleged
mental inferiority of woman upon the facial angle of
Camper, the metafacial angle of Serres, the craniofacial
angle of Huxley, the sphenoidal angle of Welcker, or the
nasobasal angle of Virchow had issued in utter failure, and

*Quand on songe & la difference qui separe de notre temps
1 'education intellectuelle de 1'homme de celle de la femme, on se de-
mande si ce n 'est pas cette influence qui retrecit le cervaux et le crane
feminins, et si, les deux sexes etant livres a leur spontaneite, leur
cervaux ne tendraient pas a se ressembler, aussi qu 'il arrive chez les
sauvages." Bulletin de la Societe d'Anthropologie, p. 503, Paris,
July 3, 1879.

CAPACITY FOR SCIENTIFIC PURSUITS

had proved for the thousandth time that it is easier to
formulate theories than to establish their validity. It was
evident, notwithstanding the assertions of certain material-
istic theorists, that the brain did not secrete thought as
the liver secretes bile ; it was evident, too, that intelligence
could not be estimated in terms of any kind of mechanical
units. Psycho-physiologists had no sort of dynamometer
for measuring brain power as they would measure muscu-
lar energy. By means of the plethysmograph they might
determine the amount of blood sent to the brain in a given
time, but they had no psychometer of any description
which would enable them to estimate the quantity, much
less the quality, of psychic force such a blood supply was
competent to produce.

Many, of course, still remained adherents of the old view
that woman must ever remain the mental inferior of man
because she is by nature physically weaker. These per-
sons, however, seemed to lose sight of the fact that women
who lead a rational life — who are not the slaves of fashion
or the victims of luxury — have little to complain of on the
score of physical weakness. This is evidenced by the life
and habits of the women of the people, as well as by the
tasks performed by women among savage tribes, who in
health and strength are little, if at all, inferior to their
male companions.

The late Professor Huxley, in referring to this subject,
exhibited his usual acumen and sanity in such matters when
he indited the following paragraph:

"We have heard a great deal lately about the physical
disabilities of women. Some of these alleged impediments,
no doubt, are really inherent in their organization, but
nine-tenths of them are artificial — the products of their
mode of life. I believe that nothing would tend so effec-
tually to get rid of these creations of idleness, weariness
and that 'over-stimulation of the emotions' which in plainer
spoken days used to be called wantonness, than a fair share

128 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

of healthy work, directed toward a definite object, com-
bined with an equally fair share of healthy play, during
the years of adolescence ; and those who are best acquainted
with the acquirements of an average medical practitioner
will find it hardest to believe that the attempt to reach
that standard is like to prove exhausting to an ordinarily
intelligent and well-educated woman."1

Substantially the same views are held by Mrs. Henry
Fawcett and Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, whose rare experi-
ence and knowledge give their opinions on the subject
under consideration special weight and value.

After men of science had tried the various theories above
enumerated and found them wanting, they finally be-
thought themselves of investigating the relative intellectual
standing of male and female students in coeducational in-
stitutions, and inquiring into their comparative capacity
for different branches of knowledge, as made known by
their professors and by the results of oral and written
examinations. Considering the simplicity of this method
and the fact that it is the more rational way to reach
reliable conclusions, the wonder is that it was not thought
of sooner. It excludes the bias of prepossessions and pre-
conceived theories and lends itself to the discussion of
results based on incontestable facts.

The first coeducational institution in which the intellec-
tual capacity of women, in competition with men, was fairly
tested was, strange to say, in the Royal College of Science
for Ireland. This was somewhat more than half a century
ago. When the time of examinations came, both the men
and women students were handed the same examination
papers. At the public distribution of prizes, at the close
of the session, "the ladies/' in the words of a Dublin
paper, "vindicated the genius of their sex by carrying off

i Times, London, July 8, 1874. Of. Chap. XVII, on "Adolescent
Girls and Their Education/' in Adolescence, Vol. II, by G. Stanley
Hall; New York, 1904,

CAPACITY FOR SCIENTIFIC PURSUITS 129

the highest prizes." In zoology, botany, physics, chemis-
try and mathematics they proved themselves the peers, and
frequently the superiors, of their male competitors.

' ' The success of the female students disturbed, of course,
very much the preconceived notions of some people, who
had always taken for granted tkat the female intellect was
inferior to the male; and, not being able to combat the
stubborn facts that appeared from time to time in the news-
papers, when the results of the examinations were pub-
lished, they tried to account for them."1

These cavillers, however, soon discovered that there was
no way of accounting for the disconcerting fact which
confronted them, except by confessing that their theory
regarding the mental inferiority of women was not sub-
stantiated by fact. This unexpected demand for the uncon-
ditional surrender of their long-cherished theory of male
superiority was a crushing and humiliating blow to their
pride of intellect, but there was no remedy for it, nor was
it accompanied by any balm of consolation that they, at
the time, felt disposed to regard as adequate compensation
for their lost prestige — a prestige which their overweening
sex had claimed from time immemorial.

Similar experiments under even more trying conditions
were subsequently made in the United States and in other
parts of the world, and everywhere with the same results.
In the universities of Switzerland, France, England, Ger-
many and Russia women, when given a fair opportunity,
were able to demonstrate to the satisfaction of all unpreju-
diced judges that the long-vaunted superiority of the male
intellect was a myth; that intelligence, like genius, has
no sex.

One of the most interesting and comprehensive investi-
gations ever undertaken regarding this long-debated ques-
tion was made some years ago by Arthur Kirchhoff, an

1 The Study of Science by Women in the Contemporary Eeview
for March, 1869.

130 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

enterprising German journalist.1 It consisted in collecting
and collaborating the opinions of more than a hundred of
the most distinguished professors of the Fatherland, be-
sides the opinions of a number of eminent writers and
teachers in girls' high schools. These constitute a volume
of nearly four hundred pages, and embody the views on
the capacity of woman for science of professors of theol-
ogy, jurisprudence, anatomy, physiology, surgery, psychol-
ogy, history, gynecology, psychiatry, philology, philosophy,
art, mathematics, physics, astronomy, chemistry, zoology,
botany, geology, paleontology and technology. The in-
vestigation, indeed, covered every branch of knowledge
and evoked the deliberate views of those who were looked
upon as the leading representatives of German thought and
culture. v

This book possesses a special value from the fact that,
of all peoples in Europe, the Germans have been the most
refractory to the claims of women to be received at the
universities on the same footing as men. The German pro-
fessors, naturally, share the conservatism of their country-
men, and, like them, are wedded to routine when there is
question of introducing innovations into their social, po-
litical or educational systems. One would anticipate, then,
that, when called upon to give their honest opinions re-
specting the intellectual capacity of women, as compared
with that of men, their answer would be decidedly in
favor of the sterner sex. "For," they will ask, "have not
all the achievements in science which have given the Fath-
erland such prestige in the eyes of the world been due
entirely to men? Have the women of Germany ever under-
taken the solution of any great scientific problem, or have

AJcademische Frau. Gutachten hervorragender Universitaten-
professoren, Frauenlehrer und Schriftsteller uber die Befahigung der
Frew, zum wissenschaftlichen Studium und Berufe herausgegeben von
'Arthur Kirchhoff, Berlin, 1897.

CAPACITY FOR SCIENTIFIC PURSUITS 131

they ever made any notable contribution to scientific ad-
vancement? They have not."

Yet, notwithstanding all these facts, notwithstanding all
traditions and prejudices and social bias, the unexpected
has happened, even in conservative, old-fashioned Ger-
many. The German professor may be tenacious of pre-
conceived views; he may be a stickler for ancient customs
and usages; nevertheless, when he is called upon to give a
question a categorical answer which can be arrived at by
observation or experiment, he may generally, in spite of
his likes or dislikes, be counted on to give a decision in
accord with the principles of legitimate induction. He may
have his prejudices — and who has not? — but, when one
appeals to him in the name of science and justice, he will
rarely be found wanting. Regardless of all personal con-
sideration, he will feel that loyalty to science, of which he
is the avowed devotee, requires him to consider a question
proposed to him as he would a scientific problem — some-
thing to be decided solely by such evidence as may be
available.

To the exceeding gratification of the believers in the
intellectual equality of the sexes, this proved to be the case
in Herr Kirchhoff's investigation. The answers of the
German professors, contrary to what most people would
have anticipated, were, by a surprising majority, in favor
of women. But their answers were in keeping with the
changed educational conditions in Germany, as well as in
other parts of the civilized world. Had Herr Kirchhoff
undertaken his investigation a few decades earlier, the
result would undoubtedly have been different, for women
were then excluded from the universities and the profes-
sors had not had an opportunity of accurately testing their
intellectual capacities. But having, during the latter part
of the nineteenth century, had them as students in their
lecture halls and laboratories, where they were able to
study their mental powers and determine the value of their

WOMAN IN SCIENCE

work by strict scientific methods, they were in a better
position to express an opinion on the question at issue than
would, a few years previously, have been possible.

Accordingly, even the declared enemies of the woman's
movement among the German professorate were forced to
admit the intellectual equality of the two sexes. For they,
too, as well as men of science in other parts of Europe, had
been measuring skulls and weighing brains ; they, too, had
been studying woman's mental caliber in the light of the
new psychology; they, too, had been watching her work
in the various departments of the university ; and, notwith-
standing all their observations and experiments, they were
unable to detect any difference between men and women in
brain organization or in intellectual capacity. And, as
might have been foreseen, results harmonized perfectly
with those arrived at by investigators in other parts of the
world — namely, that in things of the mind there is perfect
sexual equality.

Among the hundred and more professors whose opinions
are given in Herr Kirchhoff's book there were, of course,
a few who were not prepared to subscribe to the findings of
the great majority of their colleagues. But the reasons
they assign for dissent were, at least in some instances, little
better founded than that of a certain professor of chem-
istry in the University of Geneva, who, a few years ago,
gravely declared that women have no aptitude for science
because, forsooth, in chemical manipulations they break
more test-tubes than men. Verily, "a Daniel come to
judgment."

What probably more deeply impressed the German pro-
fessors than anything else was the marked talent and taste
of many of the women students for the abstract sciences,
especially for the higher mathematics. For it had always
been asserted that these branches of knowledge were beyond
woman 's capacity and that she had an instinctive antipathy
for abstruse reasoning and for abstractions of all kinds.

CAPACITY FOR SCIENTIFIC PURSUITS 133

When, however, they discovered women whose delight was
to discuss the theory of elliptic functions or curves denned
by differential equations ; when they found a mathematical
genius like Sonya Kovalevsky speculating on the fourth
dimension, and carrying away from the mathematicians of
the world the most coveted prize of the French Academy
of Sciences, they were forced to confess that another of
their illusions was dissipated, and to acknowledge that they
had no longer anything on which to base their long and
fondly cherished opinion of the mental inequality of the
sexes.

As an evidence of the extraordinary change that had
been effected among the conservative Germans in the course
of a few years respecting their attitude toward the admis-
sion of the "Academic Woman" to the universities, and,
consequently, toward her intellectual capacity, it will suf-
fice to reproduce a sentence from the elaborately expressed
opinion of Dr. Julius Bernstein, professor of physiology in
the University of Halle. "After reflection on the subject,"
he declares, ' ' I am convinced that neither God nor religion,
neither custom nor law, and still less science, warrants one
in maintaining any essential difference in this respect
between the male and the female sex. ' ' x

The controversy of centuries regarding woman 's intel-
lectual capacity was now virtually settled beyond all perad-
venture. Woman had conquered, and her final victory
had been won in the heart of the enemy's country, yea,
even in what was thought to be the impregnable fortress
of her relentless foes. It was achieved where the proud
Teuton male had imagined that he was unapproachable

1 ' ' Ich komme beim Nachdenken Member zu der Ueberzeigung,
dass kein Gott und keine Eeligion, kein Herkommen und kein Gesetz,
aber ebensowenig die Wissensehaft uns das Eecht erteilen, in dieser
Beziehung zwischen dem mannerlichen und weiblichen Geschlect einen
principiellen Untersehied zu statuiren." Die Akademische Frau,
p. 41.

134 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

and beyond compare — in the laboratories and lecture rooms
of his great universities — more irresistible, in his estima-
tion, than the Kaiser 's trained legions in battle array.

It finally dawned upon the leaders of thought in the
Fatherland, as it had but shortly before dawned upon
philosophers and men of science in other lands, that the
reputed sexual difference in intelligence was not due to
difference in brain size or brain structure, or innate power
of intellect, but rather to some other factors which had
been neglected, or overlooked, as being unessential or of
minor importance. These factors, on further investiga-
tion, proved to be education and opportunity.

As far back as 1869 that keen observer and philosopher,
John Stuart Mill, had expressed himself on the subject in
the following words : ' * Like the French compared with the
English, the Irish with the Swiss, the Greeks or Italians
compared with the German races, so women compared with
men may be found, on the average, to do the same things
with some variety in the particular kind of excellence.
But that they would do them fully as well, on the whole,
if their education and cultivation were adapted to correct-
ing instead of aggravating the infirmities incident to their
temperament, I see not the smallest reason to doubt."1

It would be difficult to find a better illustration of the
sluggishness of the male as compared with the female mind
than the tardiness of men of science in arriving at a sane
conclusion respecting the subject of this chapter. For five
hundred years ago Christine de Pisan arrived at the same
conclusion which the learned professors of Germany
reached only in the last decade of the nineteenth century.
Discussing in La Cite des Dames the question at issue she
writes as follows: "I say to thee again, and doubt never
the contrary, that if it were the custom to put the little
maidens to the school, and they were made to learn the
sciences as they do to the men-children, that they should
i The Subjection of Women, p. 91, London, 1909.

CAPACITY FOR SCIENTIFIC PURSUITS 135

learn as perfectly, and they should be as well entered into
the subtleties of all the arts and sciences as men be. And
peradventure, there should be more of them, for I have
teached heretofore that by how much women have the body
more soft than the men have, and less able to do divers
things, by so much they have the understanding more
sharp there as they apply it."

Christine de Pisan's statement is virtually a challenge
demanding the same educational opportunities for women
as were accorded to men. But it was a challenge that men
did not see fit to accept until full five centuries had
elapsed, and until it was no longer possible to deny giving
satisfaction to the long-aggrieved half of humanity. It
was also an appeal to experiment and an appeal, likewise,
to the teachings of history in lands where women have
enjoyed the same educational advantages as men.

Having reviewed the many disabilities which so long
retarded woman's intellectual advancement, and considered
some of the objections which were urged against her
capacity for scientific pursuits, we are now prepared to
consider the appeal of Christine de Pisan and deal with it
on its merits. This we shall do by a brief survey of
woman's achievements in the various branches of science
in which she has been accorded the same intellectual op-
portunities that were so long the exclusive privilege of
her male compeer.

CHAPTER III

WOMEN IN MATHEMATICS

"All abstract speculations, all knowledge which is dry,
however useful it may be, must be abandoned to the labori-
ous and solid mind of man, . . . For this reason women
will never learn geometry. "

In these words Immanuel Kant, more than a century
ago, gave expression to an opinion that had obtained since
the earliest times respecting the incapacity of the female
mind for abstract science, and notably for mathematics.
Women, it was averred, could readily assimilate what is
concrete, but, like children, they have a natural repug-
nance for everything which is abstract. They are compe-
tent to discuss details and to deal with particulars, but
become hopelessly lost when they attempt to generalize or
deal with universals.

De Lamennais shares Kant 's opinion concerning woman 's
intellectual inferiority and does not hesitate to express
himself on the subject in the most unequivocal manner.
"I have never," he writes, "met a woman who was com-
petent to follow a course of reasoning the half of a quarter
of an hour — un demi quart d'heure. She has qualities
which are wanting in us, qualities of a particular, inex-
pressible charm; but, in the matter of reason, logic, the
power to connect ideas, to enchain principles of knowledge
and perceive their relationships, woman, even the most
highly gifted, rarely attains to the height of a man of
mediocre capacity. "

But it is not only in the past that such views found
acceptance. They prevail even to-day to almost the same

136

WOMEN IN MATHEMATICS 137

extent as during the ages of long ago. How far they have
any foundation in fact can best be determined by a brief
survey of what woman has achieved in the domain of
mathematics.

Athenaaus, a Greek writer who flourished about A.D.
200, tells us in his Deipnosophistce of several Greek women
who excelled in mathematics, as well as philosophy, but
details are wanting as to their attainments in this branch
of knowledge. If, however, we may judge from the
number of women — particularly among the hetaerae — who
became eminent in the various schools of philosophy, espe-
cially during the pre-Christian era, we must conclude that
many of them were well versed in geometry and astronomy
as well as in the general science of numbers. Menagius
declares that he found no fewer than sixty-five women phi-
losophers mentioned in the writings of the ancients1 ; and,
judging from what we know of the character of the studies
pursued in certain of the philosophical schools, especially
those of Plato2 and Pythagoras, and the enthusiasm which
women manifested in every department of knowledge, there
can be no doubt that they achieved the same measure of
success in mathematics as in philosophy and literature.3

The first woman mathematician, regarding whose attain-
ments we have any positive knowledge, is the celebrated
Hypatia, a Neo-platonic philosopher, whose unhappy fate
at the hands of an Alexandrian mob in the early part of
the fifth century has given rise to many legends and ro-
mances which have contributed not a little toward obscur-
ing the real facts of her extraordinary career. She was
the daughter of Theon, who was distinguished as a mathe-

1 ' ' Ipse mulieres Philosophas in libris Veterum sexaginta quinque
reperi," Historia Mulierum Philosopharum, p. 3, Amstelodami, 1692.

2 Plato had inscribed above the entrance of his school, OuSels
dyew/j.£rTjTos eiVtrw. Let no one enter here who is not a geometer.

s Menagius in referring to this matter, op. cit., p. 37, writes as
follows: "Meritrices Graecas plerasque humanioribus literis et math-
ematicis disciplinis operam dedisse notat Athenseus. "

138 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

matician and astronomer and as a professor in the school
of Alexandria, which was then probably the greatest seat
of learning in the world. Born about the year 375 A. D.,
she at an early age evinced the possession of those talents
that were subsequently to render her so illustrious. So
great indeed was her genius and so rapid was her progress
in this branch of knowledge under the tuition of her father
that she soon completely eclipsed her master in his chosen
specialty.

There is reason to believe — although the fact is not defi-
nitely established — that she studied for a while in Athens
in the school of philosophy conducted by Plutarch the
Younger and his daughter Asclepigenia. After her re-
turn from Athens, Hypatia was invited by the magistrates
of Alexandria to teach mathematics and philosophy. Here
in brief time her lecture room was filled by eager and en-
thusiastic students from all parts of the civilized world.
She was also gifted with a high order of eloquence and
with a voice so marvelous that it was declared to be "di-
vine."

Regarding her much vaunted beauty, nothing certain is
known, as antiquity has bequeathed to us no medal or
statue by which we could form an estimate of her physical
grace. But, be this as it may, it is certain that she com-
manded the admiration and respect of all for her great
learning, and that she bore the mantle of science and phi-
losophy with so great modesty and self-confidence that she
won all hearts. A letter addressed to "The Muse," or to
"The Philosopher" — TV ^tXoo-o^o) — was sure to be de-
livered to her at once. Small wonder, then, to find a Greek
poet inditing to her an epigram containing the following
sentiment :

' ' When I see thee and hear thy word I thee adore ; it is
the ethereal constellation of the Virgin, which I contem-
plate, for to the heavens thy whole life is devoted, 0 august

WOMEN IN MATHEMATICS 139

Hypatia, ideal of eloquence and wisdom's immaculate
star."1

But it was as a mathematician that Hypatia most ex-
celled. She taught not only geometry and astronomy, but
also the new science of algebra, which had but a short time
before been introduced by Diophantus. And, singular to
relate, no further progress was made in the mathematical
sciences, as taught by Hypatia, until the time of Newton,
Leibnitz and Descartes, — more than twelve centuries later.

Hypatia was the author of three works on mathematics,
all of which have been lost, or destroyed by the ravages of
time. One of these was a commentary on the Arithmetica
of Diophantus. The original treatise — or rather the part
which has come down to us — was found about the middle
of the fifteenth century in the Vatican Library, whither it
had probably been brought after Constantinople had fallen
into the possession of the Turks. This valuable work, as
annotated by the great French mathematicians Bachet and
Fermat, gives us a good idea of the extent of Hypatia 's
attainments as a mathematician.

Another of Hypatia 's works was a treatise on the Conic
Sections by Apollonius of Perga — surnamed "The Great
Geometer. " Next to Archimedes, he was the most distin-
guished of the Greek geometricians ; and the last four books
of his conies constitute the chief portions of the higher
geometry of the ancients. Moreover, they offer some ele-
gant geometrical solutions of problems which, with all the
resources of our modern analytical method, are not with-
out difficulty. The greater part of this precious work has

1 The sentiment of the Greek epigram is well expressed in the
following Latin verses:

"Quando intueor te, adoro, et sermones,
Virginis domum sideream intuens.
E coelis enim tua sunt opera,
Hypatia easta, sermonum venustas,
Impollutum astrum sapientis doctrinse."

140 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

been preserved and has engaged the attention of several of
the most illustrious of modern mathematicians — among
them Borelli, Viviani, Fermat, Barrow and others. The
famous English astronomer, Halley, regarded this produc-
tion of Apollonius of such importance that he learned
Arabic for the express purpose of translating it from the
version that had been made into this language.

A woman who could achieve distinction by her commen-
taries on such works as the Arithmetical of Diophantus, of
the Conic Sections of Apollonius, and occupy an honored
place among such mathematicians as Fermat, Borelli, and
Halley, must have had a genius for mathematics, and we
can well believe that the glowing tributes paid by her con-
temporaries to her extraordinary powers of intellect were
fully deserved. If, with Pascal, we see in mathematics "the
highest exercise of the intelligence, ' ' and agree with him in
placing geometers in the first rank of intellectual princes —
princes de I' esprit — we must admit that Hypatia was in-
deed exceptionally dowered by Him whom Plato calls ' ' The
Great Geometer. "

There is still a third work of this ill-fated woman that
deserves notice — namely, her Astronomical Canon, which
dealt with the movements of the heavenly bodies. It is
the general opinion that this was but a commentary on the
tables of Ptolemy, in which event it is still possible that it
may be found incorporated in the work of her father,
Theon, on the same subject.

In addition to her works on astronomy and mathematics,
Hypatia is credited with several inventions of importance,
some of which are still in daily use. Among these are an
apparatus for distilling water, another for measuring the
level of water, and a third an instrument for determining
the specific gravity of liquids — what we should now call an
areometer. Besides these apparatus, she was likewise the
inventor of an astrolabe and a planisphere.

One of her most distinguished pupils was the eminent

WOMEN IN MATHEMATICS 141

Neo-platonist philosopher, Synesius, who became the Bishop
of Ptolemais in the Pentapolis of Libya. His letters con-
stitute our chief source of information respecting this re-
markable woman. Seven of them are addressed to her, and
in four others he makes mention of her. In one of them
he writes : ' ' We have seen and we have heard her who pre-
sides at the sacred mysteries of philosophy." In another
he apostrophizes her as "My benefactress, my teacher, —
magistra — my sister, my mother. ' '

In science Hypatia was among the women of antiquity
what Sappho was in poetry and what Aspasia was in phi-
losophy and eloquence — the chiefest glory of her sex. In
profundity of knowledge and variety of attainments she
had few peers among her contemporaries, and she is en-
titled to a conspicuous place among such luminaries of
science as Ptolemy, Euclid, Apollonius, Diophantus and
Hipparchus.1

It is a matter of regret to the admirers of this favored
daughter of the Muses that she is absent from Raphael's
School of Athens; but, had her achievements been as well
known and appreciated in his day as they are now, we can
readily believe that the incomparable artist would have
found a place for her in this masterpiece with the matchless
form and features of his beloved Fornarina.

After the death of Hypatia the science of mathematics
remained stationary for many long centuries. Outside of
certain Moors in Spain, the only mathematicians of note
in Europe, until the Eenaissance, were Gerbert, afterward
Pope Silvester II, and Leonardo da Pisa. The first woman
to attract special attention for her knowledge of mathe-
matics was Heloise, the noted pupil of Abelard. Aecord-

1 Among modern works on Hypatia may be mentioned Hypatia,
die PJiilosophin von Alexandria, by St. Wolt, Vienna, 1879; Hypatia
von Alexandria, by W. A. Meyer, Heidelberg, 1886; Ipazia Alessan-
drina, by D. Guido Bigoni, Venize, 1887, and De Hypatia, by B.
Ligier, Dijon, 1879.

WOMAN IN SCIENCE

ing to Franciscus Ambrosius, who edited the works of
Abelard and Heloise in 1616, the famous prioress of The
Paraclete was a prodigy of learning, for besides having a
knowledge of Latin, Greek and Hebrew, which was some-
thing extremely rare in her time, she was also well versed
in philosophy, theology and mathematics, and inferior in
these branches only to Abelard himself, who was prob-
ably the most eminent scholar of his age.1

Many Italian women, as we have seen in a preceding
chapter, were noted for their proficiency in the various
branches of mathematics. Some of the most distinguished
of them flourished during the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. Among these were Elena Cornaro Piscopia, cel-
ebrated as a linguist as well as a mathematician; Maria
Angela Ardinghelli, translator of the Vegetable Statics of
Stephen Hales; Cristina Roccati, who taught physics for
twenty-seven years in the Scientific Institute of Rovigo, and
Clelia Borromeo, fondly called by her countrymen gloria
Genuensium — the glory of the Genoese. In addition to a
special talent for languages, she possessed so great a ca-
pacity for mathematics and mechanics that no problem in
these sciences seemed to be beyond her comprehension.2
Then there was also Diamante Medaglia, a mathematician
of note, who wrote a special dissertation on the importance
of mathematics in the curriculum of studies for women,
Alle matematiche, alle matematiche prestino V opera loro le
donne, onde non cadano in crassi paralogismi — ' ' To mathe-

1 Ambrosius in his preface to the works of Abelard and Heloise
refers to the latter as ' ' Clarum sui sexus sidus et ornamentum, ' ' and
declares "necnon mathesin, philosophiam et theologiam a viro suo
edocta, illo solo minor f uit. ' '

2 Mazzuchelli says of her in his Museo, ' l Sembra non avervi nella
Natura cosa la piu intralciata ed oscura nelle storie, ne finalemente
la piu astrusa nelle matematiche e nelle mecchaniche, che a lei conta
non sia e palese, e che sf ugga la capacita del suo spirito. ; ' Dizionario
Biografico, Vol. I, p. 122, by Ambrogio Levati, Milano, 1821.

WOMEN IN MATHEMATICS 143

matics, to mathematics," she cries, "let women devote
attention for mental discipline. ' ' *

The most illustrious, by far, of the women mathemati-
cians of Italy was Maria Gaetana Agnesi, who was born in
Milan in 1718 and died there at the age of eighty-one. At
an early age she exhibited rare intelligence and soon dis-
tinguished herself by her extraordinary talent for lan-
guages. At the age of five she spoke French with ease and
correctness, while only six years later she was able to trans-
late Greek into Latin at sight and to speak the former as
fluently as her own Italian. At the early age of nine she
startled the learned men and women of her native city by
discoursing for an hour in Latin on the rights of women to
the study of science. This discourse — Oratio — was not, as
usually stated, her own composition, but a translation from
the Italian of a discourse written by her teacher of Latin.
That a child of nine years should speak in the language of
Cicero for a full hour before a learned assembly and with-
out once losing the thread of her discourse was, indeed, a
wonderful performance, and we are not surprised to learn
that she was regarded by her countrymen as an infant
prodigy.2

In addition to Italian, French, Latin and Greek, she was
acquainted with German, Spanish and Hebrew. For this
reason she was, like Elena Cornaro Piscopia, the famous

iDelle Donne Illustri Italian* del XIII al XIX Secolo, p. 268,
Roma.

2 The full title of this celebrated discourse is Oratio qua ostenditur
Artium liber alium studia a Fcemineo sexu neutiquam abhorere, habit a
a Maria de Agnesis Rhetorics Operam Dante, Anno cetatis suce nono
nondum exacto, die 18, Augusti, 1727. It is found at the end of a
work entitled Discorsi Academici di varj autori Viventi intorno agli
Stuj delle Donne in Padova, 1729. This subject, it may be remarked,
frequently engaged the attention of Maria Gaetana as she advanced
in years, for we find it among the questions discussed in her Proposi-
tiones Philosophical, pp. 2 and 3, Mediolani, 1738.

144 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

11 Venetian Minerva," called Oracolo Settilingue — Oracle
of Seven Languages.1

But it was in the higher mathematics that Maria Gaetana
was to win her chief title to fame in the world of learning.
So successful had she been in her prosecution of this branch
of science that she was, at the early age of twenty, able to
enter upon her monumental work — Le Instituzioni Anali-
tiche — a treatise in two large quarto volumes on the dif-
ferential and integral calculus. To this difficult task she
devoted ten years of arduous and uninterrupted labor.
And if we may credit her biographer, she consecrated the
nights as well as the days to her herculean undertaking.
For frequently, after working in vain on a difficult prob-
lem during the day, she was known to bound from her bed
during the night while sound asleep and, like a somnambu-
list, make her way through a long suite of rooms to her

i M. Charles de Brosses, in his Lettres Familieres ecrites de
ritalie en 1739 et 1740, speaks of Agnesi in terms that recall the
marvelous stories which are related of Admirable Crichton and Pico
della Mirandola. "She appeared to me," he tells us, "something
more stupendous — una cosa piu stupenda — than the Duomo of
Milan." Having been invited to a conversazione for the purpose of
meeting this wonderful woman, the learned Frenchman found her
to be a "young lady of about eighteen or twenty." She was sur-
rounded by l ' about thirty people many of them from different

parts of Europe." The discussion turned on various questions of
mathematics and natural philosophy.

"She spoke," writes de Brosses, "wonderfully well on these sub-
jects, though she could not have been prepared beforehand any more
than we were. She is much attached to the philosophy of Newton;
and, it is marvelous to see a person of her age so conversant with
such abstruse subjects. Yet, however much I was surprised at the
extent and depth of her knowledge, I was still more amazed to hear

her speak Latin with such purity, ease and accuracy, that I

do not recollect any book in modern Latin written in so classical

a style as that in which she pronounced these discourses The

conversation afterwards became general, everyone speaking in the
language of his own country, and she answering in the same lan-
guage ; for, her knowledge of languages is prodigious. ' ;

WOMEN IN MATHEMATICS 145

study, where she wrote out the solution of the problem and
then returned to her bed. The following morning, on re-
turning to her desk, she found, to her great surprise, that
while asleep she had fully solved the problem which had
been the subject of her meditations during the day and of
her dreams during the night. Could the psychiatrist who
so loves to deal with obscure mental phenomena find a more
interesting case to engage his attention or one more worthy
of the most careful investigation ?

Finally Maria Gaetana's opus ma jus was completed and
given to the public. It would be impossible to describe the
sensation it produced in the learned world. Everybody
talked about it; everybody admired the profound learning
of the author, and acclaimed her: "II portento del sesso,
unico al Mondo" — the portent of her sex, unique in the
world. By a single effort of her genius she had completely
demolished that fabric of false reasoning which had so long
been appealed to as proof positive of woman's intellectual
inferiority, especially in the domain of abstract science.
Maria Gaetana's victory was complete, and her victory was
likewise a victory for her sex. She had demonstrated once
for all, and beyond a quirk or quibble, that women could
attain to the highest eminence in mathematics as well as in
literature, that supreme excellence in any department of
knowledge was not a question of sex but a question of edu-
cation and opportunity, and that in things of the mind
there was essentially no difference between the male and
the female intellect.

The world saw in Agnesi a worthy accession to that noble
band of gifted women who count among their number a
Sappho, a Corinna, an Aspasia, a Hypatia, a Paula, a
Hroswitha, a Dacier, an Isabella Resales who, in the six-
teenth century, successfully defended the most difficult the-
ological theses in the presence of Paul III and the entire
college of cardinals. And so delighted were the women —
especially those in Italy — with the signal triumph of their

146 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

eminent sister that they defied the traducers of their sex —
muliebris sapientice inf ensissimis hostibus — to continue any
longer their unreasonable campaign against the rights of
women which were based on the intellectual equality of the
two sexes.

So highly did the French Academy of Science value Ag-
nesi's achievement that she would at once have been made
a member of this learned body had it not been against the
constitutions to admit a woman to membership. M. Mo-
tigny, one of the committee appointed by the Academy to
report on the work, in his letter to the author, among other
things, writes: " Permit me, Mademoiselle, to unite my
personal homage to the plaudits of the entire Academy. I
have the pleasure of making known to my country an ex-
tremely useful work which has long been desired, and which
has hitherto" — both in France and in England — "existed
only in outline. I do not know any work of this kind which
is clearer, more methodic or more comprehensive than your
Analytical Institutions. There is none in any language
which can guide more surely, lead more quickly, and con-
duct further those who wish to advance in the mathemat-
ical sciences. I admire particularly the art with which
you bring under uniform methods the divers conclusions
scattered among the works of geometers and reached by
methods entirely different. "

As an indication of the exceptional merit of Agnesi's
work, even long after its publication in 1748, it suffices to
state that the second volume of the Instituzioni Analitiche
was translated into French in 1775 by Antelmy and anno-
tated by the Abbe Bossuet, a member of the French Acad-
emy and a collaborator of D 'Alembert on the mathematical
part of the famous Encyclopedic.

A still greater proof of the estimation in which Agnesi's
work was held by men of science is the fact that it was
translated in its entirety into English by the Rev. John
Colton, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in the Univer-

WOMEN IN MATHEMATICS 147

sity of Cambridge, and published in 1801, fifty-two years
after it had appeared in Italian. His impression of the
methods followed by the Milanese savante was so favorable
that, in the words of a contemporary writer, it "gave rise
to his very spirited resolution of learning a new language
at an advanced period of life, that he might make himself
perfect master of them." 1

Gratifying, however, as were the tributes of admiration
and appreciation which came to Agnesi from all quarters,
from learned societies, from eminent mathematicians, from
sovereigns — the Empress Maria Theresa sent her a splen-
did diamond ring and a precious crystal casket be jeweled
with diamonds — that which touched her most deeply was,
undoubtedly, the recognition which she received from the
great Maecenas of his age, Pope Benedict XIV. As Car-
dinal Lambertini and Archbishop of Bologna, he had taken
a conspicuous part in the honors showered on Laura Bassi

iAt the conclusion of an elaborate review of Colton's transla-
tion of Agnesi 's Instituzioni Analitiche in the Edinburgh Review for
January, 1804, the writer expresses himself as follows: "We can-
not take leave of a work that does so much honor to female genius,
without earnestly recommending the perusal of it to those who believe
that great talents are bestowed by nature exclusively on man, and
who allege that women, even in their highest attainments, are to be
compared only to grown children, and have, in no instance, given
proofs of original and inventive powers, of a capacity for patient
research, or for profound investigation. Let those who hold these
opinions endeavor to follow the author of the Analytical Institutions
through the long series of demonstrations, which she has contrived
with so much skill and explained with such elegance and perspicuity.
If they are able to do so, and to compare her work with others of
the same kind, they will probably retract their former opinions, and
acknowledge that, in one instance at least, intellectual powers of the
highest order have been lodged in the brain of a woman.

"At si gelidus obstiterit circum praecordia sanguis; and if they
are unable to attend this illustrious female in her scientific excur-
sions, of course, they will not see the reasons for admiring her genius
that others do; but they may at least learn to think modestly of
their own."

148 [WOMAN IN SCIENCE

when she received her doctorate, and was specially de-
lighted when she was made professor of physics in his fa-
vored university. Being himself familiar with the higher
mathematics, he recognized at once the exceptional merit
of Maria Gaetana 's work and showed his appreciation of it
not only by letters and presents, but also by having her,
motu proprio, appointed by the Bolognese senate as pro-
fessor of higher mathematics in the University of Bologna.

In advising her of this appointment, he writes her that
he had in view the honor of the University in which he had
always taken a special interest, and that the appointment
carried with it no obligation of thanks on her part but
rather on his — che port a seco ch'ella non deve ringraziar
Noi, ma che Noi dobbiamo ringraziar lei. The interest that
this wise and broad-minded pontiff exhibited in the ad-
vancement of learned women and the rewards he was ever
ready to accord to their achievements in science and litera-
ture— especially in the cases of Laura Bassi and Maria
Gaetana Agnesi — is in keeping with the policy pursued by
his predecessors, and accounts in great measure for that
large number of learned women in Italy who, since the
opening of the first universities, have been the glory of
their sex and country.

But ardent as was the desire of the Supreme Pontiff to
have Agnesi occupy the chair of mathematics, and numer-
ous as were the appeals of her friends and the members of
the university faculty to have her accept the appointment
that carried with it such signal honor, she could never be
induced to leave her beloved Milan. For, after completing
her masterpiece, she resolved to retire from the world and
devote the rest of her life to the care of the poor, the sick
and the helpless in her native city. She did not, however,
as is so frequently asserted, enter the convent and become
a nun.1 During many years after her retirement from the

lit is surprising how many legends have obtained respecting the
life of Agnesi after the publication of her Instituzioni Analitiche.

WOMEN IN MATHEMATICS 149

world, she lived in her own home, a part of which she had
converted into a hospital. During the last fifteen years of
her life she had charge of the Pio Albergo Trivulzio — a
large institution founded by Prince Trivulzio for the aged
poor who were without home or assistance.

She had devoted ten years of the flower of her life to
the writing of her Instituzioni Analitiche — prepared pri-
marily for the benefit of one of her brothers who had a
taste for mathematics — and, after it was finished, she en-
tered upon that long career of heroic charity which was
terminated only at her death at the advanced age of
eighty-one.

One loves to speculate regarding Maria Gaetana 's pos-
sible achievements if she had continued during the rest of
her life that science in which, during a few short years,
she had won such distinction. She had made her own the
discoveries of Newton, Leibnitz, Roberval, Fermat, Des-
cartes, Riccati, Euler, the brothers Bernouilli, and had
mastered the entire science of mathematics then known.
Her pinions were trimmed for essaying loftier flights than
Thus, the writer of the article in the Edinburgh Eeview, above
quoted, declares that "she retired to a convent of blue nuns," — a
statement that has frequently been repeated in many of our most
noted encyclopaedias.

In a Prospetto Biografico delle Donne Italiane, written by G. C.
Facchini and published in Venice in 1824, it is stated that Maria
Gaetana was selected by the Pope to occupy "the chair of mathe-
matics which had been left vacant by the death of her father, ' ' while
Cavazza in his work "Le Scuole dell," Antico Studio Bolognese,
pp. 289-290, published in Milan in 1896, assures us that Gaetana
Agnesi taught analytical geometry in the University of Bologna for
full forty-eight years. The facts are that neither the father nor the
daughter ever taught even a single hour either in this or in any other
university. Cf. Maria Gaetana Agnesi, p. 273 et seq., by Luisa Anzo-
letti, Milano, 1900. This is far the best life of Milan's illustrious
daughter that has yet appeared. The reader may also consult with
profit the Elogio Storico di Maria Gaetana Agnesi, by Antonio
Frisi, Milano, 1799, and Gli Scrttori d' Italia, of G. Mazzuchelli,
Tom. I, Par. I, p. 198 et seq., Brescia, 1795.

150 JVOMAN IN SCIENCE

any hitherto attempted, and her intellect was prepared, as
one of her scientific friends expressed it, ''for fixing the
limits of the infinite/' But while the world of science was
still sounding her praises and predicting for her still
greater triumphs in the field of analysis, it learned with
surprise and sorrow that she had bid adieu to those studies
in which she had achieved such extraordinary success, and
had consecrated her life to the service of the poor and the
afflicted. She disappeared completely from those literary
and scientific reunions where she had so long been the most
conspicuous figure, and was thenceforth known only as the
ministering angel of the suffering and the abandoned. For
half a century hers was a life of the most heroic charity
and self-abnegation. Very readily, therefore, we can un-
derstand why a recent representative of the scientific world
should desire to see her name placed on the calendar of
saints.1

Had Agnesi devoted her entire life to science instead of
abandoning it just when she was prepared to do her best
work, she might to-day be ranked among such supreme
mathematicians as Lagrange, Monge, Laplace and the Ber-
nouillis, all of whom were her contemporaries. Even as it
was, she has been placed beside Cardan, Leibnitz and Euler
for her remarkable powers of analysis of infinitesimals,
while the best proof of the literary value of her Instituzioni
Analitiche is the fact that it has been selected by the fa-
mous society Delia Crusca as a testo di lingua — a work con-
sidered as a classic of its kind and used in the preparation of
the great authoritative dictionary of the Italian language.

But by consecrating herself to charity she probably ac-
complished far more for humanity and for the well-being
of her sex than if she had elected to continue her work in

i M. Rebi&re, in his Les Femmes dans la Science, p. 13, Paris,
1897, writes, "Ne pourrait-on aller plus loin et canonizer notre
Agnesi f J'estime, moi profane, que ce serait une sainte qui en
vaudrait bien d'autres."

WOMEN IN MATHEMATICS 151

the higher mathematics. There had been many learned
women in Italy before her time and many since ; many who
were distinguished as Hellenists, as Latinists, as polyglots,
as mathematicians — women like the Roccati, the Borghini,
the Brassi, the Ardinghelli, the Barbapiccola, the Caminer
Turra, the Tambroni ; but Maria Gaetana Agnesi surpasses
them all, not only in knowledge, but as a potent influence
for the diffusion of culture and the spirit of brotherhood,
for the expansion of benevolence and charity, and, above
all, for the elevation of woman. She was also, as her latest
and best biographer beautifully expresses it, "an inspired
condottiera who, in the field of civility, anticipated the con-
quests of these latter days. ' ' She was, indeed, as her epi-
taph informs us, pietate, doctrina, beneficentia insignis, and
as such she will live in the memory of our race as long as
men shall admire genius and love virtue.

In the year following the publication of Agnesi 's Institu-
zioni Analitiche was recorded the premature and tragic
death of the distinguished French mathematician, the Mar-
quise Emilie du Chatelet. She has been described as a
"thinker and scientist, precieuse and pedant, but not the
less a coquette — in short, a woman of contradictions. ' ' 1
To most readers she is better known by reason of her
liaison with Voltaire, of whom she is regarded as a mere
satellite, than for her work in science. But she was far
more than a satellite that shone by the light received from
the sage of Ferney. For there can be no doubt that she
was a highly gifted woman who, besides having a thorough
knowledge of several languages, including Latin, possessed
a special talent for mathematics. It was said of her that
"she read Virgil, Pope and algebra as others read novels/'
and that she was able "to multiply nine figures by nine
others in her head." No less an authority than the illus-
trious Ampere declared her to be " a genius in geometry. ' '

1 An Eighteenth Century Marquise, a Study of Emilie du Chatelet,
p. 5, by F. Hamel, New York, 1911.

152 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

Among her teachers in mathematics were Clairaut, Koe-
nig, Maupertuis, Pere Jaquier and Jean Bernouilli, the
immediate predecessors of such distinguished mathemati-
cians as Monge, Lagrange, d'Alembert and Laplace. At
her Chateau of Cirey, where she and Voltaire spent many
years together, she was visited by learned men from various
parts of Europe. Among these was the Italian scholar,
Francisco Algarotti, who was the author of a work entitled
Newtonism for Women. And as Mme. du Chatelet was an
ardent admirer of Newton, the author of the Principia soon
became a strong bond of union between her and the bril-
liant Italian. She called the savants who frequented her
chateau at Cirey the Emiliens and purposed writing me-
moirs to be entitled Emiliana — a design, however, which
she was never able to execute.

The first work of importance from the pen of the Mar-
quise was entitled Institutions de Physique. In it she gave
an exposition of the philosophy of Leibnitz and disserta-
tions on space, time and force. In the discussion of the
last topic she seems to have anticipated some of the later
conclusions of science respecting the nature of energy.

Her most noted achievement, however, was her transla-
tion of Newton's Principia, the first translation into French
of this epoch-making work. To translate this masterpiece
from its original Latin, it was necessary that the Marquise,
in order to make it intelligible to others, should have a
thorough understanding of it herself. To the translation
she added a commentary, which shows that Mme. du Cha-
telet had a mathematical mind of undoubted power. She
labored assiduously on this great undertaking for many
years and completed it only shortly before her death; but
it was not published until ten years after her demise.

In his Elogie Historique on the Marquise 's translation of
the Principia, Voltaire, in his usual flamboyant style, de-
clares ' l Two wonders have been performed : one that New-
ton was able to write this work, the other that a woman

WOMEN IN MATHEMATICS 153

could translate and explain it. " In an effort to express in
a single sentence all his admiration for his talented friend
he does not hesitate to state : c ' Never was woman so learned
as she, and never did anyone less deserve that people should
say of her, 'She is a learned woman.' ! Again he refers
to her with characteristic Frenchiness as "a woman who
has translated and explained Newton, in one word a very
great man — en un mot un tres grand homme."*

But, although the extent of her attainments and her abil-
ity as a mathematician were unquestionable, she fell far
short of her great contemporary, Gaetana Agnesi, both in
the depth and breadth of her scholarship and in her power
of infinitesimal analysis. As to her moral character, she
was infinitely inferior to the saintly savante of Milan. She
was by inclination and profession an Epicurean and an
avowed sensualist. In her little treatise, Reflexions sur le
Bonheur — Reflections on Happiness — she unblushingly as-
serts "that we have nothing to do in this world except
procure for ourselves agreeable sensations." Considering
her profligate life, bordering at times on utter abandon, we
are not surprised that one of her countrymen has character-
ized her as "Femme sans foi, sans mozurs, sans pudeur," —
a woman without faith, without morals, without shame.2

1 Preface to Mme. du Chatelet 's translation of the Principia of
Newton, Paris, 1740.

2 Voltaire 'a last tribute, ' ' The Divine Emilie, ' ' or, as Frederick
II was wont to call her, ' ' Venus-Newton, ' ' concluded with the follow-
ing verses:

"L'Univers a perdu la sublime Emilie;
Elle aimait les plaisirs, les arts, la veritd ;
Les dieux, en lui donnant leur ame et genie,
N'avaient garde pour eux que 1 'immortalite". ; '
The universe has lost the sublime Emilie; she loved pleasure, the
arts, truth; the gods, in giving her their soul and genius, retained
for themselves only immortality.

For further information of this extraordinary woman, see Lettres
de la Mme. du Chdtelet, Bennies pour la premiere fois, par Eugene
Asse, Paris, 1882.

154 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

Anna Barbara Reinhardt of "Winterthur in Switzerland
was another woman of exceptional mathematical talent.
She is remarkable for having extended and improved the
solution of a difficult problem that specially engaged the
attention of Maupertuis. According to so competent an
authority as Jean Bernouilli, she was the superior, as a
mathematician, of the Marquise de Chatelet.

Of a more original and profound mathematical mind was
Sophie Germain, a countrywoman of the Marquise du Cha-
telet. Hers was the glory of being one of the founders of
mathematical physics. A pupil of Lagrange and a co-
worker with Biot, Legendre, Poisson and Lagrange, she
has justly been called by De Prony "the Hypatia of the
nineteenth century/'

Her success, however, was not achieved without overcom-
ing many and great difficulties. In the first place, she had
to overcome the opposition of her family, who were de-
cidedly averse to her studying mathematics. "Of what
use," they asked, "was geometry to a girl?" But in try-
ing to extinguish her ardor for mathematics they but aug-
mented it. Alone and unaided she read every work on
mathematics she could find. The study of this science had
such a fascination for her that it became a passion. It
occupied her mind day and night. Finally her parents,
becoming alarmed about her health and resolved to force
her to take the necessary repose, left her bedroom without
fire or light, and even removed from it her clothing after
she had gone to bed. She feigned to be resigned ; but when
all were asleep, she arose and, wrapping herself in quilts
and blankets, she devoted herself to her favorite studies,
even when the cold was so intense that the ink was frozen in
her ink-horn. Not infrequently she was found in the morn-
ing chilled through, having been so engrossed in her studies
that she was not aware of her condition. Before such a
determined will, so extraordinary for one of her age, the
family of the young Sophie had the wisdom to permit her

WOMEN IN MATHEMATICS 155

to dispose of her time and genius according to her own
pleasure. And they did well. Like the great geometer of
Syracuse, Archimedes, who had ever heen her inspiration
in the study of mathematics, she would have died rather
than abandon a problem which, for the time being, en-
gaged her attention.

She first attracted the attention of savants by her mathe-
matical theory of Chladni's figures. By the order of Na-
poleon, the Academy of Science had offered a prize for the
one who would "Give the mathematical theory of the vi-
bration of elastic surfaces and compare it with the results
of experiment. " Lagrange declared the problem insoluble
without a new system of analysis, which was yet to be in-
vented. The consequence was that no one attempted it^
solution except one who, until then, was almost unknown
in the mathematical world; and this one was Sophie Ger-
main.

Great was the surprise of the savants of Europe when
they learned that the winner of the grand prix of the Acad-
emy was a woman. She became at once the recipient of
congratulations from the most noted mathematicians of the
world. This eventually brought her into scientific rela-
tions with such eminent men as Delambre, Fourier, Cauchy,
Ampere, Navier, Gauss * and others already mentioned.

It was in 1816, after eight years of work on the problem,
that her last memoir on vibrating surfaces was crowned in
a public seance of the Institut de France. After this event
Mile. Germain was treated as an equal by the great mathe-
maticians of France. She shared their labors and was in-
vited to attend the sessions of the Institut, which was the
xAt the beginning of her correspondence with Gauss, Legendre
and Lagrange Mile. Germain concealed her sex under a pseudonym,
"in order," as she declared, "to escape the ridicule attached to a
woman devoted to science" — craignant le ridicule attache au titre
de femme savante. She, too, suffered from the wide-spread effects
of Moliere's Les Femmes Savantes, as had many a gifted woman
before her time and as have many others of a much later date.

156 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

highest honor that this famous body had ever conferred
on a woman.

The noted mathematician, M. Navier, was so impressed
with the extraordinary powers of analysis evinced by one
of Mile. Germain's memoirs on vibrating surfaces that he
did not hesitate to declare that "it is a work which few
men are able to read and which only one woman was able
to write."

Biot, in the Journal de Savants, March, 1817, writes that
Mile. Germain is probably the one of her sex who has most
deeply penetrated the science of mathematics, not except-
ing Mme. du Chatelet, for here there was no Clairaut.1

Like Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Mile. Germain was endowed
with a profoundly philosophical mind as well as with a
remarkable talent for mathematics. This is attested by her
interesting work entitled Considerations Generates sur
I'Etat des Sciences et des Lettres aux Differ entes Epoques
de Leur Culture. All things considered, she was probably
the most profoundly intellectual woman that France has
yet produced. And yet, strange as it may seem, when the
state official came to make out the death certificate of this
eminent associate and co-worker of the most illustrious
members of the French Academy of Sciences he designated
her as a rentiere — annuitant — not as a mathematicienne.
Nor is this all. When the Eiffel tower was erected, in
which the engineers were obliged to give special attention
to the elasticity of the materials used, there were inscribed
on this lofty structure the names of seventy-two savants.
But one will not find in this list the name of that daughter
of genius, whose researches contributed so much toward
establishing the theory of the elasticity of metals, — Sophie
Germain. Was she excluded from this list for the same rea-
son that Agnesi was ineligible to membership in the French

iThis celebrated mathematician, as is well-known, was a col-
laborator with Mme. du Chatelet in her translation of Newton 'B Prin-
cipia.

WOMEN IN MATHEMATICS 157

Academy — because she was a woman? It would seem so.
If such, indeed, was the case, more is the shame for those
who were responsible for such ingratitude toward one who
had deserved so well of science, and who by her achieve-
ments had won an enviable place in the hall of fame.1

Four years after the birth of Sophie Germain was born
in Jedburgh, Scotland, one whom an English writer has
declared was "the most remarkable scientific woman our
country has produced. ' ' She was the daughter of a naval
officer, Sir William Fairfax; but is best known as Mary
Somerville. Her life has been well described as an ' ' unob-
trusive record of what can be done by the steady culture
of good natural powers and the pursuit of a high standard
of excellence in order to win for a woman a distinguished
place in the sphere naturally reserved for men, without
parting with any of those characteristics of mind, or char-
acter, or demeanor which have ever been taken to form the
grace and the glory of womanhood." 2

The surroundings of her youth were not conducive to
scientific pursuits. On the contrary, they were entirely
unfavorable to her manifest inclinations in that direction.
Having scarcely any of the advantages of a school educa-
tion, she was obliged to depend almost entirely on her own
unaided efforts for the knowledge she actually acquired.
She, like Sophie Germain, was essentially a self-made
woman ; and her success was achieved only after long labor
and suffering and in spite of the persistent opposition of
family and friends.

1 For further information respecting this remarkable woman the
reader is referred to CEuvres Philosopliiques de Sophie Germain Sui-
vies de Pensees et de Lettres Inedites et Precedees d'une Etude sur
sa Vie et ses (Euvres, par. H. Stupy, Paris, 1896. One may also
consult Todhunter's History of the Theory of Elasticity and of the
Strength of Materials, Vol. I, pp. 147-160, Cambridge, 1886, in which
is given a careful resume of Mile. Germain's mathematical memoirs
on elastic surfaces.

2 Saturday Beview, January 10, 1874.

158 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

When she was about fifteen years old, the future Mrs.
Somerville received her first introduction to mathematics;
and then, strange to say, it was through a fashion maga-
zine. At the end of a page of this magazine, "I read,"
writes Mrs. Somerville, ' ' what appeared to me to be simply
an arithmetical question; but in turning the page I was
surprised to see strange-looking lines mixed with letters,
chiefly X's and Y's, and asked 'What is that?' " She was
told it was a kind of arithmetic, called algebra.

Her interest was at once aroused; and she resolved
forthwith to seek information regarding the curious lines
and letters which had so excited her curiosity. "Unfortu-
nately," she tells us, "none of our acquaintances or rela-
tives knew anything of science or natural history ; nor, had
they done so, should I have had courage to ask of them a
question, for I should have been laughed at. ' '

Finally she was able to secure a copy of a work on alge-
bra and a Euclid. Although without a teacher she imme-
diately applied herself to master the contents of these two
works, but she had to do so by stealth in bed after she had
retired for the night. When her father learned of what
was going on, he said to the girl 's mother, l i Peg, we must
put a stop to this, or we shall have Mary in a straight-
jacket one of these days." The mother, who had no more
sympathy with her daughter's scientific pursuits than had
the father, and, fully convinced, like the great majority of
her sex, that woman's duties should be confined to the af-
fairs of the household, strove to divert her daughter's mind
from her "unladylike" pursuits. But her efforts were in-
effectual. The young woman, in spite of all obstacles and
opposition, contrived to continue her cherished studies;
and, through her uncle, the Rev. Dr. Somerville, afterward
her father-in-law, she was able to become proficient in both
Latin and Greek. When she was thirty-three years of age
she became the happy possessor of a small library of mathe-
matical works. "I had now," she writes, "the means, and

WOMEN IN MATHEMATICS 159

pursued my studies with increased assiduity; concealment
was no longer necessary, nor was it attempted. I was con-
sidered eccentric and foolish, and my conduct was highly
disapproved of by many, especially by some members of
my own family. ' ' 1

In March, 1827, Mrs. Somerville received a letter from
Lord Brougham, who had heard of her remarkable acquire-
ments, begging her to prepare for English readers a popu-
lar exposition of Laplace 's great work — Mecanique Celeste.
She was overwhelmed with astonishment at this request, for
her modesty made her diffident of her powers ; and she felt
that her self-acquired knowledge of science was so far in-
ferior to that of university men that it would be sheer pre-
sumption for her to undertake the task proposed to her.
She was, however, finally persuaded to make the attempt,
with the proviso that her manuscript should be consigned
to the flames unless it fulfilled the expectations of those
who urged its production.

In less than a year her work, to which she gave the name
of The Mechanism of the Heavens, was ready for the press.
But it was far more than a translation and epitome, as
originally intended by its projector, Lord Brougham; for,
in addition to the views of Laplace, it contained the inde-
pendent opinions of the translator respecting the proposi-
tions of the illustrious French savant. No sooner was the
work published than Mrs. Somerville found herself famous.
She had, as Sir John Herschel expressed it, " written for
posterity," and her book placed her at once among the
leading scientific writers and thinkers of the day. She was
elected an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical
Society at the same time as Caroline Herschel, they being
the first two women thus honored. Her bust, by Chantry,
was placed in the great hall of the Eoyal Society, and she
was made a member of many other scientific societies in Eu-

i Personal Recollections, From Early Life to Old Age, of Mary
Somerville, p. 80, Boston, 1874.

160 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

rope and America. In recognition of her services to science
she was granted by the government a pension of £200 a year
— a sum which was shortly afterward increased to £300.
In addition to all this, Mrs. Somerville had the satisfaction
of learning that her work was so highly esteemed by Dr.
Whewell, the great master of Trinity, that it was, chiefly
on his recommendation, introduced as a text-book in the
University of Cambridge and prescribed as "an essential
work to those students who aspire to the highest places in
the examinations. " What Mme. du Chatelet had done for
Newton, Mrs. Somerville did for Laplace.

Among other books from the pen of this highly gifted
woman is her Connection of the Physical Sciences and a
work entitled Physical Geography, which, together with the
Mechanism of the Heavens, was the object of the "profound
admiration" of Humboldt. Then there is a number of
very abstruse monographs on mathematical subjects, one
of which is a treatise of two hundred and forty-six pages
On Curves and Surfaces of Higher Orders, which, she tells
us, she ' ' wrote con amore to fill up her morning hours while
spending the winter in Southern Italy. ' '

Her last work was a treatise On Molecular and Micro-
scopic Science embodying the most recondite investigations
on the subject. This book, begun after she had passed her
eightieth birthday, occupied her for many years and was
not ready for publication until she was close upon her
ninetieth year. Her last occupations, continued until the
day of her death at the advanced age of ninety-two, were
the reading of a book on Quaternions and the review and
completion of a volume On the Theory of Differences.

Like her illustrious friend, the great Humboldt, Mary
Somerville was possessed of extraordinary physical vigor,
and, like him, she retained her mental powers unimpaired
until the last. And like her great rival in mathematics,
Maria Gaetana Agnesi, she was always "beautifully wom-
anly." Her scientific and literary occupations did not

WOMEN IN MATHEMATICS 161

cause her to neglect the duties of her household or to disre-
gard ' ' the graceful and artistic accomplishments of an ele-
gant woman of the world." Her daughter Martha writes
of her : ' ' It would be almost incredible were I to describe
how much my mother contrived to do in the course of the
day. When my sister and I were small children, although
busily engaged in writing for the press, she used to teach
us for three hours in the morning, besides managing her
house carefully, reading the newspapers — for she was al-
ways a keen and, I must add, a liberal politician — and the
most important new books on all subjects, grave and gay.
In addition to this, she freely visited and received her
friends. . . . Gay and cheerful company was a pleas-
ant relaxation after a hard day's work." 1

The life of Mary Somerville, like that of Gaetana Agnesi,
proves that the pursuit of science is not, as so often as-
serted, incompatible with domestic and social duties. It
also disposes of the fallacy, so generally entertained, that
intellectual labor is detrimental to the health of women and
antagonistic to longevity. The truth is that it is yet to be
demonstrated that intellectual work, even of the severest
kind, is, per se, more deleterious to women than to those of
the stronger sex.

Scarcely less remarkable as a mathematician was Mrs.
Somerville 's distinguished contemporary, Janet Taylor,
who was known as the "Mrs. Somerville of the Marine
World. ' ' She was the author of numerous works on navi-
gation and nautical astronomy which in their day were
highly prized by seafaring men. In recognition of her
valuable services to the marine world she was placed on
the civil list of the British government.

As an eminent mathematician as well as a "representa-
tive of the highest intellectual accomplishments to which
women have attained, ' ' Sonya Kovalevsky will ever occupy
an honored place among the votaries of science. In many
i Personal Recollections, ut sup., p. 5.

162 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

respects this richly endowed daughter of Holy Russia was
par excellence the woman of genius of the latter half of the
nineteenth century.

She was born in Moscow in 1850, but although her career
was brief it was one of meteoric splendor. At an early age
she exhibited an unusual talent for mathematics and an un-
quenchable thirst for knowledge. Not being able to obtain
in her own country the educational advantages she desired,
she resolved at the age of eighteen to go to Germany with
a view of pursuing her studies there under more favorable
auspices.

She first matriculated in the University of Heidelberg,
where she spent two years in studying mathematics under
the most eminent professors of that famous old institution.
Thence she went to Berlin. She could not enter the Uni-
versity there, as its doors were closed to female students;
but she was fortunate enough to prevail on the illustrious
Professor "Weierstrass, regarded by many as the father of
mathematical analysis, to give her private lessons. He soon
discovered to his astonishment that this child-woman had
"the gift of intuitive genius to a degree he had seldom
found among even his older and more developed students. ' '
Under this eminent mathematician Sonya spent about three
years, at the end of which period she was able to present to
the University of Gottingen three theses which she had
written under the direction of her professor. The merit of
her work and the testimonials which she was able to pre-
sent from Weierstrass, Kirchhoff and others were of such
supreme excellence that she was exempted from an oral
examination and was enabled, by a very special privilege,
to receive her doctorate without appearing in person.

Not long after receiving her doctor's degree — one of the
first to be granted to a woman by a German university —
she was offered the chair of higher mathematics in the Uni-
versity of Stockholm. She was the first woman in Europe,

WOMEN IN MATHEMATICS 163

outside of Italy, to be thus honored. But her appointment
had to be made in the face of great opposition. No other
university, it was urged by the conservatives, had yet
offered a professor's chair to a woman. Strindberg, one
of the leaders of modern Swedish literature, wrote an ar-
ticle in which he proved, ' ' as decidedly as that two and two
make four, what a monstrosity is a woman who is a pro-
fessor of mathematics, and how unnecessaiy, injurious and
out of place she is. " *

The fame that came to Sonya through her achievements
in the German and Swedish universities was immensely en-
hanced when, on Christmas eve, 1888, "at a solemn session
of the French Academy of Sciences, she received in person
the Prix Bordin — the greatest scientific honor which any
woman had ever gained ; one of the greatest honors, indeed,
to which any one can aspire. ' '

She became at once the heroine of the hour and was
thenceforth "a European celebrity with a place in his-
tory. ' ' She was feted by men of science whithersoever she
went and hailed by the women of the world as the glory of
her sex and as the most brilliant type of intellectual wom-
anhood.

Mme. Kovalevsky's printed mathematical works embrace
only a few memoirs including those which she presented
for her doctorate and for the Prix Bordin. But brief as
they are, all of these memoirs are regarded by mathemati-
cians as being of special value. This is particularly true of
the memoirs, which secured for her the Prix Bordin; for it
contains the solution of a problem that long had baffled the
genius of the greatest mathematicians.

The prize had been opened to the competition of the
mathematicians of the world, and the astonishment of the
committee of the French Academy was beyond expression

i Sonya KovalevsTcy, Her Recollections of Childhood, With a
Biography, by Anna Carlotta Leffler, p. 219, New York, 1895.

164 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

when it was found that the successful contestant was a
woman.1

Everyone admired her varied and profound knowledge,
but, above all, her amazing powers of analysis. A German
mathematician, Kronecker, did not hesitate to declare that
"the history of mathematics will speak of her as one of
the rarest investigators. ' ' 2

Shortly before her premature death, she had planned a
great work on mathematics. All who are interested in the
intellectual capacities and achievements of woman must
regret that she was unable to complete what would un-
doubtedly have been the noblest monument of woman's
scientific genius. She was then in the prime of life and
perfectly equipped for the work she had in mind. Consid-
ering the extraordinary receptive and productive power of
this richly dowered woman, there can be little doubt, had
she lived a few years longer, that she would have produced
a work that would have caused her to be ranked among the
greatest mathematicians of the nineteenth century.

1 * ' The prize was doubled to five thousand francs, on account of
the ' quite extraordinary service rendered to mathematical physics
by this work/ which the Academy of Sciences pronounced 'a re-
markable work.' The competing dissertations were signed with mot-
toes, not with names, and the jury of the Academy made the award
in utter ignorance that the winner was a woman. Her dissertation
was printed, by order of the Academy, in the Memoires des Savants
Etrangers. In the following year Mme. Kovalevsky received a prize
of fifteen hundred kroner from the Stockholm Academy for two
works connected with the foregoing.'7

2 Men of science will realize the capacity of this gifted Russian
woman as a mathematician when they learn that she gave in the
University of Stockholm courses of lectures on such subjects as the
following :

Theory of derived partial equations; theory of potential func-
tions; applications of the theory of elliptic functions; theory of
Abelian functions, according to Weierstrass; curves defined by differ-
ential equations, according to Poincare ; application of analysis to the
theory of whole numbers. How many men are there who give more
advanced mathematical courses than these?

WOMEN IN MATHEMATICS 165

It is pleasant to record that this woman of masculine
mind, masculine energy and masculine genius, far from
being mannish or unwomanly, was, on the contrary, a
woman of a truly feminine heart; and that, although a
giantess in intellectual attainments, she was in grace and
charm and delicacy of sentiment one of the noblest types of
beautiful womanhood. She could with the greatest ease
turn from a lecture on Abel's Functions or a research on
Saturn's rings to the writing of verse in French or of a
novel in Russian or to collaborating with her friend, the
Duchess of Cajanello, on a drama in Swedish, or to making
a lace collar for her little daughter, Fouzi, to whom she was
most tenderly attached.1

Little more than a quarter of a century has elapsed since
Strindberg, expressing the sentiment of the great majority
of the men of his time, declared that a woman professor of

iTo a friend, who expressed surprise at her fluttering to and
fro between mathematics and literature, she made a reply which de-
serves a place here, as it gives a better idea than anything else of
the wonderful versatility of this gifted daughter of Russia. "I
understand/' she writes, "your surprise at my being able to busy
myself simultaneously with literature and mathematics. Many
who have never had an opportunity of knowing any more about
mathematics confound it with arithmetic, and consider it an arid
science. In reality, however, it is a science which requires a great
amount of imagination, and one of the leading mathematicians of our
century states the case quite correctly when he says that it is im-
possible to be a mathematician without being a poet in soul. Only,
of course, in order to comprehend the accuracy of this definition,
one must renounce the ancient prejudice that a poet must invent
something which does not exist, that imagination and invention are
identical. It seems to me that the poet has only to perceive that
which others do not perceive, to look deeper than others look. And
the mathematician must do the same thing. As for myself, all my
life I have been unable to decide for which I had the greater inclina-
tion, mathematics or literature. As soon as my brain grows wearied
of purely abstract speculations it immediately begins to incline to
observations on life, to narrative, and vice versa, everything in life
begins to appear insignificant and uninteresting, and only the

166 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

mathematics is a monstrosity. But during this short period
what a change has been effected in the attitude of the world
toward women who devote themselves to the study and the
teaching of science! "Women mathematicians are found
to-day in all civilized countries, and no sane person now
considers it any more " unwomanly ' ' or more "monstrous"
for them to study or teach mathematics than for them to
teach music or needlework. Yet more. They are now fre-
quent contributors to mathematical magazines and to the
official bulletins of learned societies, and not infrequently
they are on the editorial staffs of publications devoted ex-
clusively to mathematics. They are also found as comput-
ers in some of the largest astronomical observatories, where
the speed and accuracy of their work have evoked the most
favorable comment.

Of women in America, who have distinguished them-
selves by their work in the higher mathematics, it suffices to
mention the name of Miss Charlotte Angas Scott, recently
deceased, who was for years professor of mathematics in
the College of Bryn Mawr. Her writings on various prob-
lems of the higher mathematics show that she faithfully
followed in the footsteps of her illustrious predecessors, —
Hypatia, Agnesi, du Chatelet, Germain, Somerville and
Kovalevsky.

eternal, immutable laws of science attract me. It is very possible
that I should have accomplished more in either of these lines, if I
had devoted myself exclusively to it; nevertheless, I cannot give
up either of them completely. ' '

From Ellen Key's Biography of the Duchess of Cajanello, quoted
in Anna Leffler's biography of Sonya Kovalevsky, ut sup, pp. 317-318.

CHAPTER IV
WOMEN IN ASTEONOMT

Urania, the muse of astronomy, was a woman; and, al-
though most of her devotees have been men, the number of
the gentler sex who have achieved success in the cultivation
of the science of the stars has been much larger than is
usually supposed.

There is reason to believe that woman's interest in as-
tronomy dates back to early Egyptian and Babylonian
times when the star-gazers in the fertile valley of the
Nile and on the broad plains of Chaldea were so active, and
when they made so many important discoveries respecting
the laws and movements of the heavenly bodies. According
to Plutarch, Aganice, the daughter of Sesostris, King of
Egypt, tried to predict future events by the aid of celes-
tial globes and by the study of the constellations. Her ob-
servations, however, were in the interests of astrology
rather than of astronomy, as we now understand the
science.

The first woman whose name has come down to us, who
deserved to be regarded as an astronomer, was most prob-
ably Aglaonice, the daughter of Hegetoris of Thessaly. By
means of the lunar cycle known as the Saros, a period dis-
covered by the Chaldean astronomers and embracing a lit-
tle more than eighteen years, during which the eclipses of
the moon and sun recur in nearly the same order as dur-
ing the preceding period, this Greek woman was able to
predict eclipses. The people among whom she lived re-
garded her as a sorceress ; but she flouted them all, and de-

167

168 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

dared that she was able to make the sun and moon disap-
pear at will.

The first woman, however, to attain eminence as an as-
tronomer was undoubtedly Hypatia, that universal genius
of the ancient world, who seemed equally at home in litera-
ture, philosophy and mathematics, and who may justly be
regarded as one of the most highly gifted women that has
ever lived. In Alexandria, where she was born and lived,
this accomplished daughter of Theon taught not only phi-
losophy, but also algebra, geometry and astronomy. One
of her pupils, Synesius, who became Bishop of Ptolemais,
informs us that she was the inventor of two important as-
tronomical instruments: an astrolabe and a planisphere.
In addition to two mathematical works, a Treatise on the
Conies of Apollonius and a Commentary on the Arithmetic
of Diophantus, which was in reality a treatise on algebra,
she was the author of an Astronomical Canon, which con-
tained tables regarding the movements of the heavenly
bodies. It is generally supposed that this was an original
work; but there are some who think it was but a commen-
tary on the tables of Ptolemy. In this latter case Hypatia 's
work may still exist in connection with that of her father,
Theon, on the same subject.1

If the works of Hypatia had not been destroyed by the
ravages of time, they would undoubtedly prove that she
fully merited all the encomiums bestowed on her by an-
tiquity for her genius; and they would also prove, we may
well believe, that she deserved to be ranked not only with
the eminent mathematicians upon whose works she com-
mented, but also with such masters of astronomic science
as Ptolemy, Eratosthenes and Aristarchus.

After the tragic death of Hypatia many centuries elapsed
before any other woman attracted attention for her work
in astronomy. Indeed, so neglected was the study of the

iCf. the preceding chapter, p. 140. See also Histoire de I' As-
tronomic Ancienne, Tom. I, p. 317, par. M. Delambre, Paris, 1817.

WOMEN IN ASTRONOMY 169

heavens between the time of Hypatia and the Arab prince
and astronomer, Albategni, who flourished during the lat-
ter part of the ninth century and the early part of the
tenth, that only eight observations, it is asserted, were re-
corded during this long period. The works and observa-
tions of Albategni, it may be remarked, have a particular
interest from the fact that they form a connecting link
between those of the Alexandrine astronomers and those
of modern Europe.

Antoine Hamilton, in his Gaufrey* — a parody on The
Thousand and One Nights — tells of a Saracen princess,
Fleur d'fipine, who, before she was fifteen years of age,
was able not only to speak Latin and Romance, but who
was also "better acquainted than any woman in the world
with the movements of the stars and the moon."

"Et du cours des etoiles et de la lune luisant
Savoit moult plus que fame de chest siecle vivant."

If any woman between the time of Hypatia and Galileo
deserved such high praise for her astronomical knowledge
it was certainly Saint Hildegard, the famous Benedictine
abbess of Bingen on the Rhine. She has well been called
"the marvel of the twelfth century/' not only on account
of her sanctity, but also on account of her extraordinary
attainments in every branch of knowledge then cultivated.

When treating of the sun, Hildegard tells us that it is in
the center of the firmament and holds in place the stars that
gravitate around it, as the earth attracts the creatures
which inhabit it. This view of a twelfth century nun is
indeed remarkable. For, in her time, the earth was by
everyone considered as the center of the firmament, while
universal gravitation — the sublime discovery of Newton —
had not as yet entered into the scientific theories of that
epoch.

Hildegard likewise anticipates subsequent discoveries re-
garding the alternation of the seasons. "If," she writes,

170 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

"it is cold in the winter time on the part of the earth which
we inhabit, the other part must be warm, in order that the
temperature of the earth may always be in equilibrium/'
That she should have arrived at this conclusion before nav-
igators had visited the southern hemisphere is truly aston-
ishing.1

"The stars," she continues, "have neither the same
brightness nor the same size. They are kept in their course
by a superior body. ' ' Here again is her idea of universal
gravitation.

These stars, she further declares, are not immovable, but
they traverse the firmament in its entirety. And to make
clearer her conception of the motion of the stars, she com-
pares this motion to that of the blood in the veins. To
hear one of this early period speaking of blood coursing
through the veins and thus traversing the whole body of
man seems to presage, in a remarkable manner, the beauti-
ful discoveries of Cesalpino and Harvey regarding the cir-
culation of the blood.

The most celebrated astronomer of the early Renaissance
was John Miiller, of Konigsburg, better known as Kegio-
montanus. In his observatory in Nuremberg he was ably
assisted by his wife who exhibited a special interest in as-
tronomy. At the end of the sixteenth century, Sophia
Brahe, the youngest sister of Tycho Brahe, following in the
footsteps of her illustrious brother, attained great celebrity
as an astronomer.

More distinguished for her astronomical work than either
of these two women was Maria Cunitz, a Silesian, who, from
her tenderest years, displayed extraordinary zeal for study
and who eventually became mistress of seven languages,

i"Calor etiam soils in hieme maior est sub terra quam super
terram, quod si tune frigus tantum esset sub terra quam super ter-
rain, vel si in sestate calor tantus esset sub terra quantus est super
terram, de immoderatione ista terra tota scinderetur. ' ' Hildegardis
Causes et Cures, p. 7, Lipsiae, 1903.

WOMEN IN ASTRONOMY 171

among which were Latin, Greek and Hebrew. She also
cultivated poetry, music and painting; but her favorite
studies were mathematics and astronomy. At the solicita-
tion of her husband, she undertook the preparation of an
abridgment of the Eudolphine Tables. Her work, under
the name of Urania Propitia, was published after her death
by her husband, and gained for the talented authoress the
name of ' ' The second Hypatia. ' ' 1

Shortly after the completion of Urania Propitid, a
French woman, Jeanne Dumee, distinguished herself by
writing a work on the theory of Copernicus entitled Entre-
tiens sur I' Opinion de Copernic Touchant la Mobilite de la
Terre. So far as known, this work was never published,
but the original manuscript is still preserved in the Na-
tional Library of Paris. The authoress deems it necessary
it apologize for. writing on a subject that is usually consid-
ered foreign to her sex and to explain why she was ambi-
tious to discuss questions to which the women of her time
never gave any thought. It was that she might "prove to
them that they are not incapable of study, if they wish to
make the effort, because between the brain of a woman and
that of a man there is no difference. ' ' 2

How often before had not women endeavored to prove the
equality of brain power of the two sexes, and how often since
have they bent their efforts in this direction ! And yet the
majority of men still remain skeptical about such equality.

Among the contemporaries of Jeanne Dumee were two
other women who gained more than ordinary distinction by
their attainments in astronomy. These were Mme. de la
Sabliere,in France, and Maria Margaret Kirch, of Germany.

1 Commentaire de TJieon d'Alexandrie, p. X, translated by the
Abbe" Halma, Paris, 1882.

2 f ( Enfin de leur f aire connoistre qu 'elles ne sont pas incapable
de Pestude, si elles s'en vouloient donner la peine puisqu 'entre le
cerveau d'une femme et celui d'un homme il n'y a aucune differ-
ence." Of. Journal de Savans, Tom. Ill, p. 304, & Amsterdam, 1687.

172 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

Mine, de la Sabliere evinced from an early age a special
aptitude for science, especially for physics and astronomy.
She studied mathematics under the eminent mathemati-
cian, Roberval, and at the age of thirty was famous. Her
home became the resort of learned and eminent men, in-
cluding some of the most noted characters of the age.
Among these was Sobieski, King of Poland. But it is as
the friend and protectress of La Fontaine and as the object
of Boileau's satire that she is best known.

For a woman to devote herself to the study of science so
soon after the appearance of Moliere's Les Femmes Sa-
vantes argued more than ordinary courage. But for her to
become distinguished for her scientific acquirements was al-
most tantamount to defying public opinion. The great
majority of men had come to regard learned women in the
same light as those who were so mercilessly derided in the
Precieuses Ridicules; and they had, accordingly, no hesita-
tion in treating them as unbearable pedants. No one could
have made less parade of her learning than Mme. de la
Sabliere, or striven more successfully to conceal her admir-
able gifts. But this was not sufficient. She was known to
have devoted special study to science, particularly to as-
tronomy, and this was sufficient to make her the target of
the satirists of her time.

By an act that wounded the self-love of Boileau this
Venus Urania, as she has been called, soon found herself
the victim of the satirist's well-directed shafts. The poet
does not name her, but refers to her as

"Cette savante
Qu'estime Roberval et que Sauveur frequente "

this learned woman whom Roberval esteems and whom
Sauveur frequents. And with the view of pricking the ob-
ject of his spleen in her most sensitive part, he tells, in his
Satire centre les Femmes, how she, with astrolabe in hand,
spends her nights in making observations of the planet

WOMEN IN ASTRONOMY 173

Jupiter and how this occupation has had the effect of
weakening her sight and ruining her complexion.1

Mme. de la Sabliere does not, however, seem to have been
greatly perturbed by the ungracious effusions of the satir-
ist, for she continued her cultivation of astronomy as be-
fore the poet's ill-natured outburst. She probably found
ample compensation in the writings of La Fontaine, who
addressed her as his muse and proclaimed her as one in
whom were combined manly beauty and feminine grace —
beaut e d'homme avec grace de femme.

Maria Kirch, born at Panitch, near Leipsic, in 1670, was
the wife of a Berlin astronomer, Gottfried Kirch. After
her marriage she, like her three sisters-in-law, became her
husband's pupil in astronomy. In 1702, as his assistant in
observations and calculations, she was fortunate enough to
discover a comet. She was the friend of Leibnitz, and was
by him presented to the court of Prussia. It is a matter of
regret to those of her own sex that this comet was not, as it
should have been, named after its discoverer.

The death of Herr Kirch, which took place in 1710,
caused no interruption in Prau Kirch's astronomical occu-
pations. Among the evidences of her activity is a work
which she wrote in 1713 on the conjunction of Jupiter and
Saturn in the year following. In our day the conjunction
of planets is for the laity a mere matter of curiosity,
while for professional astronomers it is quite devoid of
particular interest. But it was not so in the time of Maria
Kirch, for then astronomy was so intimately associated with
astrology that mankind attributed $o such special positions
of the planets a certain occult and capricious influence on
the destiny of the earth and its inhabitants. As theoretical
astronomy progressed, such erroneous notions were aban-

iD'ou vient qu'elle a 1'oeil trouble et le teint si ternil
C'est que sur le caleul, dit-on, de Cassini,
Un astrolabe & la main, elle a, dans la gouttiere,
A suivre Jupiter passe la nuit entiere.

174 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

doned, because it was then recognized that the conjunction
of the superior planets was not something fortuitous, but
something that was reproduced at fixed periods by the
known movements of these bodies. Writers on the subject
made it a point to warn the public that they had nothing
in common with astrologers. Among these was Christopher
Thurm, who published a work on the conjunction of Jupi-
ter and Saturn in 1681. Similarly, the book of Maria Kirch
contains only astronomical calculations and nothing more —
a fact that redounds to the honor of the author and to the
age in which she lived.

The daughters of Maria Kirch, even long after their
mother's death, continued to occupy themselves with as-
tronomy. They calculated for the Berlin Academy of Sci-
ences its Almanac and Ephemeris, which were among the
sources of revenue of this learned body.

During the same period a number of French and Italian
astronomers had female collaborators in their own families.
Celsus, the celebrated professor of Upsala, and a pupil of
the son of Gottfried Kirch, had been accorded a most cor-
dial reception, while passing through Paris on his way to
Bologna, by De L 'Isle who had a sister who was devoted to
astronomy. On his arrival in Italy he found that his new
master, the director of the observatory at Bologna, had two
sisters, Teresa and Maddalena, both of great learning, who,
like their brother, were engaged in the study of the heavens
and collaborated with him in the preparation of the Ephem-
eris of Bologna. This caused Celsus, in a letter to Kirch, to
declare "I begin to believe that it is the destiny of all the
astronomers whom I have had the honor of becoming ac-
quainted with during my journey to have learned sisters.
I have also a sister, although not a very learned one. To
preserve the harmony, we must make an astronomer of
her."1

i ' ' Celebre inter observatores hujus sevi nomen adeptus est God-
fredus Kirehius, astronomus nuper regius in Societate Scienciarum

WOMEN IN ASTRONOMY 175

The Polish astronomer, Hevilius, who had an observatory
at Dantzig, is noted for having made the most accurate
observations that had been known before the adaptation of
the telescope to astronomical instruments. He is also noted
for his Prodromus Astronomice, a catalogue of 1,888 stars ;
for his Selenographia, containing accurate descriptions and
drawings of the moon in her different phases and librations,
and for his Machina Ccelestis, which contained the results
of forty years of observations and labor. Much of his suc-
cess and eminence, however, was due to his intelligent and
devoted wife, Elizabeth, who, during twenty-seven years,
was a zealous collaborator and should share the credit
usually given to her husband. It was she who, after his
death, edited and published their joint work, the Pro-
dromus Astronomice.

Among the women most distinguished in the eighteenth
century for astronomical pursuits was the Marquise du
Chatelet, who was likewise famous for her knowledge of
mathematics. It was she who accomplished the difficult
task of translating Newton's Principia into French. "This
translation, ' ' writes Voltaire, * ' which the most learned men
of France should have made and which the others should
study, was undertaken by a woman and completed to the
astonishment and glory of her country. ' ' *

France was at this time devoted to the doctrines of Des-
cartes and to his theory of elementary vortices; and Vol-
taire, who had been deeply impressed by the admirable sim-
plicity of Newton's theory of universal attraction as a

Berlinensi; mense Julio A, 1710 mortuus. Ejus vidua, Maria Mag-
dalena Winckelmannia, non minore in observando et calculo astrono-1
mico dexteritate pollet, ac in utroque labore maritum, cum viveret,

fideliter juvit quod laudi ducitur framings ea animo compre-

hendisse, quss sine ingenii vi studiique assiduitate non comprehen-
duntur," Ada Eruditorum, pp. 78, 79, Lipsiae, 1712.

1 Preface Historique to Principes Mathematiques de la Philosophic
Naturelle par feue Madame la Marquise du Chastellet, Tom. I, p. V,
Paris, 1759.

176 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

means of explaining the seemingly complex motions of the
heavenly bodies, resolved to make his countrymen acquaint-
ed with the teachings of the great English geometer and,
at the same time, dethrone Descartes in the French Acad-
emy. It was, indeed, a huge undertaking; but, thanks to
the ability which Mme. du Chatelet displayed in translating
and elucidating Newton's immortal masterpiece, he lived
to see his dream realized.

How proud Mme. du Chatelet 's countrywomen must
have been of her! How they must have rejoiced in her
success and acclaimed her as the intellectual glory of her
sex! How they must have pointed to her work as a tri-
umphant refutation of the age-old belief in woman's inca-
pacity for mathematics and all abstract science ! How they
must have been elated to find one of their number success-
fully executing a task which would have taxed the powers
of the most eminent mathematicians of France ! How they
must have associated her truly notable performance with
similar achievements of Hypatia and Maria Gaetana Ag-
nesi and discerned in it concrete evidence of the falsity of
all those imputations of mental inferiority which had been
fostered by "man's huge egotism and woman's carefully
coddled superstition." How they must have been encour-
aged by her achievement and spurred on to emulate her by
similar contributions to the advancement of science !

That is what we think now; but the light and frivolous
women who constituted the leaders of society in Mme. du
Chatelet 's day, and who were devoured by envy and jeal-
ousy of one who was so much their superior in intellect
were not so minded. Far from sympathizing with her
work, they proved to be her most virulent critics and most
pronounced enemies. Neither Moliere nor Boileau could
have heaped more ridicule on the pedantic women of their
time than was meted out to the translator of the Principia
by certain noble dames of provincial chateaux or by dis-
tinguished habituees of prominent Parisian salons.

WOMEN IN ASTRONOMY 177

Thus the petulant ennuyee, Mme. de Stael, in a letter to
her friend, Mme. du Deffand, writing of Mme. du Chatelet,
who was then her guest at Sceaux, tells us that ' ' she is now
passing in review her principles. This is a task she per-
forms every year, else they might, perhaps, make their
escape and run to such a distance that she would never be
able to recover any of them. I verily believe that they are
in durance vile while in her possession, as they were cer-
tainly not born with her. She does well to keep a strict
watch over them."1

And, in her turn, Mme. du Deffand, who was wont to
pose as the intimate friend of Mme. du Chatelet, did not
hesitate to write and circulate a pen portrait of this friend
— and that after the unhappy woman was in her grave —
which for bitter reviling and brutal villification has prob-
ably never been equalled. A witty Frenchman observed of
this portrait that it reminded him of an observation once
made by a medical acquaintance of his concerning one of
his patients: " 'My friend fell ill; I attended him. He
died; I dissected him/ "2

1 The Unpublished Correspondence of Madame du Deffand, Vol. I,
pp. 202-203, London, 1810.

2 Mme. du Deffand Js venomous letter, somewhat abridged, reads
as follows: "Imagine a tall, hard and withered woman, narrow-
chested, with large limbs, enormous feet, a very small head, a thin
face, a pointed nose, two small sea-green eyes, her color dark, her
complexion florid, her mouth flat, her teeth set far apart and very
much decayed; there is the figure of the beautiful Emilie, a figure
with which she is so well pleased that she spares nothing for the
sake of setting it off. Her manner of dressing her hair, her adorn-
ments, her top-knots, her jewelry, all are in profusion; but, as she
wishes to be lovely in spite of nature, and as she wishes to appear
magnificent in spite of fortune, she is obliged, in order to obtain
superfluities, to go without necessaries such as under-garments and
other trifles.

"She was born with sufficient intellect, and the desire to appear
as though she had a great deal made her prefer to study the most
abstract sciences rather than more general and pleasant branches of

178 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

Among other women astronomers of the eighteenth cen-
tury who deserve mention are Mme. du Pierry, the
Duchesse Louise of Saxe-Gotha, and Mme. Hortense
Lepaute.

According to Lalande, Mme. du Pierry was the first
woman professor of astronomy in Paris. He dedicated to
her his Astronomie des Dames, and incorporated in his own
works many of her memoirs on astronomical subjects. She

knowledge. She thought she would gain a greater reputation by this
peculiarity and a more decided superiority over other women.

"She did not limit herself to this ambition. She wished to be a
princess as well, and she became so, not by the grace of God nor by
that of the King, but by her own act. This absurdity went on like
the others. One became accustomed to regard her as a princess of
the theatre, and one almost forgot that she was a woman of rank.

"Madame worked so hard to appear what she was not that no
one knew what she really was. Even her faults were perhaps not
natural. They may have had something to do with her pretensions,
her want of respect with regard to the state of princess, her dullness
in that of savante, and her stupidity in that of a jolie femme.

"However much of a celebrity Mme. du Chatelet may be, she
would not be satisfied if she were not celebrated, and that is what
she desired in becoming the friend of M. de Voltaire. To him she
owes the eclat of her life, and it is to him that she will owe im-
mortality." See Lettres de la Marquise du Deffand a Horace Wai-
pole, Tom. I, pp. 200-201, Paris, 1824.

As a contrast to this atrocious caricature, it is but due to the
memory of Mme. du Chatelet to give her portrait by Voltaire, to
whom she was ever the beautiful, the charming Urania, the

"Vaste et puissante genie,
Minerve de la France, immortelle Emilie."

It is contained in the following verses:

"L 'esprit sublime et la delicatesse,
L'oubli charmante de sa propre beaute
L'amitie tendre et 1 'amour emporte

Sont les attraits de ma belle maitresse."

If the whole truth were known, it would, doubtless, be found some-
where between the above extreme and contradictory views, and the
cause of the caustic statements of Mesdames de Stael and du Deffand
would probably be found to be quite accurately expressed in the

WOMEN IN ASTRONOMY 179

devoted much time to calculating eclipses with a view to
accurately determining the motion of the moon, and was,
besides, the author of numerous astronomical tables which
exhibit patient research and unquestioned skill.

The Duchesse Louise had a great reputation as a rapid
and accurate computer, and was celebrated for the number
and variety of her computations. Her modesty, however,
prevented her from publishing anything or even having
her work quoted.

Considering, however, the amount and character of her
work, the most eminent woman astronomer that France has
yet produced was, without doubt, Mme. Hortense Lepaute,
the wife of the royal clockmaker of France. She first dis-
tinguished herself by her investigations on the oscillations
of pendulums of different lengths, an account of which is
to be found in her husband's valuable work, Traite d'Hor-
logerie, published in 1755.

In 1759 Lalande, who was then the Director of the Paris
Observatory, engaged Mme. Lepaute and the celebrated
mathematician, Clairaut, to determine the amount of the
attraction of Jupiter and Saturn on Halley's comet, whose
return was expected in that year. So difficult was this
problem, and so numerous were the complications involved,

first part of Voltaire's Epistle on Calumny, which was written about
the beginning of his particular relationship with ' ' the divine Emilie. ' ;
The first lines of this epistle, as translated by Smollett, are :
" Since beautiful, 'twill be your fate,

Emelia, to incur much hate;

Almost one-half of human race

Will even curse you to your face;

Possesst of genius, noblest fire,

With fear you will each breast inspire;

As you too easily confide,

You'll often be betrayed, belied;

You ne'er of virtue made parade,

To hypocrites no court you 've paid,

Therefore, of Calumny beware,

Foe to the virtuous and the fair."

180 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

that Lalande frankly confesses that he would not have
dared to undertake its solution without Mme. Lepaute's
assistance. For it necessitated calculating for every de-
gree, and for one hundred and fifty years the distances and
forces of each of the planets with reference to the comet.
"It would be difficult, " declares Lalande, "to realize the
courage which this enterprise required, if one did not know
that for more than six months we calculated from morning
until night, sometimes even at meals, and that at the end
of this enforced labor I was stricken by a malady which
affected me during the rest of my life." Clairaut was so
impressed by Mme. Lepaute's energy and skill during this
time that he declared "her ardor was surprising," and he
did not hesitate to call her La savante calculatrice — the
learned computer.1

The eclipse of 1762 also engaged Mme. Lepaute's atten-
tion, as did also the annular eclipse of 1764. The latter
was a curious phenomenon for France, as it had never be-
fore been observed. Mme. Lepaute calculated it for the
whole of Europe and published a chart showing its path
for every quarter of an hour. She also published another
chart for Paris, in which were exhibited the different
phases of the eclipse.

On the occasion of the different eclipses which she had
calculated, Mme. Lepaute recognized the advantage of
having a table of parallactic angles. She accordingly pre-

i In his work on Comets, Clairaut at first gave Mme. Lepaute
full credit for her work which had been of such inestimable service
to himself ; but, in order to gratify a woman who, having preten-
sions without knowledge, was very jealous of the superior attain-
ments of Mme. Lepaute, he had the weakness subsequently to sup-
press his generous tribute to merit. Commenting on this strange
conduct of his assistant, Lalande expresses himself as follows:
"We know that it is not rare to see ordinary women depreciate
those who have knowledge, tax them with pedantry and contest their
merit in order to avenge themselves upon them for their superiority.
The latter are so few in number that the others have almost suc-
ceeded in making them conceal their acquirements. ; ;

WOMEN IN ASTRONOMY 181

pared a very extended table of this kind which was pub-
lished by the French government. Besides this table, she
was the author of numerous memoirs on astronomical sub-
jects. Among them was one embracing calculations based
on all the observations which had been made on the transit
of Venus in 1761.

' ' In 1759, ' ' again writes Lalande, i ' I was given charge of
the Connaissance des Temps, a work which the Academy of
Sciences published every year for the use of astronomers
and navigators, the calculations for which gave occupation
to several persons. I had the good fortune to find in Mme.
Lepaute a co-worker without whom I should not have been
able to undertake the labor required. She continued in this
occupation until 1774, when another Academician assumed
this laborious task. But she thereupon began work on the
Ephemeris, of which the seventh volume in quarto, which
appeared in 1774, goes to 1784, and of which the eighth,
published in 1783, extends to the year 1792. In this latter
volume she made, unaided, all the computations for the
sun, the moon and all the planets.

"This long series of calculations finally enfeebled her
eyesight, which had been excellent, and she was in the last
years of her life obliged to discontinue them. ' n

In view of her extraordinary and long-continued work in
her chosen specialty, M. Lalande was quite warranted in
stating that "Mme. Lepaute is the only woman in France
who has acquired veritable knowledge in astronomy; and
she is now replaced only by Mme. du Pierry, who has pub-
lished divers astronomical calculations, and who has de-
served to have dedicated to her L'Astronomie des Dames,
which appeared in 1786. "

It is gratifying to know that the beautiful Japan Rose-
originally called Pautia, but changed to Hortensia by Jus-
sieu — was named after this distinguished woman. It is

i Bibliographic Astronoimque, pp. 676-687, par Jerome de la Lande,
Paris, 1803,

182 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

also gratifying to be assured that her engrossing work in
astronomy in no wise caused her to neglect her home duties
or to lose that sweetness of character and delicacy of re-
finement for which she was noted before she entered upon
the absorbing and taxing career of astronomical computer.

The wife of Lalande 's nephew, Mme. Lefranc,ais de
Lalande, proved herself in many respects a worthy succes-
sor of Mme. Lepaute. "My niece," writes her uncle,
Jerome Lalande, "aids her'husband in his observations and
draws conclusions from them by calculation. She has re-
duced the observations of ten thousand stars, and prepared
a work of three hundred pages of horary tables — an im-
mense work for her age and sex. They are incorporated
in my Abrege de Navigation.

"She is one of the rare women who have written scien-
tific books. She has published tables for finding the time
at sea by the altitude of the sun and stars. These tables
were printed in 1791 by the order of the National As-
sembly. ... In 1799 she published a catalogue of ten
thousand stars, reduced and calculated."

This distinguished observer and computer had a daugh-
ter in whom her grand-uncle was particularly interested.
* ' This daughter of astronomy, ' ' he tells us, ' ' was born the
twentieth of January, 1790, the day on which we at Paris
saw for the first time the comet which Miss Caroline Her-
schel had just discovered. The child was accordingly
named Caroline ; her godfather was Delambre. ' '

The discoverer of the comet referred to was, in many
ways, a most remarkable woman. She was the sister of
Sir William Herschel, the illustrious pioneer of modern
physical astronomy and the virtual founder of sidereal
science, as we know it to-day. She was also the aunt of
Sir John Herschel, who was the only rival of his uncle, Sir
William, as an explorer of the heavens.

But she was far more than a mere relative of these
immortal leaders in astronomic science. She herself was

WOMEN IN ASTRONOMY 183

an astronomer of distinction, and is known, in the annals
of astronomy, as the discoverer of no fewer than eight
comets. Great, however, as was her skill as an observer
and computer, it was as her brother's assistant that she is
entitled to the most distinction. Her affection for him was
as unbounded as her devotion to his life work was abiding
and productive of great results. For fifty years, after
joining him in England — they both had been born and bred
in Hanover — she was ever at his side, to assist him in his
labors and to cheer him by her words of counsel and en-
couragement. She helped him to grind and polish the mir-
rors that were used in his epoch-making reflectors. This
was a most arduous task; for, at that time, there was no
machinery sufficiently exact for grinding specula, and, as a
consequence, the work had all to be done by hand. So
interested was the great astronomer in his work, when
polishing his larger specula, that he forgot all about the
passage of time, and on these occasions his sister was con-
stantly obliged, as she herself informs us, "to feed him
by putting the victuals by bits into his mouth by way of
keeping him alive. ' ' When finishing his seven- foot reflector
he was on one occasion found so intent on his work that
"he had not taken his hands from it for sixteen hours
together. "

In our day, when all kinds of astronomical apparatus
are made by machinery, it is difficult for us to realize what
stupendous labor was required to produce those giant tele-
scopes with which the Herschels made their great discov-
eries and by which they, at the same time, revolutionized
the science of the stars. For they had not only to design
and make the specula, but also the mountings of the mir-
rors as well. And, in order to obtain the money required
for material and workmen, they were obliged to make tele-
scopes for sale. This meant an immense loss of precious
time that would otherwise have been devoted to the study
of the heavens.

184 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

After long years of struggle, during which the devoted
brother and sister overcame countless difficulties of every
kind, their condition was somewhat ameliorated by finan-
cial aid from the government and by William's appoint-
ment to the position of astronomer royal with a salary of
£200 a year. When Sir William Watson heard that this
limited sum had been granted by George III to the dis-
coverer of Georgium Sidus — the planet now known as
Uranus — he exclaimed, "Never bought monarch honor so
cheap."

Shortly afterwards Caroline was appointed as assistant
to her brother at a salary of £50 a year. This we should
now consider but a nominal sum, but she managed to live
on it. When she received the first quarterly payment of
twelve pounds she wrote in her memoirs, "It was the first
money I ever in all my lifetime thought myself to be at
liberty to spend to my liking. ' ' Her appointment as assist-
ant to her brother is notable from the fact that she was the
first woman in England, if not in the world, to hold such a
position in the government service.

Miss Herschel held this official appointment until Sir
William's death in 1822. When not acting as her brother's
assistant or secretary, she devoted her time to what she
quaintly called "minding the heavens. " It was during this
period that she made her most important discoveries. As
assistant, however, to so indefatigable an observer as Sir
William Herschel, she had but little time for sweeping
the heavens, for, when at home, Sir William "was invari-
ably accustomed to carry on his observations until day-
break, circumstances permitting, without regard to seasons ;
it was the business of his assistant to note the clocks and
to write down the observations from his dictations as they
were made. Subsequently she assisted in the laborious
numerical calculations and reductions, so that it was only
during his absence from home or when any other interrup-
tion of his regular course of observation occurred that she

WOMEN IN ASTRONOMY

185

was able to devote herself to the Newtonian sweeper, which
she used to such good purpose. Besides the eight comets
by her discovered, she detected several remarkable nebulas
and clusters of stars, previously unnoticed, especially the
superb nebulae known as No. 1, Class V, in Sir William
Herschel's catalogue. Long practice taught her to make
light of her work. 'An observer at your twenty-foot when
sweeping, ' she wrote many years after, ' wants nothing but
a being who can and will execute his commands with the
quickness of lightning ; for you will have seen that in many
sweeps six or twice six objects have been secured and
described in one minute of time. ' ' n

It was her quick, intelligent action, combined with a
patience, enthusiasm and powers of endurance that were
most extraordinary, that made Caroline Herschel so valu-
able as an assistant to her brother, and enabled him to
achieve the unique position which is his among the world 's
greatest astronomers. Had she been able to devote all her
time to ''minding the heavens/' it is cevtain that she
would have made many more discoveries than are now
credited to her; but her service to astronomy would have
been less than it was as the auxiliary of her illustrious
brother. No two ever did better " teamwork "; no two
were ever more devoted to each other or exhibited greater
enthusiasm in the task to which they so heroically devoted
their lives.2

i Memoirs and Correspondence of Caroline Herschel, p. 144, by
Mrs. John Herschel, London, 1879.

2 So sensitive was Miss Herschel in her old age regarding the
reputation of her brother, William, who had always been her idol
and the one in whom she had concentrated all her affection, that
she came to look askance at every person and thing that seemed cal-
culated to dull the glory of his achievements. Thus her niece, in
writing to Sir John Herschel, after her death, declares : ' ' She looked
upon progress in science as so much detraction from her brother's
fame; and, even your investigations would have become a source of
estrangement had she been with you." In a letter to Sir John

186 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

In addition to her arduous and engrossing duties as sec-
retary and assistant to her brother, Caroline found time to
prepare a number of works for the press. Among these
were a Catalogue of Eight Hundred and Sixty Stars Ob-
served by Flamsteed but not Included in the British Cata-
logue and A General Index of Reference to Every Observa-
tion of Every Star in the Above-mentioned British Cata-
logue. She had the honor of having these two works pub-
lished by the Koyal Society. Another, and a more valuable
work, was The Reduction and Arrangement in the Form of
Catalogue, in Zones, of All the Star-Clusters and Nebulae
Observed by Sir W. Herschel in His Sweeps. It was for
this catalogue that a gold medal was voted to her by the
Royal Astronomical Society in 1828 — a production that
was characterized as "a work of immense labor " and "an
extraordinary monument to the unextinguished ardor of a
lady of seventy-five in the cause of abstract science. " To
her nephew, Sir John Herschel, it proved invaluable, as it
supplied the needful data "when he undertook the review
of the nebulae of the northern hemisphere. ' ' It was also a
fitting prelude to Sir John's Cape Observations, a copy of
which great work she received from her nephew nearly

Herschel, written four years before her death, she exhibits, in an
amusing fashion, her jealous spirit anent the great telescope of Lord
Eosse. ' ' They talk of nothing here at the clubs, ' ' she writes, ' ' but of
the great mirror and the great man who made it. I have but one an-
swer for all — Der Kerl ist ein Narr — the fellow is a fool. ' '

Even "Every word said in her own praise seemed to be so much
taken away from the honour due to her brother. She had lived so
many years in companionship with a truly great man, and in the
presence of the unfathomable depths of the starry heavens, that praise
of herself seemed childish exaggeration. ' ' And notwithstanding the
honor and recognition which she received from learned men and
learned societies for her truly remarkable astronomical labors, her
dominant idea was always the same — "I am nothing. I have done
nothing. All I am, all I know, I owe to my brother. I am only a tool
which he shaped to his use — a well-trained puppy-dog would have
done as much." Op. cit., pp. IX, 335 and 346.

WOMEN IN ASTRONOMY 187

twenty years subsequently, after he had completed his
famous observations of the southern heavens in his ob-
servatory at the Cape of Good Hope.

"By a most striking and happy coincidence, " writes Mrs.
John Herschel, "she, whose unflagging toil had so greatly
contributed to its successful prosecution in the hands of
her beloved brother, lived to witness its triumphant termi-
nation through the no less persistent industry and strenu-
ous labor of his son; and her last days were crowned by
the possession of the work which brought to its glorious
conclusion Sir William Herschel's vast undertaking — The
Survey of the Heavens."

That Miss Herschers labors in the cause of astronomy
were appreciated by her contemporaries is evidenced by the
honors of which she was the recipient. The first of these
honors came in the form of a gold medal, unanimously
awarded by the Royal Astronomical Society for her reduc-
tion of twenty-five hundred nebulae "discovered by her
illustrious brother, which may be considered as the com-
pletion of a series of exertions probably unparalleled either
in magnitude or importance in the annals of astronomical
labor."

It was on this occasion, when referring to the immen-
sity of the task which Sir William Herschel had under-
taken, that the vice-president of the society paid a deserv-
ing tribute to the great astronomer's devoted sister, in
which is found the following statement :

"Miss Herschel it was who by right acted as his amanu-
ensis ; she it was whose pen conveyed to paper his observa-
tions as they issued from his lips; she it was who noted
the right ascensions and polar distances of the objects
observed; she it was who, having passed the night near
the instrument, took the rough manuscripts to her cot-
tage at the dawn of day and produced a fair copy of the
night's work on the following morning; she it was who
planned the labor of each succeeding night; she it was

188 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

who reduced every observation, made every calculation;
she it was who arranged everything in systematic order;
and she it was who helped him to obtain his imperishable
name."1

Besides this gold medal from the Royal Astronomical
Society, Miss Herschel also received two others, one from
the King of Denmark and the other from the King of
Prussia. The latter was accompanied by a most eulogistic
letter from Alexander von Humboldt, who informed her
that the medal was awarded her "in recognition of the
valuable services rendered by her as the fellow worker of
her immortal brother, Sir William Herschel, by discov-
eries, observations and laborious calculations."

In 1835, when she was eighty-five years of age, Miss
Herschel had the signal honor of being elected, along with
Mrs. Somerville, an honorary member of the Royal Astro-
nomical Society. As they were the first two women in
England to receive such recognition for their contributions
to science, it seems desirable to reproduce here an extract
from the report of the council of the society regarding the
bestowal of an honor which marked so distinct a change in
England of the attitude that should be taken toward women
who excelled in intellectual achievements. The extract
reads as follows:

"Your council has no small pleasure in recommending
that the names of two ladies distinguished in different walks
of astronomy be placed on the list of honorary members.
On the propriety of such a step, in an astronomical point
of view, there can be but one voice ; and your council is of
the opinion that the time is gone by when either feeling or
prejudice, by whichever name it may be proper to call it,
should be allowed to interfere with the payment of a well-
earned tribute of respect. Your council has hitherto felt
that, whatever might be its own sentiment on the subject,
or however able and willing it might be to defend such a
i Op. cit., p. 224.

WOMEN IN ASTRONOMY

189

measure, it had no right to place the name of a lady in a
position the propriety of which might be contested, though
upon what it might consider narrow grounds and false
principles. But your council has no fear that such a dif-
ference could now take place between any men whose opin-
ion could avail to guide the society at large ; and, abandon-
ing compliment on the one hand and false delicacy on the
other, submits that, while the tests of astronomical merit
should in no case be applied to the works of a woman less
severely than to those of a man, the sex of the former
should no longer be an obstacle to her receiving any ac-
knowledgment which might be held due to the latter. And
your council, therefore, recommends this meeting to add to
the list of honorary members the names of Miss Caroline
Herschel and Mrs. Somerville, of whose astronomical knowl-
edge, and of the utility of the ends to which it has been
applied, it is not necessary to recount the proofs."1

Three years after this splendid recognition of Miss Her-
schel's astronomical labors she was elected an honorary
member of the Royal Irish Academy.

But exceptional as were the honors conferred on her by
sovereigns and learned societies, none of them afforded her
the extreme satisfaction that she experienced on the receipt
of a copy, shortly before her death, of her nephew 's epochal
Cape Observations; for, as has well been said, "nothing in
the power of man to bestow could have given such pleasure
on her death-bed as this last crowning completion of her
brother's work." We are told that a copy, just from the
press, of his immortal work, De Orbium Celestium Eevolu-
tionibus, in which he had established the heliocentric theory
of the planetary system, was placed in the hands of Coper-
nicus on the day of his death, just a few hours before he
expired. He seemed conscious of what it was; but, after
touching it and contemplating it for a moment, he lapsed

i Memoirs and Correspondence of Caroline Herschel, ut. sup., pp.
226-227.

190 ;WOMAN IN SCIENCE

into a state of insensibility which soon terminated in death.
With Miss Herschel the case was different. Although in
her ninety-seventh year, she still retained possession of all
her faculties and was fully able to appreciate the volume
which told of the crowning of her brother's life work — a
volume which must have given her additional satisfaction
when she recalled her fifty years of loyal service at her
brother's side as his associate and ministering angel in the
greatest work ever undertaken by a single man in the his-
tory of astronomy.

Caroline Herschel died at the advanced age of ninety-
seven years and ten months, retaining to the last her inter-
est in astronomy which had occupied her mind for more
than three-quarters of a century.

Her epitaph, composed by herself, is engraved on a heavy
stone slab which covers her grave and contains the follow-
ing words: "The eyes of her who is glorified were here
below turned to the starry heavens. Her own discoveries
of comets and her participation in the immortal labors of
her brother, William Herschel, bear witness of this to
future ages."

Space precludes any extended reference to Miss Her-
schel's distinguished associate in the Royal Astronomical
Society, Mrs. Somerville, whose masterly translation and
exposition of Laplace's Mecanique Celeste secured for her
so enviable a place among the mathematicians of her time,
and placed all English students of mathematical astronomy
under such deep obligations. It is true that she ever mani-
fested a lively interest in celestial phenomena; but it is
rather as a mathematician than as an astronomer that she
will be remembered by the devotees of science.

The first American woman to win distinction in astron-
omy was Miss Maria Mitchell. Born in the island of Nan-
tucket in 1818, she, at an early age, displayed remarkable
talent for astronomy and mathematics. Her first instructor
was her father, who, besides being a school teacher, had

WOMEN IN ASTRONOMY 191

from his youth been an enthusiastic student of astronomy,
and that, too, at a time when very little attention was given
to its study in this country, and when the observatory of
Harvard College consisted of only a little projection to
an old mansion in Cambridge, in which there was a small
telescope.

At the age of thirteen little Maria counted seconds by
the chronometer for her father while he observed the an-
nular eclipse of the sun in 1831; and from that time on
she was his assiduous co-worker in the study of the heavens.
After teaching school for some years, she became the
librarian of the Nantucket Atheneum, a position which she
held for nearly twenty years. Here she continued the
study of her favorite science, and read all the books on
astronomy which she could obtain. It was during this
period that she read Bowditch's translation of Laplace's
Mecanique Celeste and Gauss's Theoria Motus Corporum
Ccelestium in the original.

On the evening of October 1, 1847, she was the dis-
coverer of a comet that attracted great attention because
it secured for her a medal offered by the King of Denmark
in 1831 for the first one who should discover a telescopic
comet. The same comet was observed by Father de Vico
in Rome two days subsequently, by Dawes in England on
October seventh, and by Madame Riimker, wife of the
director of the observatory of Hamburg, on the eleventh
of the same month. As there was no Atlantic cable in those
days, it was not known who was the fortunate winner of
the prize until nearly a year afterward, when word was
received from Denmark announcing that the priority of
Miss Mitchell's discovery had been recognized and that
she would be the recipient of the prize, which, for a while,
it was thought would go to De Vico or Madame Riimker.1

In 1849 Miss Mitchell was appointed a compiler for the

i M aria Mitchell, Life, Letters and Journals, compiled by Phebe
Mitchell Kendall, p. 267 et seq., Boston, 1896.

192 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

Nautical Almanac, a position she held for nineteen years.
During the same period she was employed by the United
States Coast Survey.

When Vassar College was opened in 1865 for the higher
education of women, Miss Mitchell was called to fill the
chair of astronomy and to be the first director of the
observatory. In this position she soon succeeded in giving
astronomy a prominence that it never had had before in
any other college for women, and in but few for men.

Miss Mitchell was a member of several learned societies
and the author of a number of papers containing the re-
sults of her observations on Jupiter and Saturn and their
satellites. But she is notable chiefly for being the first
woman astronomer in the United States and for training
up a number of young women who have followed in her
footsteps as enthusiastic astronomers. She held her posi-
tion at Vassar until 1889, when she died, a few months
before her seventy-first birthday.

Since the pioneer days of Miss Caroline Herschel, the
number of women throughout the world who have achieved
distinction in astronomy has rapidly augmented. One of
the most noted of these was Caterina Scarpellini, niece of
Feliciano Scarpellini, professor of astronomy in Rome, re-
storer of the Academy of the Lyncei, and founder of the
Capitoline Observatory. Born in 1808, she manifested at
an early age a decided taste for astronomy, which was
carefully developed by her uncle. She it was who organ-
ized the Meteorologico Ozonometric station in Rome and
edited its monthly bulletin. She exhibited a special inter-
est in shooting stars and prepared the first catalogue of
these meteors observed in Italy. In 1854 she discovered
a comet. She has. also left valuable studies on the probable
influence of the moon on earthquakes — studies which
brought her distinction from several of the learned so-
cieties of Europe. In 1872 the Italian government decreed
her a gold medal for her statistical labors in science. Since

WOMEN IN ASTRONOMY

193

her death her countrymen have recognized the value of her
contributions to science by erecting a statue to her memory.

Another woman who has won enduring fame in the an-
nals of astronomy is Miss Dorothea Klumpke, of San Fran-
cisco. "While yet quite young, she and her sisters were
taken to Europe to be educated. There she soon became
proficient in a number of languages, and then devoted her-
self to the study of mathematics and astronomy. After
securing her baccalaureate and licentiate in Paris, she ap-
plied for admission as a student to the Paris observatory.
"The directors of the observatory consulted the statutes.
No woman had hitherto proposed herself as a colleague, but
there was no rule opposing it. They themselves approved,
and gave her a telescope to make her own observations.
After a time she completed the work begun by Mme.
Kovalevsky on the rings of Saturn, which she made the
subject of her thesis, and, when she had become Doctor of
Science, she was given a decoration by the Institute and
made an Officier de V Academic."

After Miss Klumpke had brilliantly defended her thesis
in the Sorbonne, M. Darboux, the president of the jury,
complimented the young American doctor on her splendid
work and concluded a notable address in her honor in the
following laudatory words:

' ' The great names of Galileo, of Huyghens, of Cassini, of
Laplace, without speaking of those of my illustrious col-
leagues and friends, are attached to the history of every
serious step forward made in this attractive and difficult
theory of Saturn's rings. Your work constitutes another
valuable contribution to the same subject and places you
in an honorable rank beside those women who have conse-
crated themselves to the study of mathematics. In the last
century Maria Agnesi gave us a treatise on the differential
and integral calculus. Since then Sophie Germain, as re-
markable for her literary and philosophical talent as for
her faculty for mathematics, won the esteem of the great

194 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

geometricians who honored our country at the commence-
ment of this century. It is but a few years since the
Academy awarded one of its most beautiful prizes which
will place the name of Mme. Kovalevsky beside those of
Euler and Lagrange in the history of discoveries relative
to the theory of the movement of a solid body about a fixed
point. . . . And you, mademoiselle, your thesis is the first
which a woman has presented and successfully defended
before our faculty for the degree of doctor in mathematics.
You worthily open the way, and the faculty unanimously
makes haste to declare you worthy of obtaining the degree
of doctor."

Besides her thesis just referred to, Miss Klumpke is the
author of numerous communications to scientific journals
and learned societies regarding her researches on the
spectra of stars and meteorites and other allied subjects.
For many years she was at the head of the bureau in the
Paris Observatory for measuring the photographic plates
that are to be used in the large catalogue of stars and map
of the heavens which are to constitute the crowning achieve-
ments of the International Astronomical Congress. She
was the first woman to be elected a member of the Astro-
nomical Society of France, and the character of her work
as an observer as well as a computer has given her an en-
viable position among the astronomers of the world.1

In America another woman has won renown among
astronomers by successfully executing the same kind of

iMiss Klumpke, the reader may be interested in knowing, be-
longs to a singularly gifted family. Her sister, Augusta, is a dis-
tinguished physician and an authority on nervous diseases. Hers is
the glory to be the first woman permitted, after an exceptionally
severe examination, to serve as interne in the Paris hospitals. Julia,
her youngest sister, who achieved distinction as a violinist with
Ysaye, was one of the first to pass the examination required of
women entering the Paris Lycees, while Anna, the eldest, has won
fame as an artist, and as the friend, heiress and executrix of France's
famous daughter, Eosa Bonheur.

WOMEN IN ASTRONOMY

195

work as was entrusted to Miss Dorothea Klumpke in Paris.
For many years Mrs. W. Fleming, with her large corps
of women assistants, had charge of the immense collection
of astronomical photographs in the Observatory of Har-
vard University. To her and her staff were assigned the
reductions and measurements of the photographic and
photometric work done in Cambridge and Arequipa, Peru.
She was singularly successful in her studies of photo-
graphic plates and made many discoveries which astrono-
mers regard of the greatest importance. By such studies
she and her assistants detected many new nebulas, double
and variable stars, besides spectra of different types and of
rare interest. In addition to this they examined and classi-
fied tens of thousands of photographs of stellar spectra, a
labor which involved countless details of reduction and
measurements of exceeding delicacy and skill.

A complete list of the women who, during the past half
century, have devoted themselves to the study of astronomy
and who have contributed to its advancement by their
observations and writings would be a very long one.
Among those, however, whose labors have attracted special
notice, mention must be made of the Misses Antonia C.
Maury, Florence Cushman, Louisa D. Wells, Mabel C.
Stephens, Eva F. Leland, Anna Winlock, Annie J. Cannon
and Henrietta S. Leavitt, all of whom are on the staff of
the Harvard Observatory.

Then, too, there are many women who occupy important
positions as professors or assistant professors in our col-
leges and universities. Chief among these in the United
States are Sarah F. Whiting, of Wellesley ; Mary W. Whit-
ney, of Vassar ; Mary E. Boyd, of Smith ; Susan Cunning-
ham, of Swarthmore, and Annie S. Young, of Mt. Holyoke.
Nor must we forget such able computers as Mrs. Margaretta
Palmer, of Yale, and Miss Hanna Mace, the clever assistant
of the late Simon Newcomb in the Naval Observatory in
Washington.

196 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

In the Old World among the women who, during the
last few decades, have materially contributed to the pro-
gress of astronomy, either as observers and computers or
as writers, are Miss Alice Everett, who has done splendid
work in the observatories of Greenwich and Potsdam,
Misses M. A. Orr, Mary Ashley, Alice Brown, Mary Proc-
tor— daughter of the late astronomer, R. A. Proctor —
Agnes M. and Ellen M. Clerke, and Lady Huggins, of
England; Mmes. Jansen, Faye, and Flammarion, in
France; the Countess Bobinski, in Russia; and Miss Pog-
son, in the Observatory of Madras, India.

In conclusion, it is but just to observe that women 's
work in astronomy has by no means been confined to their
contributions as observers, writers and computers. Refer-
ence must also be made to the financial aid which they
have given to various observatories and learned societies
for the furtherance of astronomical research both in the
New and the Old World. It must suffice here to recall the
endowment at Harvard University of the Henry Draper
Memorial, by Mrs. Henry Draper, in order that the work
of photographing stellar spectra, which occupied her hus-
band's later years, might be continued under the most
favorable auspices, and the munificent sum of fifty thou-
sand dollars given by Miss C. Bruce, of New York, for the
construction of a large telescope especially designed for
photographing faint stars and nebulae. The photographs
taken with this instrument will be used in the preparation
of the great chart of the heavens which is to be the joint
production of the chief observatories of the world.

CHAPTER V
WOMEN IN PHYSICS

Physics, being one of the inductive sciences, received
little attention until modern times. True, the Greeks were
familiar with some of the fundamental facts of the me-
chanics of solids and fluids, and had some notions respect-
ing the various physical forces; but their knowledge of
what until recently was known as natural philosophy was
extremely limited. Aristotle, Pythagoras and Archimedes
were among the most successful investigators of their time
respecting the laws and properties of matter, and contrib-
uted materially to the advancement of knowledge regarding
the phenomena of the material universe ; but the sum total
of their information of what we now know as physics could
be embodied in a few pages.

In view of the foregoing facts, we should not expect to
find women engaged in the study, much less in the teaching,
of physical science during ancient times. And yet, if we
are to credit Boccaccio, who bases his statements on those
of early Greek writers, there was at least one woman that
won distinction by her knowledge of natural philosophy
as early as the days of Socrates. In his work, De Laudibus
Mulierum, which treats of the achievements of some of the
illustrious representatives of the gentler sex, the genial
author of the Decameron gives special praise to one Arete
of Gyrene for the breadth and variety of her attainments.
She was the daughter of Aristippus, the founder of the
Cyrenaic school of philosophy, and is represented as being
a veritable prodigy of learning. For among her many

197

198 "WOMAN IN SCIENCE

claims to distinction she is said to have publicly taught
natural and moral philosophy in the schools and academies
of Attica for thirty-five years, to have written forty books,
and to have counted among her pupils one hundred and
ten philosophers. She was so highly esteemed by her
countrymen that they inscribed on her tomb an epitaph
which declared that she was the splendor of Greece and
possessed the beauty of Helen, the virtue of Thirma, the
pen of Aristippus, the soul of Socrates, and the tongue of
Homer.1

This is high praise, indeed, but, when we recollect that
Arete lived during the golden age of Greek learning and
culture, that she had exceptional opportunities of acquiring
knowledge in every department of intellectual effort ; when
we recall the large number of women who, in their time,
distinguished themselves by their learning and accomplish-
ment, and reflect on the advantages they enjoyed as pupils
of the ablest teachers of the Lyceum, the Portico, and the
Academy; when we remember further that they lived in
an atmosphere of intelligence such as has since been un-
known; when we call to mind the signal success that re-
warded the pursuit of knowledge by the scores of women
mentioned by Athenaeus and other Greek writers; when
we peruse the fragmentary notices of their achievements
as recorded in the pages of more recent investigators re-
garding the educational facilities of a certain class of

i" Publics philosophiam naturalera et moralem in seholis Aca-
demiisque Atticis docuit haec foemina annis XXXV, libros com-
posuit XL, discipulos habuit philosophos CX, obiit anno aetatis
LXXVII, cui tale Athenienses statuere epitaphium:
Nobilis hie Arete dormit, lux Helladis, ore

Tyndaris at tibi par, Icarioti, fide.
Patris Aristippi calamumque animamque dederunt,
Socratis huic linguam Maeonidaeque Dii. "

— Boccaccio, De Laudibus Mulierum, Lib. II.

Cf. Wolf's Mulierum Grcecarum qucB Oratione Prosa Usce Sunt
Fragmenta et Elogia, pp. 283 et seq., London, 1739.

WOMEN IN PHYSICS

199

women living in Athens and the eminence which they at-
tained in science, philosophy and literature, we can realize
that the character and amount of Arete 's work as an author
and as a teacher have not been overestimated.

Living in an age of prodigious mental activity, when
women, as well as men, were actuated by an abiding love
of knowledge for its own sake, there is nothing surprising
in finding a woman like Arete commanding the admiration
of her countrymen by her learning and eloquence. For
was not the learned and eloquent Aspasia her contempor-
ary? And did not Theano, the wife of Pythagoras, take
charge of her husband's school after his death; and does
not antiquity credit her with being not only a successful
teacher of philosophy, but also a writer of books of recog-
nized value? Such being the case, what is there incred-
ible in the statements made by ancient writers regarding
the literary activity of Arete, and about her eminence as a
teacher of science and philosophy? She was but one of
many of the Greek women of her age that won renown by
their gifts of intellect and by their contributions to the
educational work of their time and country.

Better known than Arete, but probably not superior to
her as a teacher or writer, was the illustrious Hypatia of
Alexandria. She, too, like her distinguished predecessor
in Athens, was an instructor in natural philosophy, as well
as other branches of science. Of her we know more than
we do of the daughter of Aristippus, but even our knowl-
edge of the acquisitions and achievements of Hypatia is,
unfortunately, extremely meager. We do, however, know
from the historian, Socrates, and from Synesius, bishop of
Ptolemais, who was her pupil, that she was one of the most
richly dowered women of all time. Born and educated in
Alexandria when its schools and scholars were the most
celebrated in the world, she was even at an early age re-
garded as a marvel of learning. For, not satisfied with
excelling her father, Theon, in mathematics, of which he

200 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

was a distinguished professor, she, as Suidas informs us,
devoted herself to the study of philosophy with such success
that she was soon regarded as the ablest living exponent of
the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle. "Her knowledge,"
writes the historian, Socrates, "was so great that she far
surpassed all the philosophers of her time. And succeed-
ing Plotinus, in the Platonic school which he had founded
in the city of Alexandria, she taught all the branches of
philosophy with such signal success that students flocked
to her in crowds from all parts."1 Her home, as well as
her lecture room, was the resort of the most noted scholars
of the day, and was, with the exception of the Library and
the Museum, the most frequented intellectual center of the
great city of learning and culture. Small wonder, then,
that her contemporaries lauded her as an oracle and as
the most brilliant luminary in Alexandria's splendid gal-
axy of thinkers and scholars — sapientis artis sidus integer-
rimum.

Among the many inventions attributed to Hypatia, be-
sides the planisphere and astrolabe which she designed for
the use of astronomers, are several employed in the study
of natural philosophy. Probably the most useful of these
is an areometer mentioned by her pupil Synesius. He calls
it a hydroscope and describes it as having the form and
size of a flute, and graduated in such wise that it can be
used for determining the density of liquids. That Hypatia
was thoroughly familiar with the science of natural philos-
ophy, as then known, there can be no doubt. That she also
contributed materially to its advancement, as well as to

i ' ' Mulier qusedam f uit Alexandria^ nomine Hypatia, Theonis
filia. Hsec ad tantam eruditionem pervenerat ut omnes sui tem-
poris philosophos longo intervallo superaret, et in Platonicam scholam
a Plotino deductam succederet, cunctasque philosophise disciplinas
auditoribus exponeret. Quocirca omnes philosophies studiosi ad illam
undique confluebant. ' ' Socrates, Historic Ecclesiastics, Lib. VII,
Cap. 15.

WOMEN IN PHYSICS

201

that of astronomy, in which she always exhibited a special
interest, there is every reason to believe.1

After the death of Hypatia, the study of natural philoso-
phy was almost entirely neglected for more than a thou-
sand years. The first woman in modern times to attract
attention by her discussion of physical problems was the
famous Marquise du Chatelet, although she was better
known as a mathematician and as the translator into the
French of Newton 's Principia. In her chateau at Cirey
she had a well-equipped physical cabinet in which she took
special delight. But in her time, as in that of Hypatia,
natural philosophy was far from being the broad experi-
mental science which it has become through the marvelous
discoveries made in heat, light, electricity and magnetism
during the last hundred years, as well as through those
countless brilliant investigations which have led up to
our present doctrine of the correlation and conservation
of the various physical forces. There was then no occasion
for those delicate instruments of precision which are now
found in every physical laboratory by means of which the
man of science is able to investigate phenomena and deter-
mine laws that were quite unknown until a few years ago.

In the time of Mme. du Chatelet, as during the century
following, natural philosophy consisted rather in the me-
chanical and mathematical than in the physical study of
nature. This is illustrated by the title of the great work
on the translation of which she spent the best years of her
life — Newton's immortal Philosophic Naturalis Principia
Mathematica.

The Marquise's first scientific work was an investigation
regarding the nature of fire. The French Academy of

i For extracts from the ancient authors regarding Hypatia, aa
well as for the extant letters to her from her friend and pupil,
Synesius, the reader is referred to Wolf's erudite Mulierum Grcs-
carum quce Oratione Prosa Usce sunt Fragmenta et Elogia, pp.
72-91, ut sup.

202 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

Sciences had offered a prize for the best memoir on the
subject. Among the contestants for the coveted honor
were the chatelaine of Cirey and the celebrated Swiss
mathematician, Leonard Euler. The Marquise was unsuc-
cessful in the contest, but her paper was of such value that
the eminent physicist and astronomer, Arago, was able to
characterize it as an "elegant piece of work, embracing all
the facts relating to the subject then known to science and
containing among the experiments suggested one which
proved so fecund in the hands of Herschel." In this re-
markable Memoire sur le Feu, which is printed in the
Collections of the Academy, the Marquise anticipates the
results of subsequent researches of others by maintaining
that both heat and light have the same cause, or, as we
should now say, are both modes of motion.

The second book written by this remarkable woman is
entitled Institutions de Physique, and was dedicated to her
son, for whose benefit it was primarily written. It deals
specially with the philosophy of Leibnitz and discusses
such questions, as force, time and space. Her views respect-
ing the nature of the force called vis viva, which was much
discussed in her time, are of particular interest, as they
are not only opposed to those which were held by Descartes
and Newton, but also because they are in essential accord
with those now accepted in the world of science.

All things considered, the Marquise du Chatelet deserv-
edly takes high rank in the history of mathematical
physics. In this department of science she has had few,
if any, superiors among her own sex. And, when we recol-
lect that she labored while the foundations of dynamics
were still being laid, we shall more readily appreciate the
difficulties she had to contend with and the distinct service
which her researches and writings rendered to the cause
of natural philosophy among her contemporaries.

The first woman to occupy a chair of physics in a uni-
versity was the famous daughter of Italy, Laura Maria

WOMEN IN PHYSICS

203

Catarina Bassi. She was born in Bologna in 1711 — but
five years after the birth of Madame du Chatelet — and
from her most tender years she exhibited an exceptional
facility for the acquisition of knowledge.

After she had, through the assistance of excellent mas-
ters, become proficient in French and Latin, she took up
the study of logic, metaphysics and natural philosophy. In
all these branches of learning her progress was so rapid
that it far exceeded the fondest expectations of her parents
and teachers. Thanks to a wonderful memory and a highly
developed reasoning faculty, she was able, while still a
young maiden, to prove herself the possessor of knowledge
that is ordinarily obtained only in the maturity of age
and after long years of systematic study.

"When she had attained the twenty-first year of her age
she was induced by her family and friends — much against
her own inclination, however — to take part in a public
disputation on philosophy. Her entering the lists against
some of the most distinguished scholars of the time was
made the occasion for an unusual demonstration in her
honor. The hall of the university in which such intellectual
jousts were generally held was too small for the multitude
that was eager to witness the young girl's formal appear-
ance among the scholars and the notables of the old uni-
versity city. It was, accordingly, arranged that the dis-
putation should be held in the great hall of the public Pal-
ace of the Senators.

Among the vast assemblage present at the disputation
were Cardinal Grimaldi, the papal legate; Cardinal Arch-
bishop Lambertini, afterwards Pope Benedict XIV; the
gonfalonier, senators, literati from far and near, leading
members of the nobility and representatives of all the re-
ligious orders.

When the argumentation began the young girl found
herself pitted against five of the most distinguished scholars
of Bologna. But she was fully equal to the occasion and

204 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

passed the ordeal to which she was subjected in a manner
that excited the admiration and won the plaudits of all
present. Cardinal Lambertini was so impressed with the
brilliant defence which she had made against the five
trained dialecticians and the evidence she gave of varied
and profound learning that he paid her a special visit the
next day in her own home to renew his congratulations on
her signal triumph and to encourage her to continue the
prosecution of her studies.

In less than a month after this interesting event Laura
Bassi, in response to the expressed desire of the whole
of Bologna, presented herself as a candidate for the doc-
torate in philosophy. This was the occasion for a still
more brilliant and imposing ceremony. It was held in the
spacious Hall of Hercules in the Communal Palace, which
was magnificently decorated for the splendid function. In
addition to the distinguished personages who had been
spectators of the fair student's triumph a few weeks be-
fore, there was present in the vast audience the noted
French ecclesiastic, Cardinal Polignac, who was on his
way from Rome to France.

The heroine of the hour, dressed in a black gown, was
ushered into the great hall, preceded by two college beadles
and accompanied by two of the most prominent ladies of
the Bolognese nobility. She was given a seat between the
chancellor and the prior of the university, who, in turn,
were flanked by the professors and officials of the in-
stitution.

After the usual preliminaries of the function were over
the prior of the university, Doctor Bazzani, rose and pro-
nounced an eloquent discourse in Latin to which Laura
made a suitable response in the same language. She was
then crowned with a laurel wreath exquisitely wrought in
silver, and had thrown round her the vajo, or university
gown, both symbols of the doctorate. After this the young
doctor proceeded to where the three cardinals were seated,

WOMEN IN PHYSICS

205

and in delicately chosen words, also in Latin, expressed to
them, her thanks for the honor of their presence. All then
withdrew to the apartments of the gonfalonier, where re-
freshments were served in sumptuous style, after which the
young Laureata, accompanied by a numerous cortege and
applauded by the entire city, was escorted to her home.

So profound was the impression made on the university
senate by the deep erudition of Laura Bassi that it was
eager to secure her services in its teaching body. But,
before she could be offered a chair in the institution, long-
established custom required that she should pass a public
examination on the subject matter which she was to teach.
Five examiners were chosen by lot, and all of them proved
to be men whose names, says Fantuzzi, "will always be
held by our university in glorious remembrance. " They
had all to promise under oath that the candidate for the
chair should have no knowledge before the examination
of the questions which were to be asked, and that the test
of the aspirant's qualifications to fill the position sought
should be absolutely free from any suspicion of favoritism
or partiality.

Notwithstanding the difficulties she had to confront,
Laura acquitted herself with even greater credit than on
former occasions of a similar character. There was no
question in the mind of any one present at the examination
of the candidate's ability to fill the chair of physics, and
it was, accordingly, offered to her by acclamation.

The first public lecture of the gifted young dottoressa
was made the occasion of a demonstration such as the old
walls of the university had rarely witnessed. Her lecture
room was thronged by the elite of the city, as well as by a
large class of enthusiastic students. All were charmed by
her eloquence and amazed at the complete mastery she
evinced of the subject she had selected for discussion. From
that day forth her reputation as a scholar and a teacher
was established, and her lectures were attended by appre-

206 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

ciative students from all parts of Europe. She was espe-
cially popular with the students from Greece, Germany
and Poland, and her popularity, far from waning, waxed
greater with the passing years.

At the time of Laura 's entering upon her professional
career the senate of Bologna had a medal coined in her
honor, on the obverse of which was her name and effigy,
while on the reverse there was an image of Minerva, with
the inscription, Soli cui fas vidisse Minervam.

Far from interrupting her studies, which had hitherto
been the joy of her life, Laura's university work gave new
zest to the literary and scientific pursuits which had al-
ways such a fascination for her. Among the subjects that
specially engaged her attention were studies so diverse as
Greek and the higher mathematics. She was particularly
interested in the great physico-mathematical work of New-
ton, and did not rest until she had thoroughly mastered
the contents of his epoch-making Principia.

A few years after she had become a member of the uni-
versity faculty Laura was a European celebrity, and no
one eminent by learning or birth passed through Bologna
without availing himself of the opportunity of making the
acquaintance of so extraordinary a woman. Men of sci-
ence and letters vied with princes and emperors in doing
honor to one who was looked upon by many as being, like
Arete of old, endowed with a soul and a genius far above
that of ordinary mortals, and as being the possessor of a
talent that indicated something superhuman.

Laura Bassi was in constant correspondence with the
most celebrated scholars of Europe, and more especially
with those who had attained eminence in her special line
of work. Among the letters received from her illustrious
correspondents were two from Voltaire. They were writ-
ten shortly after the author had been refused admittance
into the French academy. He then bethought himself of
securing membership in the Academy of Sciences of

WOMEN IN PHYSICS 207

Bologna. This, he reasoned, would be a splendid tribute
to the versatility of his genius and would, at the same time,
be a biting satire on the demigods of French literature who
had dared to exclude him from their society.

That he might not meet the same refusal on the part of
the Academy of Bologna as he had experienced in Paris,
Voltaire determined not to rely entirely on the good will
of the male members of the Bolognese academy. He ac-
cordingly resolved to enlist the services of Laura Bassi,
who was one of the leading members of this distinguished
body, and trust to her influence in his behalf on the hearts
of her colleagues.

The first letter, written in Italian, is so characteristic of
the writer that it will bear reproduction.

"Most Illustrious Lady," he writes from Paris, the 23d
of November, 1744, "I have been wishing to journey to
Bologna in order to be able one day to tell my countrymen
I have seen Signora Bassi; but, being deprived of this
honor, let it at least be permitted me to place at your feet
this philosophic homage and to salute the honor of her age
and of women. There is not a Bassi in London, and I
should be more happy to be a member of the Academy of
Bologna than of that of the English, although it has pro-
duced a Newton. If your protection should obtain for me
this title, of which I am so ambitious, the gratitude of my
heart will be equal to my admiration for yourself. I beg
you to excuse the style of a foreigner who presumes to
write you in Italian, but who is as great an admirer of
yours as if he were born in Bologna."

The second letter of Voltaire is in response to one re-
ceived from Laura Bassi announcing that he had been
elected to membership in the Bologna Academy. The first
sentence of it suffices to indicate its tenor. "Nothing,"
he writes, "was ever more grateful to me than to receive
from your hand the first advice that I had the honor, by
means of your favor, of being united by this new link to

208 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

one who had already bound me to her car by all the chains
of esteem and admiration."1

Like so many of her gifted sisters of sunny Italy, Laura
was in every way "a perfect woman nobly planned. " Of
a deeply religious nature, she was as pious as she was intel-
ligent, and was throughout her life the devoted friend of
the poor and the afflicted. The mother of twelve children,
she never permitted her scientific and literary work to con-
flict with her domestic duties or to detract in the least
from the singular affection which so closely united her to
her husband and children. She was as much at home with
the needle and the spindle as she was with her books and
the apparatus of her laboratory. And she was equally
admirable whether superintending her household, looking
after her children, entertaining the great and the learned
of the world, or in holding the rapt attention of her stu-
dents in the lecture room. She was, indeed, a living proof
that higher education is not incompatible with woman's
natural avocations ; and that cerebral development does not
lead to race suicide and all the other dire results attributed
to it by a certain class of our modern sociologists and anti-
feminists.

Considering her manifold duties as a professor in the
university and the mother of a large family, it was scarcely
to be expected that Laura Bassi would have much time for
writing for the press. She was, however, able to devote
some of her leisure moments to the cultivation of the Muses,
of whom, Fantuzzi informs us, she was a favorite. Her
verses, as well as her contributions to the science of physics,
are scattered through various publications, but they suffice
to show that the accounts of her transmitted to us by her
contemporaries were not exaggerated.2

1 Ernesto Masi, Studi e Eitratti, p. 166 et seq., Bologna, 1881.

2 Two of her Latin dissertations on certain physical problems
were published in the Commentaries of the Bologna Institute. One
of them is entitled De Problemate quodam MecJianico; the other De

WOMEN IN PHYSICS 209

A learned French traveler who visited Laura in Bologna
describes her as having a face that was sweet, serious and
modest. Her eyes were dark and sparkling, and she was
blessed with a powerful memory, a solid judgment, and a
ready imagination. "She conversed fluently with me in
Latin for an hour with grace and precision. She is very
proficient in metaphysics ; but she prefers modern physics,
particularly that of Newton. ' '

How many of our college women of to-day could readily
carry on a conversation in Latin, if this were the sole
medium of communication, or discuss the philosophy of
Plato and Aristotle in the tongue of Cicero, or give public
lectures on the physieo-mathematical discoveries of Des-
cartes and Newton in what was the universal language of
the learned world, even less than a century ago ?

It must not, however, be inferred from the foregoing
statements regarding the great intellectual capacity of
Laura Bassi or the enthusiastic demonstrations that were so
frequently made in her honor that she was unique in this
respect among her countrywomen. Special attention has
been called to her as a type of the large number of her
sex who, by their learning and culture, graced the courts
and honored the universities of her country for full ten
centuries. Scarcely had death removed Laura Bassi from
a career in which for twenty-eight years she had won the
plaudits of the whole of Europe, when the University of
Bologna welcomed to its learned halls two other women
who, in their respective lines of research, were fully as emi-
nent as their departed countrywoman. These were Maria
dalle Donne, for whom Napoleon established a chair of
obstetrics, and Clotilda Tambroni, the famous professor of
Greek, of whom a noted Hellenist declared, "Only three

Problemate quodam Hydrometrico. Many of her lectures on physics
still exist in manuscript, and it is to be hoped that at least the
titles of them may be given in a biography of the learned author
which has been long desired and long promised.

210 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

persons in Europe are able to write Greek as well as she
does, and not more than fifteen are able to understand
her."

Burckhardt, in his thoughtful work on the culture of the
Italian Renaissance, has a paragraph which expresses, in a
few words, what was always the attitude of the Italian
father toward the education of his daughter.

"The education of the woman of the upper class was
absolutely the same as that of the man. The Italian of the
Renaissance did not for a moment hesitate to give his son
and daughter the same literary and philosophical training.
He considered the knowledge of the works of antiquity
life's greatest good, and he could not, therefore, deny to
woman participation in such knowledge. Hence the per-
fection attained by the daughters of noble families in writ-
ing and speaking Latin."1

This attitude of the members of the nobility toward the
education of their daughters was essentially the same as
that of the universities of Italy toward women who had a
thirst for knowledge. For from the dawn of learning in
Salerno to the present there never was a time when women
were not as cordially welcomed to the universities as stu-
dents and professors as were the men; and never a time
when the merit of intellectual work was not determined
without regard to sex.

In Bologna, where were passed the sixty-seven years of
her mortal life, the name of Laura Bassi, like that of her
illustrious colleague, Luigi Galvani, is one to conjure with,
and a name that is still pronounced with respect and rever-
ence. Her last resting place is in the Church of Corpus
Domini, the same sacred shrine in which were deposited all
that was mortal of the renowned discoverer of galvanic elec-
tricity.2

1 Die Cultur tier "Renaissance in Italien, Vol. I, p. 363, 1869.

2 As no satisfactory biography of Laura Bassi has yet been writ-
ten, most of our knowledge respecting her is limited to that found

WOMEN IN PHYSICS

Two years after Signora Bassi was gathered to her
fathers there was born near Edinburgh to a Scotch admiral,
Sir William George Fairfax, an infant daughter who was
destined to shed as much luster on her sex in the British
Isles as the incomparable Laura Bassi had diffused on
womankind in Italy during her brilliant career in "Bo-
logna, the learned. ' ' She is known in the annals of science
as Mary Somerville, and was in every way a worthy suc-
cessor of her famous sister in Italy, both as a woman and
as a votary of science.

Although her chief title to fame is her notable work in
mathematical astronomy, especially her translation of La-
place's Mechanique Celeste, she is likewise to be accorded a
prominent place among scientific investigators for her con-
tributions to physics and cognate branches of knowledge.
Chief among these are her works on the Connection of the
Physical Sciences and Physical Geography. As to the last
production, no less an authority than Alexander von Hum-
boldt pronounced it an exact and admirable treatise, and
wrote of it as " that excellent work which has charmed and
instructed me since its first appearance.*'

In a letter from the illustrious German savant to the
gifted authoress of the two last-named volumes occurs the
following paragraph: "To the great superiority you pos-
sess and which has so nobly illustrated your name on the
high regions of mathematical analysis, you add, Madam,
a variety of information in all parts of physics and descrip-
tive natural history. After the Mechanism of the Heavens,
the philosophical Connection of the Physical Sciences has
been the object of my profound admiration. . . . The
author of the vast Cosmos should more than any one else
salute the Physical Geography of Mary Somerville. ... I

in Fantuzzi's Notizie degli Scrittori Bolognesi, Tom. I, pp. 384-391,
and Mazzuchelli's Gli Scrittori d' Italia, Vol. II, Part I, pp. 527-529,
Brescia, 1758.

J5VOMAN IN SCIENCE

know of no work on physical geography in any language
that can compare with yours."

Among the other works by Mrs. Somerville, treating of
physical subjects or of subjects intimately related to phys-
ics are The Form and Rotation of the Earth, The Tides
oj the Ocean and Atmosphere, and an abstruse investiga-
tion On Molecular and Microscopic Science. The last vol-
ume was published in 1869, when its author was near her
ninetieth year, and bore as its motto St. Augustine's sub-
lime words: Deus magnus in magnis, maximus in minimis
— God is great in great things, greatest in the least.

After Mrs. Somerville 's death, in 1872, at the advanced
age of ninety-two, the number of women who devoted them-
selves to the study and teaching of physics was greatly
augmented. The brilliant success of Laura Bassi and
Mary Somerville had not been without results, and their
notable achievements as authors and teachers had the effect
of stimulating women everywhere to emulate their example,
and encouraging them to devote more attention to a
branch of science which, until then, had been regarded by
the general public as beyond the sphere and capacity of
what was assumed to be the intellectually weaker sex.

One of the most eminent scientific women of the present
day in England is Mrs. Ayrton, the wife of the late Pro-
fessor W. E. Ayrton, the well-known electrician. Her
chosen field of research, like that of her husband, has been
electricity, in which she has achieved marked distinction.
Her investigations on the electric arc and on the sand
ripples of the seashore won for her the first medal ever
awarded to a woman by the Royal Society. When, how-
ever, in 1902, she was formally nominated for fellowship
in this same society, she failed of election because the coun-
cil of the society discovered that ' ' it had no legal power to
elect a married woman to this distinction."

How different it was in the case of Laura Bassi, who was
an active member of all the leading scientific and literary

WOMEN IN PHYSICS

societies of Italy, where from time immemorial women have
been as cordially welcomed to membership in its learned
societies as to the chairs of its great universities.

The list of the women who in Europe and America are
now engaged in physical research and in teaching physics
in schools and colleges is a long one, and the work accom-
plished by them is, in many cases, of a high order of merit.
It is only, indeed, during the present generation that such
work has been made generally accessible to them ; and, con-
sidering the success which has already attended their efforts
in this branch of science, we have every reason to believe
that the future will bring forth many others of their sex
who will take rank with such intellectual luminaries as
Hypatia, Mme. du Chatelet, Laura Bassi and Mary Somer-
ville.

CHAPTER VI

WOMEN IN CHEMISTRY

The first woman deserving special mention in the history
of chemistry is the wife of the immortal Lavoisier, the most
famous of the founders of modern chemical science. While
yet in her teens, this remarkable woman gave evidence of
exceptional intelligence and will power. She was thor-
oughly devoted to her husband, and had the greatest admi-
ration for his genius. Her highest ambition was to prove
herself worthy of him and to render herself competent to
assist him in those investigations that have given him such
imperishable renown. With this end in view, she learned
Latin and English, and she thus became an accomplished
translator from these languages of any chemical works
which might aid her spouse in his epoch-making researches.
It was she who translated for him the chemical memoirs of
Cavendish, Henry, Kirwan, Priestly and other noted Eng-
lish scientific investigators.

Arthur Young, well known in his day as a traveler and
author, who in 1787 made the acquaintance of Madame
Lavoisier, describes her as a woman full of animation,
good sense and knowledge. In referring to a breakfast
she had given him, he declares that "unquestionably the
best part of the repast was her conversation on Kirwan 's
Essay on Phlogiston, which she was then translating, and
on other subjects which a woman of sense, working in the
laboratory of her husband, knows so well how to make
interesting. "

She was an ardent co-worker with her husband in his

214

WOMEN IN CHEMISTRY 215

laboratory and materially aided him in his labors. Under
his direction she wrote the results of the experiments that
were made, as is evidenced by the records of his work.
As a pupil of the illustrious painter, David, she was natu-
rally skillful in drawing. Besides this, she was a good
engraver, and it is to her that are due the illustrations in
Lavoisier's great Trait e de Chimie, which contributed so
much toward revolutionizing the science of chemistry. It
was, indeed, the first work that deserved to be regarded as
a textbook of modern chemistry. Among her drawings are
two of special interest. They represent her as seated at
a table in the laboratory, taking notes, while her husband
and his assistant, Seguin, are making an experiment on the
phenomena of respiration.1

All Mme. Lavoisier's writings testify to her great admi-
ration of the genius of her husband. Intimately associated
with him in his work, she combatted for the triumph of his
ideas and sought to make converts to them. One of her
most notable converts was the Swiss chemist, de Saussure.
"You have, Madame," he writes her, "triumphed over my
doubts, at least in the matter of phlogiston, which is the
principal object of the interesting work of which you have
done me the honor of sending me a copy. ' '

After Lavoisier 's tragic death on the guillotine, it was his
devoted wife who edited his Memoirs on Chemistry, of
which Lavoisier had himself projected the publication. The
two volumes constituting this work were not for sale, but
were gratuitously distributed by the bereaved widow
among the most eminent scientific men of the epoch. Cuv-
ier, in acknowledging the receipt of these precious memoirs,
declares : l ' All the friends of science are under obligations
to you for your sorrowful determination to publish this
collection of papers and to publish them as they were writ-

i Lavoisier 1743-1794, d'apres sa Correspondence, Ses Manuscrits,
Ses Papiers de Famille et d'Autres Documents Inedits, p. 42 et seq.;
par E. Grimaux, Paris, 1896.

216 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

ten — a melancholy monument of your loss and theirs — a
loss which humanity will feel for centuries."

To realize the importance of the work in which Mme.
Lavoisier participated, it suffices to recall the fact that
her husband, as one of the creators of modern chemistry,
was the first to demonstrate the existence of the law of
the conservation of matter, which declares that in all
chemical changes nothing is lost and nothing is created.
The co-discoverer with Scheele and Priestly of oxygen, he
was the first one to exhibit the role of this important ele-
ment in the phenomena of combustion and respiration and
the first, also, to lay the foundations of a chemical nomen-
clature. We are not, then, surprised to learn that Mme.
Lavoisier's salon, even long after her lamented husband's
death, was frequented by the most eminent savants of the
time. For here were gathered such scientific luminaries as
Cuvier, Laplace, Arago, Lagrange, Prony, Berthollet,
Delambre, Biot, Hurnboldt, and others scarcely less bril-
liant.

After the conclusion of Mme. Lavoisier's work in the
laboratory of her husband, little was accomplished by
women in chemistry for more than half a century. The
reason was simple. Chemistry was not a part of the cur-
riculum of studies for girls either in Europe or America.
Even "during the sixties, " writes a teacher of one of the
prominent female seminaries of the United States, "the
study of chemistry was mostly confined to the textbook,
supplemented once a year by a course of lectures from an
itinerant expert, who with his tanks of various gases pro-
duced highly spectacular effects. "

When one recollects that the first institution in America
— Vassar — for the higher education of women was not
opened until 1865, one will understand that there were
previously to this date few opportunities for women to
study either chemistry or any of the other sciences.

The first scientific institution to open its doors to women

WOMEN IN CHEMISTRY

was the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This was
on May 11, 1876, when the governing board of the institute
decided that * ' hereafter special students in chemistry shall
he admitted without regard to sex." In less than a year
after this event every department of this institution was
open to women, and any one who could pass the requisite
examination was admitted as a student.

Five years, however, before women were formally ad-
mitted to the courses of chemistry an energetic young grad-
uate from Vassar, eager to devote her life to the pursuit of
science, had, as an exceptional favor, been allowed to enter
the Institute as a special student in chemistry. As she
was the first woman in the United States to enter a strictly
professional scientific school, her entrance marks the begin-
ning of a new epoch in the history of female education.
The name of this ardent votary of science was Miss Ellen
Swallow, better known to the world as Mrs. Ellen H.
Richards.

Mrs. Richards had not devoted herself long to the study
of her favorite science before she resolved to apply the
knowledge thus gained to the problems of daily life. She
saw, among other things, the necessity of a complete re-
form in domestic economy, and resolutely set to work to
have her views adopted and put in practice. She was, in
consequence, one of the first leaders of the crusade in
behalf of pure food, and her lectures and books on this
all-important subject contributed greatly toward the dif-
fusion of exact knowledge respecting the dangers lurking
in unwholesome food.

She was likewise one of the first to apply the science of
chemistry to an exhaustive study of the science of nutri-
tion— to the study of food and the proper preparation of
food materials. In this she was eminently successful, and
was able to achieve for home economics what the illustrious
Liebig had many years before accomplished for agricul-
tural chemistry — put it on a firm and lasting basis. To

218 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

her the kitchen was the center and source of political
economy.

The facts of science, indeed, were to Mrs. Richards more
than mere uncorrelated facts. They are potential agencies
of service, and their chief value consists in their enabling
us to control our environment in such wise as to secure the
maximum of physical well being. Hence her constant in-
sistence on personal cleanliness, on the cleanliness of food,
of the house we live in, and, above all, of the kitchen.
Hence, also, her preaching, in season and out of season, on
the necessity of pure air, pure water and abundance of
vitalizing sunshine.

"We cannot, then, wonder that sanitary chemistry eventu-
ally became the life work of Mrs. Richards, and that, when
the course of sanitary engineering was inaugurated in the
Institute of Technology — the first course of its kind in the
world — she became an important agent in its development
and contributed immensely to its popularity and prestige.

She held the position of instructor of sanitary chemistry
in the institute for twenty-seven years. During this time
she trained a large number of young men in her chosen
specialty, and these, after graduating, engaged in similar
work in various parts of the New and the Old "World.

The branch of sanitary chemistry to which Mrs. Richards
devoted most attention was air, water and sewage analysis.
In this she was a recognized expert, and her advice and
services were sought in all parts of the country. During
the last three years of her life she acted, according to her
own testimony, as general sanitary adviser to no fewer
than two score corporations and schools. In addition to
this she was also during this brief period consulted on the
subject of foods by nearly two hundred educational and
other institutions.

What, however, constituted the greatest contribution of
Mrs. Richards to the public health was the part she took
in the great sanitary survey of the waters of the State of

WOMEN IN CHEMISTRY 219

Massachusetts. During this long and laborious investiga-
tion she analyzed more than forty thousand samples of
water. These analyses exhibited the condition of the water
from all parts of the state during all seasons of the year
and were of the greatest value in solving a number of
important problems in state sanitation.

But notwithstanding the drafts made on her time and
energy by her classwork in the laboratory and her occupa-
tion as sanitary engineer for scores of public and private
institutions, she still found leisure to engage in many im-
portant movements which had in view the public health
and the betterment of sanitary conditions in city and coun-
try. It is safe to say that no one ever put her knowledge
of chemical science to more practical use or made it more
perfectly subserve the public weal than did Mrs. Richards.
To spread among the masses a knowledge of the principles
of sanitation, to make them realize how indispensable to
health are pure food, pure water, pure air and life-giving
sunshine was her great mission in life, and in this she dis-
played an energy and a tireless zeal which were an inspira-
tion to all with whom she came into contact.

This indefatigable woman, it is proper to record here,
might have distinguished herself as a discoverer in chemi-
cal science had she elected to devote her life to original
research rather than to utilizing the knowledge already
available for the welfare of her fellows. Thus, after a
careful analysis of the rare mineral samarskite, she found
an insoluble residue which led her to believe might contain
unknown elements. This view she repeatedly expressed to
her co-workers in the laboratory. But she was unwilling
to take from what she regarded more important work the
time necessary for making investigations which might have
given her undying fame as a discoverer. For not long
afterward this insoluble residue, in the hands of two
French chemists, yielded the exceedingly rare elements,
samarium and gadolinium.

220 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

Another chemist of a less altruistic nature than Mrs.
Richards would not have resisted the temptation to achieve
distinction in the domain of original research. But where
there was so much suffering to be relieved and so much
ignorance to be removed regarding the most fundamental
principles of sanitation, this philanthropic woman pre-
ferred to put to practical use what she called ''the con-
siderable body of useful knowledge now lying on our
shelves. ' '

Her duty, as she conceived it, is well indicated in the
following paragraph, taken from a thoughtful discussion
by her of the subject of home economics a short time before
her death in 1911. "The sanitary research worker in
laboratory and field, ' ' she declares, ' ' has gone nearly to the
limit of his value. He will soon be smothered in his own
work, if no one takes it. Meanwhile children die by the
thousands; contagious diseases take toll of hundreds; back
alleys remain foul and the streets are unswept; school-
houses are unwashed and danger lurks in the drinking
cups and about the towels. Dust is stirred up each morn-
ing with the feather duster to greet the warm, moist noses
and throats of the children. To the watchful expert it
seems like the old cities dancing and making merry on the
eve of a volcanic outbreak. ' n

From the day in 1873 when Mrs. Richards received from
the Institute of Technology the degree of Bachelor of Sci-
ence— a degree which made her not only the first woman
graduate of this institution, but also the first graduate in
the United States of a strictly scientific seat of learning—
the number of women who have devoted themselves to
chemical pursuits is legion. They are now found in every
civilized country in both hemispheres and their number is
daily increasing. They are everywhere doing excellent
work as teachers in classrooms and laboratories and hold-

i The Life of Ellen H. Bichards, p. 273 et seq., by Caroline L.
Hunt, Boston, 1912.

WOMEN IN CHEMISTRY

ing their own with men as chemical experts in manufac-
turing establishments and government institutions. Many
of them have done original work of a high order, and dis-
tinguished themselves by their valuable contributions to
contemporary chemical literature. Space, however, pre-
cludes more than a general reference to their achievements,
for the names only of those who have done meritorious
work in chemistry would make a very long list.

Passing over, then, all the lesser feminine lights in chem-
istry who, in various fields of activity, have rendered such
distinct service during the past generation, we come to
one who for nearly two decades has stood in the forefront
of the great chemists of the world. This is that renowned
daughter of Poland, Mme. Marie Klodowska Curie, whose
name will always be identified with some of the most re-
markable discoveries which have ever been made in the
long-continued study of the material universe.

Marie Klodowska was born in Warsaw, in 1868. Her
father was a professor of chemistry in the university of the
former Polish capital ; and it is undoubtedly from him that
his brilliantly dowered daughter has inherited her love of
chemistry and her extraordinary genius for scientific re-
search. Owing to the paltry salary he received, Professor
Klodowska was obliged to make little Marie his laboratory
assistant while she was quite a young girl. Instead, then,
of playing with tops and dolls, her time was occupied in
cleaning evaporating dishes and test tubes and in assisting
her father to prepare for his lectures and experiments.
And it was thus that, at an early age, she acquired a taste
for that science in which she was subsequently to achieve
such world-wide fame.

While still a young woman, her love of science drew
her to Paris, where she arrived with only fifty francs in
her purse. But, possessed of dauntless courage and unfal-
tering perseverance, she was prepared to make any sacri-
fice in the pursuit of knowledge.

222 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

Her first home in the gay French metropolis was a
poorly furnished garret in an obscure part of the city, and
her diet was for so long a time restricted to black bread
and skimmed milk that she afterward avowed that she had
to cultivate a taste for wine and meat. And so intensely
cold was her cheerless room in winter that the little bottle
of milk which was daily left at her door was speedily
congealed. At this time the poor girl was living on less
than ten cents a day, but still cherishing all the while the
fond hope that she might eventually secure a position as a
student assistant in some good chemical laboratory.

After a long struggle with poverty and after countless
disappointments in quest of a position where she could
gratify her ambition as a student of chemistry, she finally
found occupation as a poorly paid assistant in the labora-
tory conducted by Professor Lipmann. She was not, how-
ever, at work a week before this distinguished investigator
recognized in the young woman one whose knowledge of
chemistry and faculty for original research were far above
the average. She was accordingly transferred without de-
lay from the menial employment in which she had been en-
gaged and given every possible facility for prosecuting
work as an original investigator.

It was shortly after this event that Marie Klodowska met
the noted savant, Pierre Curie. He was not long in dis-
covering in her a kindred spirit — one who, besides having
exceptional talent in experimental chemistry, was actuated
by an ardent love of science. It was then that he deter-
mined to make her his wife. A single sentence in a letter
he wrote at this time to the object of his admiration and
affection reveals, better than anything else, the devotion
of this matchless pair in the cause of science. "What a
great thing it would be/' he exclaims, "to unite our lives
and work together for the sake of science and humanity. ' '
These simple words were the keynote to the ideal life led
by this incomparable couple during the eleven years they

WOMEN IN CHEMISTRY

worked together in perfect unity of thought and aspira-
tion before the sudden and premature extinction of the
husband's life gave such a shock to the entire scientific
world.

After her marriage the gifted young Polish woman had
reached the goal of her ambition. She was able to devote
herself exclusively to what was henceforth to constitute her
life work in one of the best laboratories of Paris, that of
the Ecole de Physique et de Chimie, and that, too, in col-
laboration with her husband, from whom she was never
separated during the entire period of their married life
for even a single day.

It was about this time that Mme. Curie had her interest
aroused by the brilliant discoveries of Rb'ntgen and Bec-
querel regarding radiant matter. After a long series of
carefully conducted experiments on the compounds of
uranium and thorium, she, with the intuition of genius,
opened up to the world of science an entirely new field of
research. But she soon realized that the labor involved in
the investigations which she had planned was entirely be-
yond the capacity of any one person. It was then that she
succeeded in enlisting her husband 's interest in the under-
taking which was to lead to such marvelous results.

Confining their work to a careful analytical study of the
residue of the famous Bohemian pitchblend — an extremely
complex mineral, largely composed of oxide of uranium —
they soon found themselves confronted by most extraordi-
nary radioactive phenomena. Continuing their researches,
their labor was rewarded by the discovery of a new element
which Mme. Curie, in her enthusiasm, named in honor of
the land of her birth, polonium.

As their investigations progressed, they became corre-
spondingly difficult. They were dealing with substances
which exist in pitchblend residue only in infinitesimal quan-
tities— not more than three troy grams to the ton. The
difficulties they had to contend with were enough to dis-

WOMAN IN SCIENCE

courage the stoutest heart. Few believed in their theories,
while the majority of those who had some intimation of
the character of their work were persuaded that they were
pursuing a phantom. But the indefatigable pair toiled on
day and night and continued their experiments through
long years of poverty and deferred hopes.

Considering the herculean task in which they were en-
gaged for so many years, we scarcely know which to ad-
mire most, their clearness of vision, which made them di-
vine success ; their profound knowledge, which guided them
in the choice of reagents; or the indomitable perseverance
which characterized them in their laborious task and in
the countless sacrifices which they were obliged to make
before their efforts were crowned with success.

During this long search into the inner heart of nature,
Pierre Curie was often so discouraged and depressed that,
had he not been sustained by his more sanguine wife, he
would time and again have given up his investigations in
despair. But Marie Curie never faltered. She never lost
faith in their theories or confidence in the outcome of their
great undertaking. Before her deft hands and fertile brain
difficulties vanished as if under the magic wand of Pros-
pero.

At length, after countless experiments of the most deli-
cate character, after bringing to bear on the solution of the
problem before them the most refined methods of chemical
analysis, they were rewarded by one of the most extraordi-
nary discoveries recorded in the annals of science. With
the announcement of the discovery of radium, the Curies
sprang into world-wide fame, and the name of the wonder-
ful woman who had been the prime mover in the supreme
achievement was on every lip. Pierre Curie himself de-
clared that more than half of the epochal discovery be-
longed to his wife. It was she who began the work. It was
she who, after her marriage, enlisted in it the cooperation
of her husband. It was she whose invincible patience and

WOMEN IN CHEMISTRY 225

persistence — typical of the noblest representatives of her
race — supported him during periods of doubt and despon-
dency and fanned his flagging spirits to new endeavor. It
can indeed be truthfully asserted that had it not been for
her penetrating intelligence, her tenacity of purpose and
her keenness of vision, which were never at fault, the great
victory which crowned their efforts would never have been
achieved.1

Compare their work with that which was accomplished
by their illustrious predecessors, Antoine Laurent Lavoi-
sier, and his wife, a century earlier. The latter, by their
discovery of and experiments with oxygen, were able to
explain the until then mysterious phenomena of combus-
tion and respiration and to coordinate numberless facts
which had before stood isolated and enigmatic. But the
reverse was the case in the discovery of that extraordinary
and uncanny element, radium. It completely subverted
many long-established theories and necessitated an entirely
new view of the nature of energy and of the constitution of
matter. A substance that seemed capable of emitting light
and heat indefinitely, with little or no appreciable change
or transformation, appeared to sap the very foundations of
the fundamental principle of the conservation of energy.

iMme. Curie, in an article which she wrote shortly after her
discovery of radium, shows that she possesses a genius for inductive
science of the highest type. "It was at the close of the year 1897,"
she writes, "that I began to study the compounds of uranium, the
properties of which had greatly attracted my interest. Here was a
substance emitting spontaneously and continually radiations similar
to Eontgen rays, whereas ordinarily, Eontgen rays can be produced
only in a vacuum tube with the expenditure of electrical energy.
By what process can uranium furnish the same rays without ex-
penditure of energy and without undergoing apparent modification?
Is uranium the only body whose compounds emit similar rays? Such
were the questions I asked myself; and it was while seeking to
answer them that I entered into the researches which have led to
the discovery of radium." Eadium and Radio-Activity in The Cen-
tury Magazine, for January*, 1904.

WOMAN IN SCIENCE

Subsequent investigations seemed only to render "con-
fusion worse confounded." They appeared to justify the
dreams of the alchemists of old, not only regarding the
transmutation of metals but also respecting the elixir of
life. For was not this apparently absurd idea vindicated
by the observed curative properties — bordering almost on
the miraculous — this marvelous element was reputed to
possess ! Its virtues, it was averred, transcended the fabled
properties of the famous red tincture and the philosopher 's
stone combined, and many were prepared to find in it a
panacea for the most distressing of human ailments, from
lupus and rodent ulcer to cancer and other frightful forms
of morbid degeneration.1

And the end is not yet. Continued investigations, made
in all parts of the world since the discovery of radium by
the Curies, have but emphasized its mysterious properties,
and compelled a revision of many of our most cherished
theories in chemistry, physics and astronomy. No one
single discovery, not even Pasteur's far-reaching discovery
of microbic life, it may safely be asserted, has ever been
more subversive of long-accepted views in certain domains
of science, or given rise to more perplexing problems re-
garding matters which were previously thought to be thor-
oughly understood.

Never in the entire history of science have the results of
a woman's scientific researches been so stupendous or so
revolutionary. And never has any one achievement in
science reflected more glory on womankind than that which
is so largely due to the genius and the perseverance of
Mme. Curie.

After their startling discovery, honors and tributes to
their genius came in rapid succession to the gifted couple.
On the recommendation of the venerable British savant,

i Notice sur Pierre Curie, p. 20 et seq., by M. D. Gernez, Paris,
1907, £nd Le Radium, Son Origine et ses Transformations, by M. L.
Houllerigue, in La Bevue de Paris > May 1, 1911.

WOMEN IN CHEMISTRY 227

Lord Kelvin, they were awarded the Davy gold medal by
the Koyal Society. Shortly after this they shared with
M. H. Beequerel in the Nobel prize for physics bestowed
on them by Sweden. Then came laggard France with its
decoration of the Legion of Honor. But it was offered
only to the man. There was nothing for the woman. Pierre
Curie showed his spirit and chivalry by declining to accept
the proffered honor unless his wife could share it with him.
His answer was simple, but its meaning could not be mis-
taken. ' ' This decoration, ' ' he said, "has no bearing on my
work."1

Shortly after her husband's death Mme. Curie was ap-
pointed as his successor as special lecturer in the Sorbonne.
This was the first time that this conservative old univer-
sity ever invited a woman to a full professorship. But she
soon showed that she was thoroughly competent to fill the
position with honor and eclat. She has the elite of society
and the world's most noted men of science among her au-
ditors. The crowned heads of the Old World eagerly seek
an opportunity to witness her experiments and hear her
discourse on what is by all odds the most marvelous ele-
ment in nature.

Mme. Curie has not allowed her lectures in the Sorbonne
to interfere with the continuation of the researches which
have won for her such world-wide renown. Since the sud-
den taking off of her husband by a passing truck on a
Paris bridge, she has succeeded in isolating both radium
and polonium — only the chlorides and bromides of these
elements were previously known — besides doing other work
scarcely less remarkable. And besides all this, she has also

iThe day following Pierre Curie's refusal of the decoration
offered by the Government, the elder of his two daughters, little
Irene, climbed upon her father's knee and put a red geranium in
the lapel of his coat. "Now, papa, " she gravely remarked, "you
are decorated with the Legion of Honor. " "In this case," the
fond father replied, "I make no objection."

228 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

found time to write a connected account of her investiga-
tions under the title of Traite de Radio- Activite — a work
that reflects as much honor on her sex as did Le Institu-
zioni Analitiche of Maria Gaetana Agnesi, which won for
her, through that celebrated patron of learning, Benedict
XIV, the chair of higher mathematics in the University of
Bologna.

The list of learned societies to which Mme. Curie be-
longs is an extended one. To mention only a few, she is an
honorary or foreign member of the London Chemical So-
ciety, the Koyal Institution of Great Britain, the Royal
Swedish Academy, the American Chemical Society, the
American Philosophical Society, and the Imperial Academy
of Sciences of St. Petersburg. From the universities of
Geneva and Edinburgh she has received the honorary de-
gree of doctor.

In 1898 she received the Gegner prize from the French
Academy of Sciences for her elaborate researches on the
magnetic properties of iron and steel, as also for her inves-
tigations relating to radio-activity. The same prize was
again awarded to her in 1900, and still again in 1903. With
her husband she received in 1901 the La Caze prize of ten
thousand francs; and in 1903 she received a part of the
Osiris prize of sixty thousand francs. Since her husband 's
death in 1906 Mme. Curie has been awarded the coveted
Nobel prize in chemistry, which was placed in her hand by
the King of Sweden on December 11, 1911 — a prize which
increased the exchequer of the fair recipient by nearly
two hundred thousand francs. Having before been the
beneficiary of the Nobel prize for physics, in conjunction
with her husband and M. H. Becquerel, Mme. Curie is thus
the first person to be twice singled out for the world's
highest financial recognition of scientific research.

It would take too long to enumerate all the medals and
prizes and honors which have come to this remarkable
woman from foreign countries. But she has doubtless been

WOMEN IN CHEMISTRY 229

the recipient of more trophies of undying fame during the
last decade and a half than any other one person during
the same brief period of intellectual activity. And all these
tokens of recognition of genius were showered upon her not
because she was a woman, but in spite of this fact. Had
she been a man, she would have been honored with the
other distinctions which tradition and prejudice still per-
sist in denying to one of the proscribed sex, no matter how
great her merit or how signal her achievements.

At a recent scientific congress, held in Brussels, it was
decided to prepare a standard of measurement of radium
emanations. It was the unanimous opinion of the congress
that Mme. Curie was better equipped than any other person
for establishing such a standard ; and she was accordingly
requested to undertake the delicate and difficult task — a
commission which she executed to the satisfaction of all
concerned.

This unit of measurement, it is gratifying to learn, will
be known as the curie — a word which will enter the same
category as the volt, the ohm, the ampere, the farad, and a
few others which will perpetuate the names of the world's
greatest geniuses in the domain of experimental science.

When, not long since, there was a vacancy among the im-
mortals of the French Academy, there was a generally ex-
pressed desire that it should be filled by one who was uni-
versally recognized as among the foremost of living scien-
tists. The name of Mme. Curie trembled on every lip ; and
the hope was entertained that the Academy would honor
itself by admitting the world-famed savante among its
members. Considering her achievements, she had no com-
petitor, and was, in the estimation of all outside of the
Academy, the one person in France who was most deserv-
ing of the coveted honor.

But no. She was a woman ; and for that reason alone she
was excluded from an institution the sole object of whose
establishment was the reward of merit and the advance-

280 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

ment of learning. The age-old prejudice against women
who devote themselves to the study of science, or who con-
tribute to the progress of knowledge, was still as dominant
as it was in the days of Maria Gaetana Agnesi, a century
and a half before. Mme. Curie, like her famous sister in
Italy, might win the plaudits of the world for her achieve-
ments ; but she could have no recognition from the one in-
stitution, above all others, that was specially founded to
foster the development of science and literature, and to
crown the efforts of those who had proven themselves
worthy of the Academy's highest honor. The attitude of
the French institution toward Mme. Curie was exactly like
that of the Royal Society of Great Britain when Mrs. Ayr-
ton 's name was up for membership. The answer to both
applicants was in effect, if not in words, "No woman need

apply."

When one reads of the sad experiences of Mme. Curie
and Mrs. Ayrton with the learned societies of Paris and
London, one instinctively asks, "When will the day come
when women, in every part of the civilized world, shall
enjoy all the rights and privileges in every field of intel-
lectual effort which have so long been theirs in the favored
land of Dante and Beatrice — the motherland of learned
societies and universities ? " For not until the advent of
the day when such exclusive organizations as the Royal So-
ciety and the French Academy of Sciences, such ultra-con-
servative universities as Oxford and Cambridge shall admit
women on the same footing as men, will these institutions
be more than half serving the best interests of humanity.1

Women, it is true, are now eligible to many literary and
scientific associations from which they were formerly de-

iA few days before Mme. Curie's name was to come before the
Academy of Sciences as a candidate for membership, the French
Institute in its quarterly plenary meeting of the five academies, of
which the Institute is composed, decided by a vote of ninety to
fifty-two against the eligibility of women to membership, and put

WOMEN IN CHEMISTRY

barred, and are, in most countries, admitted to colleges
and universities whose portals were closed to them until
only a few years ago ; but until they shall be welcomed to
all universities and all societies whose objects are the ad-

itself on record in favor of the "immutable tradition against the
election of women, which it seemed eminently wise to respect. "

Commenting on this decision of The Immortals, a writer in the
well-known English magazine, Nature, under date of January 12,
1911, penned the following pertinent paragraph:

"It remains to be seen what the Academy of Sciences will do
in the face of such an expression of opinion. Mme. Curie is de-
servedly popular in French scientific circles. It is everywhere rec-
ognized that her work is of transcendent merit, and that it has
contributed enormously to the prestige of France as a home of ex-
perimental inquiry. Indeed, it is not too much to say that the dis-
covery and isolation of the radio-active elements are among the
most striking and fruitful results of a field of investigation pre-
eminently French. If any prophet is to have honour in his own
country — even if the country be only the land of his adoption —
surely, that honour ought to belong to Mme. Curie. At this moment,
Mme. Curie is without doubt, in the eyes of the world, the dominant
figure in French chemistry. There is no question that any man
who had contributed to the sum of human knowledge what she has
made known, would years ago have gained that recognition at the
hands of his colleagues, which Mme. Curie's friends are now de-
sirous of securing for her. It is incomprehensible, therefore, on any
ethical principles of right and justice that, because she happens to be
a woman, she should be denied the laurels which her pre-eminent
scientific achievement has earned for her."

Compare this frank and honest statement with that of a con-
tributor, about the same date, to La Eevue du Monde, of Paris.
Guided by his myopic vision and diseased imagination, this writer
discerns in the admittance of women into the grand old institution
of Eichelieu and Napoleon the imminent triumph of what Prudhon
called pornocracy and the eventual opening of the portals of the
Palais Mazarin to representatives of the type of Lais and Phryne,
on the Hellenic pretext that "Beauty is the supreme merit."

It is gratifying, however, to the friends of woman's cause to
learn that Mme. Curie's candidacy was defeated by only two votes.
Her competitor, M. Branly, received thirty votes against the Polish
woman's twenty-eight. She thus fared far better than did Mme.
Pauline Savari, who aspired to the fauteuil made vacant by the

WOMAN IN SCIENCE

vancement of knowledge, until they shall participate in the
advantages and prestige accruing from connection with
these organizations, they will have reason to feel that they
are not yet in the full possession of the intellectual advan-
tages for which they have so long yearned — that they have
been but partially liberated from that educational disquali-
fication in which they have been held during so many long
centuries of deferred hopes and fruitless struggles.

death of Kenan, regarding whose candidature the Academy curtly
declared, ' ' Considering that its traditions do not permit it to examine
this question, the Academy passes to the order of the day." Thus,
it will be seen that, in spite of the long-continued opposition to
women members, the French Academy is more than likely to offer
its next vacant chair to the pride and glory of Poland, — the im-
mortal discoverer of radium and polonium.

CHAPTER VII

WOMEN IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES

It is reasonable to suppose that women, who are such
lovers of nature, have always had a greater or less interest
in the natural sciences, especially in botany and zoology;
but the fact remains that the first one of their sex to write
at any length on the various kingdoms of nature was that
extraordinary nun of the Middle Ages, St. Hildegard, the
learned abbess of the Benedictine convent of St. Rupert, at
Bingen on the Rhine. Of an exceptionally versatile and
inquiring mind, her range of study and acquirement was
truly encyclopaedic. In this respect she was the worthy
forerunner of Albert the Great, the famous Doctor Univer-
salis of Scholasticism.

Although St. Hildegard has much to say about nature in
several of her works, the one of chiefest interest to us as
an exposition of the natural history of her time is her
treatise entitled Liber Subtilitatum Diver sarum Naturarum
Creaturarum. It is usually known by its more abbreviated
name, Physica, and, considering the circumstances under
which it was written, is, in many ways, a most remarkable
production. It consists of nine books treating of minerals,
plants, fishes, birds, insects and quadrupeds. The book on
plants is composed of no fewer than two hundred and
thirty chapters, while that on birds contains seventy-two
chapters.

In reading Hildegard 's descriptions of animated nature
we are often reminded of Pliny's great work on natural
history j but, so far as known, there is no positive evidence

233

WOMAN IN SCIENCE

that the learned religieuse had any acquaintance whatever
with the writings of the old Roman naturalist. Had she
had, the general tenor of her work would have been quite
different from what it actually is.

The mystery, then, is, what were the sources of Physica f
Some have fancied that Hildegard in preparing this made
use of the writings not only of Pliny and Virgil, but also
of those of Macer, Constantinus Africanus, Walafrid
Strabo, Isodore of Seville, and other writers who were in
great vogue during the Middle Ages. The general con-
sensus of opinion, however, of those who have carefully
studied this interesting problem is that the gentle nun was
not acquainted with any of the authors named, except,
possibly, Isodore of Seville, whose works were all held in
high esteem, especially during the period of Hildegard 's
greatest literary activity.

Hildegard 's Physica has a special value for philologists,
as well as for students of natural history, for it contains
the German names of plants still used by the people of the
Fatherland seven hundred years after they were penned by
the painstaking abbess of St. Rupert's.1

Referring to the Saint's work entitled De Natura Ho-
minis, Elementorum, Diversarumque Creaturarum — a trea-
tise on the nature of man, the elements and divers created
things — no less an authority than Dr. Charles Daremberg
iln his erudite work, Geschichte der Botanik, Vol. Ill, p. 517,
Koenigsberg, 1856, Ernest H. F. Meyer gives in a few words his
estimate of the excellence of Hildegard 'a Physica: "Aber als ehr-
wiirdiges Denkmal des Alterthums und einer zu jener Zeit nicht
gemeinen Naturkentniss empfehlen sich zumal deutschen Natur-
f orschern ihre vier Biicher der Physica . . . Denn nicht nur der
deutsche Botaniker und Zoologe finden in ihrer Physik fast die
ersten rohen Anfange vaterlandische Naturforshung, auch dem Artzt
bietet sie fiir jene Zeit iiberraschende Erscheinung dar, eine nicht
von Dioskorides abgeleitete, sondern unverkennbar aus der Volksiiber-
lieferung geschb'pfte Heilmittellehre ; und der Sprachforscher stosst
im lateinischen Text beinahe Zeile um Zeile auf deutsche Ausdriicke
seltener Sprachf ormen, ' 7

WOMEN IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES' 235

declares that It will always hold an important place in the
history of medical art and of inanimate and animate nature
— insignis semper locus debetitur in artis medicce rerumque
naturalium historia.1

He even goes further and affirms that Hildegard was
familiar with numerous facts of science regarding which
other mediaeval writers were entirely ignorant. More than
this. She was acquainted with many of nature's secrets
which were unknown to men of science until recent times,
and which, on being disclosed by modern researches, have
been proclaimed to the world as new discoveries.2

One reason why St. Hildegard's writings on botany, zo-
ology and mineralogy are not better known is that few stu-
dents care to make the effort to master her voluminous
works. They require long and assiduous study and a
knowledge of her peculiarities of style and expression
which is acquired only after patient and persistent labor.
But the labor is not in vain, as is evidenced by the numer-
ous monographs which have appeared in recent years, es-
pecially in Germany, on the scientific works of this mar-
velous nun of the twelfth century. All things considered,
the Abbess of Bingen may be said to hold the same posi-
tion in the natural sciences of her time as was held in the
physical and mathematical sciences seven hundred years
earlier by the illustrious Hypatia of Alexandria.

After the death of St. Hildegard, full six centuries
elapsed before any one of her sex again achieved distinc-
tion in the domain of natural science. And then, strange

i Hildegardis Opera Omnia, p. 1122, Migne's Edition, Paris, 1882.

2"Constat permulta S. Hildegardi nota jam fuisse, quse caeteri
medii aevi seriptores nescierunt, quaeque sagaces demum recentiorum
temporum indagatores reperierunt ac tamquam nova ventitarunt. ' '
Ibid. Dr. Karl Jessen, in his thoughtful Botanik der Gegenwart und
Vorzeit in Culturliistorischer EntwicJcelung, p. 123, Leipzig, 1864,
expresses himself on the extraordinary medical knowledge of the
abbess of Bingen as follows: "Wer deutsche Volkarznei studieren
will, der studiere Hildegard und er wird Kespect davor bekommen,"

236 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

to relate, the first woman who won fame by her knowledge
of science and by her contributions to it, did so in the field
where a woman would, one would think, be least disposed
to exercise her talent and least likely to find congenial
work. It was in the then comparatively new science of
human anatomy — a science which had been inaugurated in
the famous medical schools of Salerno and which was sub-
sequently so highly developed in the great University of
Bologna.

The name of this remarkable woman was Anna Morandi
Manzolini. She was born in 1716 in Bologna, where, after
a brilliant career in her favorite branch of science, she died
at the age of fifty-eight. She held the chair of anatomy in
the University of Bologna for many years, and is noted for
a number of important discoveries made as the result of
her dissections of cadavers.

But she won a still greater title to fame by the marvelous
skill which she exhibited in making anatomical models out
of indurated wax. They were so carefully fashioned that
some of them could scarcely be distinguished from the parts
of the body from which they were modeled. As aids in the
study of anatomy they were most highly valued and eagerly
sought for on all sides. The collection which she made for
her own use was, after her death, acquired by the Medical
Institute of Bologna and prized as one of its most precious
possessions.

Three years after her demise, Luigi Galvani, professor
of anatomy in the same university in which Anna had
achieved such fame, made use of these wax models for a
course of lectures on the organs and structure of the hu-
man body.

These famous models, first perfected by Anna Manzolini,
were the archetypes of the exquisite wax models of Vas-
sourie as well as of the unrivaled papier-mache creations
of Dr. Auzoux and of all similar productions now so ex-
tensively used in our schools and colleges.

i

WOMEN IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 237

Even during the lifetime of the gifted modeler there
were demands for specimens of her work from all parts of
Italy. From many cities in Europe, even from London and
St. Petersburg, she received the most nattering offers for
her services. So eager was Milan to have her accept a
position which had been offered her that the city authori-
ties sent her a blank contract and begged her to name her
own conditions. But she could never be induced to leave
the home of her childhood and the city which had witnessed
and applauded her triumphs of maturer years.

Men of learning and eminence, on passing through Bo-
logna, invariably made it a point to call on the learned
professora in order to make her acquaintance and to see
her wonderful anatomical collection, which was celebrated
throughout Europe as Supellex Manzoliniana. Among these
visitors was Joseph II of Austria. So greatly was His
Majesty impressed by Anna's rare intellectual attainments
and by her marvelous skill in reproducing the various parts
of the "human form divine " that he could not take leave
of her without showing his appreciation of them by loading
her with gifts worthy of a sovereign.1

i Compendia Storico delta Scuola Anatomica di Bologna, p. 358,
by Michele Medici, Bologna, 1857, and Notizie degli Scrittori Bo-
lognesi, Tom. VI, p. 113, by Giovanni Fantuzzi, Bologna, 1788.

Certain writers tell us of another woman who distinguished her-
self in anatomy in the early part of the fourteenth century. Her
name was Alessandra Giliani, who is said to have been a pupil and
an assistant of the celebrated Mondino, father of modern anatomy.
In addition to possessing great skill in dissection, she is reputed to
have devised a means of drawing the blood from the veins and ar-
teries— even the most minute — and then filling them with variously
colored liquids which quickly solidified. By this means, we are told,
she was able to exhibit the circulatory system in all its details and
complexity, and to have always on hand, for purposes of instruction,
a model that was absolutely true to nature.

How much truth there may be in these statements regarding a
young girl, who was only nineteen when she died, is difficult to de-
termine. Medici, in concluding his account of her and referring

238 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

A contemporary of Anna Manzolini, who also distin-
guished herself in the preparation of anatomical models,
was the French woman, Mile. Biheron. Her facsimiles of
parts of the human body were^ according to Mme. de Gen-
lis, so true to nature that they could not be distinguished
from the originals. This led the facetious Chevalier Ringle,
after examining a specimen of her handiwork, to declare,
"Verily, it is so perfect that it lacks only the odor of the
natural object.'7

While yet prince royal, Gustavus of Sweden visited the
French Academy of Sciences in Paris. Here he was enter-
tained by a number of experiments in anatomy. The dem-
onstrator was Mile. Biheron, who is said to have had a
veritable passion for both anatomy and surgery. So im-
pressed was Gustavus with the extraordinary skill and
knowledge of this gifted daughter of France that he of-
fered her the position of demonstrator of anatomy in the
royal University of Sweden.

Other branches of science, apparently quite as alien as
anatomy to women's taste and talent, are mineralogy and
metallurgy. Yet as early as the first half of the seven-
teenth century, the Baroness de Beausoleil had achieved a
great reputation by her investigations into the mineral
treasures of France. Indeed, she may, strange as it may
appear, be regarded as the first mining engineer of her
native land. She details the qualifications of a mining en-
gineer and tells us he must, among other things, be well
versed in chemistry, mineralogy, geometry, mechanics and

to the inscription on her tomb, which seems to authenticate all the
claims made for her, expresses himself as follows: "In quoting this
document, I do not intend that my readers shall accord to it a
credence that I myself abstain from giving it, but only that they
may know of it, if for no other reason than to satisfy their curi-
osity. " Op. cit., pp. 30 and 362, note I. Should the traditions re-
garding this precocious girl be verified, it would be most gratifying to
the people of Bologna, for it would add one more to the long list
of her illustrious women.

!

WOMEN IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES

hydraulics. As for herself, she assures us that she de-
voted thirty years of unremitting study to these divers
branches.

To Mme. de Beausoleil is also attributed the glory of
awakening her countrymen's interest in the mineral re-
sources of France, and of showing them how their proper
exploitation would inure not only to the credit of the
nation abroad but also to its prosperity at home.

She was the author of two works which prove that she
was a woman of rare attainments combined with excep-
tional breadth of view and political acumen. She was
deeply concerned in the development of the mineral re-
sources of her country and foresaw how greatly they could
be made to contribute to the augmentation of the nation's
finances.

Her work entitled La Restitution de Pluton is a report
on the mines and ore deposits of France, and is a docu-
ment as precious as it is curious. It was addressed to Car-
dinal Richelieu, and shows how the French monarch could,
if the subterranean treasures of the country were properly
developed, become the greatest ruler in Christendom and
his subjects the happiest of all peoples.

Another report by this energetic and enthusiastic woman
is in the same strain. In it she proves how the King of
France, by utilizing the underground riches of his country,
could make himself and his people independent of all other
nations.1

i The titles of the two works of this remarkable woman are of
sufficient interest to be given in full. They are as follows: /

1. Veritable Declaration de la Decouverte des Mines et Minieresl
par le Moyen desquelles Sa Majeste et Sujets se peuvent passer des *
Pays Strangers, Paris, 1632.

2. La Restitution de Pluton a Mgr. V Eminent Card, de Eichelieu,
des Mines et Minieres de France, cachees jusqu'd present au Venire,
de la Terre, par la Moyen desquelles les Finances de sa Majeste
seront beaucoup plus Grandes que celles de tons les Princes Chrestiens
et ses Sujets plus Heureux de tous les Peuples. Paris, 1640.

240 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

In these two productions Mme. de Beausoleil treats of the
science of mining, the different kinds of mines, the assaying
of ores and the divers methods of smelting them, as well as
of the general principles of metallurgy, as then understood.
But, unlike the majority of her contemporaries, this en-
lightened woman had no patience with those who believed
that the earth's hidden treasures could not be discovered
without recourse to magic or to the aid of demons. She
was unsparing in her ridicule of those who had faith in
the existence of gnomes and kobolds, or thought that ore
deposits could be located only by divining-rods or similar
foolish contrivances which were relics of an ignorant and
superstitious age.

The same century that witnessed the exploring activity
of the Baroness de Beausoleil saw the beginnings of the
notable achievements of a daughter of Germany, well
known in the annals of science as Maria Sibylla Merian.
Born in Frankfort in 1647, she died in Amsterdam in 1717,
after a somewhat checkered career, most of which was de-
voted to the pursuit of natural history. So fond was she
of flowers and insects that it is said they told her all their
secrets.

After having familiarized herself with the fauna and
flora of her native land, she proceeded to investigate the
collections of the principal European cabinets of natural
history. This only fired her ambition to see more of the
world and study Nature where she is seen in her greatest
splendor and luxuriance.

She accordingly resolved to undertake a journey to the
equatorial regions of South America. Such a voyage can
now be made with comparative ease, but in her days it was
fraught with discomforts and dangers of all kinds, and
one that no woman thought to venture on unless obliged to
do so by stern necessity.

But she was set on investigating animals and plants in
their own habitats in the glorious and exuberant flora of

WOMEN IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES

the tropics and, accompanied by her two daughters, Helena
and Dorothea, she embarked for Surinam. Here, assisted
by her daughters, who, like their mother, were both skillful
artists, the intrepid naturalist spent two years in studying
the wonders of plant and animal life that everywhere
greeted her delighted vision. All the time not occupied in
research work was devoted to sketching and painting those
superb insects that are so abundant in tropical fields and
forests.1

Returning to Holland with her precious scientific treas-
ures, she began the preparation of a work that will long
endure as a monument to her knowledge and industry. It
was a magnificent volume in folio on the insects of Surinam.
It appeared simultaneously in Dutch and Latin, and was
subsequently translated into French.

In illustrating this sumptuous work, Prau Merian was
greatly assisted by her younger daughter, Dorothea. The
etchings and hand-colored reproductions of the gorgeous
butterflies and flowers of Surinam commanded universal
admiration, and marked a new epoch in book-making. Even
to-day this noble volume is eagerly sought by both book-
lovers and men of science, for it is not only a work of rare
conception and beauty but also one of exceptional accuracy
in illustration and statement of fact.2

Besides etchings of multiform insects, lizards and ba-
trachians indigenous to Dutch Guiana, there were in this
unique volume carefully executed illustrations of plants
and trees peculiar to tropical America, such as vanilla,
cacao, and the species of manihot which constitutes the
staff of life of so large a portion of the population in the
basins of the Amazon and the Orinoco.

A new and enlarged edition of this work was published

1 Die Verdienste der Frauen um Naturwissenschaft und HeilTcunde,
p. 169, von Dr. C. F. Harless, Gottingen, 1830.

2 The Latin title of this interesting work is De Generatione et
Metamorphose Insectorum Surinamensium, Amsterdam, 1705.

[WOMAN IN SCIENCE

after Fran Merian's death by her daughter Dorothea. The
same gifted daughter showed her interest in her parent's
work and her devotion to her memory by bringing out a
beautifully illustrated edition of her mother 's earliest work
which treated of the wonderful life-history of silk-worms.1

The century following that which had celebrated the
scientific triumphs of Maria Merian found in Josephine
Kablick, born in 1787 in Hohenelbe, Bohemia, a woman
who was destined to prove a worthy successor, as a nature-
student, of the noted daughter of Frankfort-on-the-Main.

From her tenderest years she exhibited a passionate love
for every form of plant life. In addition to this, she had,
while yet young, the good fortune of studying under the
best botanists of her time.

Soon she became an enthusiastic collector and was in a
short time the happy possessor of a herbarium which con-
tained many new species of plants which she had discov-
ered during her frequent botanical excursions. From
making collections for her private herbarium, she was
gradually led to make collections for the schools and col-
leges of her native country, as well as for the museums and
learned societies of various parts of Europe. Many public
institutions owed to her cordial cooperation some of the
choicest treasures in their herbaria, and not a few botanical
writers of her day found in her an intelligent and sympa-
thetic collaborator.

But Frau Kablick *s interest in nature was not confined
to plants. She was an assiduous student of paleontology
as well as of botany, and the many fossil animals and plants
named in her honor testify to her success in the pursuit of
her favorite branches of science.

There was nothing of the conventional blue-stocking

iThe Latin edition of this work is entitled Erucarum Ortus,
Alimenta et Paradoxa Metamorphosis, Amsterdam, 1718. It waa
afterwards translated into French and published under the title
Histoire des Insects de I'Europe.

WOMEN IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 243

about this ardent votary of nature. Strong and healthy,
neither wind nor rain interfered with her fieldwork in
botany or paleontology. It was her greatest pleasure to
roam through dark forests and scale high mountains in
search of new species of plants and fossils. And the suc-
cess which rewarded her efforts was such that the old and
trained naturalists among her male friends had reason to
envy her good fortune as an explorer.

But Frau Kablick never permitted her frequent excur-
sions, or her devotion to science, to cause her to neglect
the duties of her household. Fortunately, her husband was
also an ardent student of nature, and while his wife was
devoting her attention to botany and paleontology, he was
making investigations in zoology and mineralogy. They
spent fifty happy years together in the pursuit of science
and their joint efforts contributed not a little toward the
advancement of the branches of science to which they had
devoted their lives with such well-directed effort and en-
thusiasm.

As the fruitful life of Josephine Kablick who had shed
such luster on her sex in Bohemia was drawing to a close,
a young woman in Germany, Amalie Dietrich by name, was
preparing herself to fill the void which would be occasioned
by her predecessor 's death. Her first love, as a young girl,
was plant life, and this was subsequently accentuated by
her husband, who was not only a botanist himself but also
one who belonged to a distinguished family of botanists.

A keen observer and an indefatigable collector, Frau
Dietrich soon became known throughout Europe as a bot-
anist of marked ability and daring. She was wont, unac-
companied, to climb the highest peaks of the Salzburg
Alps, and spend entire weeks there seeking new species of
Alpine flora. During the day she explored the deep ra-
vines and clambered along the brambly ledges of beetling
precipices, and during the night she sought shelter and
repose in the humble hut of some hospitable herdsman.

WOMAN IN SCIENCE

Valuable, however, as was Amalie Dietrich 's work in the
Austrian Alps, it was but a preparation for that which
some years later she was to enter upon in far-off Australia.
Here she devoted twelve of the best years of her life to the
cultivation of botany in the virgin soil of Queensland.
Here, too, she surprised everyone by her venturesome spirit
no less than by her irrepressible zeal in making collections.
Heedless of danger, she plunged quite alone into the wil-
derness and spent days and weeks at a time with the wild
aborigines.

But she secured what she went in quest of, — a large and
valuable collection of plants, containing many new and
interesting species. Besides these, she was able to bring
back with her to Europe a large mass of zoological speci-
mens as well as countless domestic utensils and implements
of warfare and husbandry employed by the savages among
whom she so frequently journeyed and with whose man-
ners and customs she eventually became so familiar.

Modest and trustworthy, Frau Dietrich had a host of
friends in the scientific world, and the number of plants
which bear her name are not only a tribute to her worth,
but a striking evidence of the extent of her activity in the
pursuit of the science which became the absorbing passion
of her life.1

Of Russian women who have become specially noted for
their contributions to natural science, a very prominent
place must be assigned to Sophia Pereyaslawzewa. After
receiving the doctorate of science in the University of
Zurich, she became director of the biological station at Se-
bastopol, a position she held with great eclat during twelve
years. Here she made numerous important researches on
manifold forms of marine life and prepared many works
for the press in German and French, as well as in her na-

Leistungen der deutschen Frau in den letzen vierhundert
Jdhren auf wissenschaftlichem Gebiebte, p. 85, von Elise Oelsner,
Gulirau, 1894.

WOMEN IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 245

tive Kussian. Her Monographic de Turb diaries de la Mer
Noire, a large and beautifully illustrated volume published
at Odessa in 1892, placed her at once among biologists of
the first rank. Indeed, so meritorious was this production
of the talented daughter of Holy Russia that the Congress
of Naturalists in 1893 did not hesitate to recognize its ex-
ceptional value by conferring on the fair authoress a spe-
cial prize.

This gifted biologist has since rendered distinct service
in the cause of science by her explorations of the Gulf of
Naples and the coasts of France. Her activity is pro-
digious, and the long list of books and monographs which
she has published on the lower forms of marine life in the
Black and Mediterranean seas shows that she has a capacity
for work that is truly extraordinary.

Here is, probably, the place to make mention of a woman
of encyclopaedic mind, Clemence Augustine Royer, who was
born in 1830 in Nantes, France. She wrote on such a va-
riety of subjects that it is difficult to classify her. She was
in no sense of the word a specialist, and she seems by tem-
perament to have been averse to confining herself to any
one branch of knowledge.

Her first work to attract particular attention was one on
a topic connected with political economy. A prize had
been offered for the discussion of this subject, and the little
French woman acquitted herself so well that she had the
honor of sharing the prize with the noted Proudhon. She
has also written many works on philosophy and physics.
Among these are two which attracted considerable notice
at the time of their publication. In one of them she attacks
the positivism of Comte ; in the other she assails Laplace 's
hypothesis regarding the origin of the material universe.

But the work which made her famous, particularly in
France, was her translation into French in 1862 of Dar-
win's Origin of Species. It is safe to say that this version
created as much of a sensation in France as the original

246 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

had caused in Great Britain and America. Her preface
to the work of the English naturalist, in which she indi-
cates the results which flow from an acceptance of the
transformist theory, created a veritable storm in both re-
ligious and scientific circles.

So gratified was Madame Royer by the impression made
by this preface and so pleased was she with the contro-
versy which she had started, that she expanded her sum-
mary of the theory of evolution as therein given and pub-
lished it in 1870 under the title of Origine de I'Homme et
de Societes. This production was so revolutionary in char-
acter and so subversive of teachings long held sacred that
it provoked an indignant protest from all quarters, and the
author was at once ranked with such radical exponents of
the new science as Voght, Biichner and Hseckel.

After the appearance of this production, she wrote nu-
merous other works, several of them on subjects relating
to natural science, especially in its connection with anthro-
pology and prehistoric archaeology. And so great was her
breadth of view and so exceptional was her grasp of all
subjects discussed by her that Renan declared of her, Elle
est presque un homme de genie — She is almost a man of
genius.

Mme. Royer was frequently spoken of as a candidate for
the French Institute, but she was so well aware of the
prejudices against the admission of women to membership
in this learned body that she never allowed herself to con-
sider the proposal seriously. She was certainly a brainy
woman, and in her own department of intellectual effort
she exhibited as much talent as did George Sand and Mme.
de Stael in literature and history.

An entirely different type of woman from the radical and
disputatious Mme. Royer was the charming and cultured
lady, Miss Eleanor Ormerod, her contemporary, who, in her
chosen department of science, won both fame and the last-
ing gratitude of her fellowmen.

WOMEN IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES

Miss Ormerod, unlike Mme. Royer, was preeminently a
specialist, and the branch of science in which she achieved
distinction was entomology, or rather that branch of it
known as economic entomology. From her childhood she
manifested an unusual interest in all forms of insects, but
particularly in those which are serviceable to mankind or
are destructive to farms and gardens, orchards and forests.

Fortunately for the gratification of her peculiar bent of
mind, nearly half of Miss Ormerod 's life was spent in a
locality which was specially favorable to the study of in-
sects which are obnoxious to the gardener, the farmer and
the forester. This was at the confluence of the "Wye and
the Severn, where her father owned a large landed estate,
part of which was under cultivation and part wood and
park land.

Here the young girl made her first collection of insects,
and here she began her studies on the cause and nature of
the parasitic attacks upon crops. Here she first realized
the frightful ravages that were occasioned by the manifold
insect pests that infest not only trees, shrubs, cereals and
vegetables, but also flocks and herds as well. And here, too,
she resolved to devote her life to devising preventive and
remedial treatment for the evils which were robbing the
husbandman of so great a part of the fruits of his toil.

After taking this generous resolution, the life of our
young heroine was, like that of Liebig and Pasteur, de-
voted to the welfare of her f ellowmen. And like these noble
benefactors of their race, her thought was always how she
might prevent the losses and increase the products of the
tillers of the soil. Entomology with her was not mere
nomenclature — a knowledge of strange and fantastic names,
which, with the ignorant, constitutes a distinction — but one
of the most practical and useful of the sciences.

Miss Ormerod might, had she so elected, have won fame
as a systematic entomologist and as a distinguished con-
tributor to the already long list of genera and species of

248 JVOMAN IN SCIENCE

insects. She might have devoted herself to theoretical
work, or bent her energies towards the general advance-
ment of the science, like Fabricius, Swammerdam, West-
wood and Burmneister ; but she preferred to forego all
the glory that might accrue from pursuing such a course,
and to direct her efforts in such wise as to be of most
service to humanity.

Like the great Pasteur, after his long and laborious ex-
perimental researches on silkworm diseases, Miss Ormerod
could, at the end of her illustrious career, declare with
truth : 1 1 The results which I have obtained are, perhaps,
less brilliant than those which I might have anticipated
from researches pursued in the field of pure science, but I
have the satisfaction of having served my country in en-
deavoring, to the best of my ability, to discover the remedy
for great misery. It is to the honor of a scientific man that
he values discoveries which at their birth can only obtain
the esteem of his equals, far above those which at once con-
quer the favor of the crowd by the immediate utility of
their application ; but, in the presence of misfortune, it is
equally an honor to sacrifice everything in the endeavor to
relieve it."1

Miss Ormerod 's labors were not, it is true, instrumental
in rescuing from destruction a nation's chief industries, as
were Pasteur's in the case of his famous researches on the
phyloxera of the grape vine or the pebrine of the silkworm.
Nor had they to do with such frightful industrial disturb-
ances as have frequently been occasioned by rinderpest or
by the potato blight in Ireland in 1845.

This is true in so far as any one pest is concerned. But
when one reflects on the scope of Miss Ormerod 's investi-
gations and considers how far-reaching were her researches
and how many and diverse industries were embraced by the
remedial and prophylactic measures which she proposed,

1 In his preface to Les Maladies des Vers a Soie.

WOMEN IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 249

one cannot but realize the immense importance of her life-
work.

The fact that her activities were confined chiefly to
old and well-known pests — insects from which the farmer
and the gardener and the forester had suffered for cen-
turies, and which they had come to regard as necessary and
inevitable evils — does not detract from the merit and the
value of her labors. That she should have taken up a work
which affected so many people and have been so successful
in abating, or in entirely removing evils which had so long
afflicted agriculturists and stock-growers, shows that she
was a woman of rare courage and determination as well as
one of invincible persistence and of intellectual resources
of a very high order.

During more than a quarter of a century Miss Ormerod
devoted practically the whole of her time to the study of
economic entomology and to spreading a knowledge of it
among her countrymen. From 1877 to 1898 she published
annual reports on injurious insects and sent them broad-
cast throughout Great Britain and her colonies. In addi-
tion to this she wrote a number of manuals and text-books
on insects injurious to food crops, forest trees, orchards
and bush fruits.

Nor was this all. She also prepared for gratuitous dis-
tribution a large number of four-page leaflets on the most
common farm pests. Of the leaflet, for instance, on the
warble-fly, its life-history, methods of prevention and rem-
edy, no less than a hundred and seventy thousand copies
were printed. And so great was the demand for her leaflet
on the gooseberry red spider that a single mail brought her
an order for three thousand copies.

Miss Ormerod, it is proper to state here, received no re-
muneration whatever for her great services to the public.
On the contrary, she gave not only all her time gratui-
tously, but bore a great part of the expense of printing and

250 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

distributing her publications. The amount of good she thus
did unaided and alone cannot be estimated.

In her leaflet on the warble-fly, also known as bot-fly, she
estimates the annual damage to the stock-growers of the
United Kingdom from this pest at from £3,000,000 to
£4,000,000. The losses due to fruit, grain and vegetable
insects of various kinds, before she began her insect cru-
sade, were much greater. In Great Britain and her col-
onies they amounted to very many millions of pounds ster-
ling every year.1

And most of these losses, as she demonstrated, were pre-
ventable by simple precautions which she eventually suc-
ceeded in inducing the people to adopt. How much she was
instrumental in saving annually to the farmers and garden-
ers of England by her writings and lectures can only be
imagined, but the sum must have been immense.

When we recollect that Miss Ormerod accomplished all
her work before it occurred to the English Board of Agri-
culture to appoint a government entomologist, we shall
realize what a pioneer she was in the career in which she
achieved such distinction and through which she conferred
such inestimable benefits upon her fellows.

Miss Ormerod 's entomological publications, especially her
annual reports, brought her into relations with people of
all classes throughout the whole world. Her correspond-
ence, in consequence, was enormous, and not infrequently
amounted to from fifty to a hundred letters a day. The
great entomologists of Europe and America held her in the
highest esteem, and had implicit faith in her judgment in
all matters pertaining to her specialty.

One day she would receive a letter from an English gar-
dener begging for a remedy against the strawberry beetle.

lit is estimated that the loss to the United States from cattle
ticks alone is $100,000,000 a year. According to the year-book of
the Agricultural Department for 1904, the annual losses to agriculture
from destructive insects reach the enormous sum of $420,000,000.

WOMEN IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 251

The next day she would have a similar letter regarding
mite-galls on black currants, or pea-weevil larvae or clover-
eel worms. Again there would be a communication from
Norway requesting advice about the Hessian fly, or from
Argentina asking information concerning a certain kind of
destructive grass beetle, or from India appealing for help
against a pernicious species of forest fly, or from South
Africa seeking a relief from the boot-beetle. And still
again, she was consulted by her foreign correspondents
about termites, which were causing havoc among the young
cocoa trees of Ceylon, or about certain peculiar species of
Australian larvae, or about the devastating action of the
pine beetle in the Scotch forests, or about the wheat midge
and antler moth in Finland.

One day she had a communication from the Austrian
Embassy regarding a beetle that was eating the oats about
Constantinople, and not long afterwards she received a
letter from the Chinese Minister in London begging for
information as to how to prevent the ravages of certain
noxious bugs in the lee-chee orchards of China.

In view of all these facts it is not surprising that Miss
Ormerod became an active and valued colleague of some
of England's most noted scientific men. Professor Huxley
said of her in connection with certain work performed by
her as a member of one of the committees to which he
belonged that "she knew more about the business " than
all the rest put together.

Miss Ormerod 's services and attainments, it is gratifying
to note, were not without recognition in high quarters. Be-
sides being in constant correspondence with the most emi-
nent entomologists of the world, consulting entomologist to
the Royal Agricultural Society of England and examiner
in agricultural entomology in the University of Edinburgh,
she was a member of many learned societies in both the Old
and the New World. She was also the recipient of many
medals, two of which came from Russia.

WOMAN IN SCIENCE

The honor, however, which gave her the most pleasure
was the degree of Doctor of Laws, which was conferred on
her by the University of Edinburgh. It was the first time
this old and conservative institution thus honored a woman,
but in honoring Miss Ormerod it honored itself as well.1

But when one considers the magnitude of Miss Ormerod 's
services to her country and to the world, when one reflects
on the tens of millions of pounds sterling which she saved
to the British Empire by her researches and writings, these
honors seem trivial and unworthy of the great nation which
she so signally benefited. If any of her countrymen had
labored so long and so successfully and made so many
sacrifices for the welfare of the nation as she had, he would
have been knighted or ennobled. But age-long prejudices
and traditions will not yet permit England to bestow the
same honors on women as on men, no matter how brilliant
their attainments or how distinguished their services to the
crown and to humanity. Recognition of this kind may pos-
sibly come as one of the desirable innovations of the twen-
tieth century. No lover of fair play can deny ' ' 'tis a con-
summation devoutly to be wished. ' ' 2

i The dean of the law faculty in presenting Miss Ormerod to
the vice-chancellor on this occasion and speaking before an audi-
ence of three thousand people said, among other things: "The pre-
eminent position which Miss Ormerod holds in the world of science is
the reward of patient study and unwearying observation. Her in-
vestigations have been chiefly directed towards the discovery of
methods for the prevention of the ravages of those insects which are
injurious to orchard, field and forest. Her labors have been crowned
with such success, that she is entitled to be hailed as the protectress
of agriculture and the fruits of the earth — a beneficent Demeter of
the nineteenth century." Eleanor Ormerod, Economic Entomologist,
Autobiography and Correspondence, Edited by Kobert Wallace, p. 96,
London, 1904.

2 The Canadian Entomologist, September, 1901, in an obituary
notice of Miss Ormerod, well voiced the high appreciation in which
she was held throughout the civilized world in the following para-
graph: "Miss Ormerod was one of the most remarkable women of

WOMEN IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 255

The names of the women in the United States who have
become prominent by their researches and writings in the
various branches of the natural sciences would make a long
list. And when one recalls the fact that it was only in the
latter part of the nineteenth century that American women
were afforded an opportunity to study science, it is a matter
of surprise that the list is so extended. For practically no
provision was made for the serious pursuit by them of the
natural sciences until the opening of Yassar College in
1865, and it was not until the closing years of the century
that the portals of many men 's colleges were unlocked and
thrown open to the hitherto proscribed sex. Considering
all the obstacles they had to overcome, the ignorance, the
prejudice, the opposition of all kinds they had to combat
in the United States, women have already accomplished
wonders and bid fair to achieve much more in the near
future.

Now almost every educational institution in the land,
private or state, has one or more women professors or asso-
ciate professors. They teach all the branches of the natural
sciences that are taught by their male colleagues, — botany,
geology, mineralogy, zoology, anatomy, bacteriology and

the latter half of the nineteenth century and did more than any one
else in the British Isles to further the interests of farmers, fruit-
growers and gardeners by making known to them methods for con-
trolling and subduing their multiform insect pests. Her labors were
unwearied and unselfish; she received no remuneration for her services,
but cheerfully expended her private means in carrying out her in-
vestigations and publishing their results. We know not now by
whom in England this work can be continued; it is not likely that
anyone can follow in the unique path laid out by Miss Ormerod; we
may, therefore, cherish the hope that the Government of the day will
hold out a helping hand and establish an entomological bureau for
the lasting benefit of the great agricultural interests of the coun-
try. " Professor J. Eitzema Bos, the distinguished entomologist of
Holland, had no hesitation in proclaiming Miss Ormerod the first
economic entomologist in England and one of the most famous eco-
nomic entomologists in the world.

254 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

all the numerous subdivisions of these sciences, — and they
teach them with success and eclat.

They also occupy responsible scientific positions in vari-
ous state and federal institutions. Thus one woman has
been the principal of the Denver School of Mines, while
another has been the state entomologist for Missouri.
Women are also found doing important work in the Na-
tional Museum, in the Smithsonian Institution, and in the
Agricultural Department in Washington, as well as in the
various museums, botanical gardens and public laboratories
of the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Among those who have deserved well of science in the
United States by their investigations and writings are Olive
Thorne Miller and Florence Merriam in ornithology; Su-
sanna Phelps Gage, Dr. Ida H. Hyde, Mary H. Hinckley,
Cornelia M. Clapp, Edith J. and Agnes M. Claypole in
biology ; Rose S. Eigenman in icthyology ; Edith M. Patch,
Elizabeth W. Peckham, Emily A. Smith, Cora H. Clarke,
J. M. Arms Sheldon, Mary Treat, Mary E. Murfeldt, Annie
T. Slosson in entomology ; Elizabeth G. Britton and Clara

E. Cummings in cryptogamic botany; Sarah A. Plummer
Lemmon, Katherine E. Golden, Alice Eastman and Almira
Lincoln Phelps in general botany ; Ada D. Davidson, Ella

F. Boyd and Florence Bascom in geology. Besides these,
special mention should also be made of Dr. Julia W. Snow
for her work on the microscopical forms of fresh-water
algae ; Anna Botsf ord Comstock for her contributions to our
knowledge of microscopic insects; Katherine J. Bush for
her monographs on shallow and deep-water molusca ; Har-
riet Randolph and Fannie E. Langdon for their studies on
worms, and Katherine Foot for her papers on cellular
morphology. Particularly notable, too, is the work that
has been done on marine invertebrates by Mary J. Rathbun
in the United States National Museum and by Florence
Wambaugh Patterson in vegetable physiology and pathol-
ogy in the Department of Agriculture in Washington.

WOMEN IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 255

But much as the women just named deserve recognition
for their achievements in the various branches of science to
which they have severally devoted themselves, the one who
will always be specially remembered, not only for her val-
uable contributions to divers branches of natural science,
but also for her labors in behalf of higher female education
—particularly as president of Radcliffe College — is Mrs.
Elizabeth Gary Agassiz, the wife of the celebrated Swiss-
American naturalist, who gave such an impetus to the
study of natural science in the United States, and whose
influence on the general advancement of science in all its
departments has proved so enduring and so far-reaching.
As an inspirer of and collaborator with her gifted husband,
Mrs. Agassiz deserves a large page in the annals of science,
while as an enthusiastic student of nature and as one who
communicated her enthusiasm to her students, and at the
same time held up before them the highest ideals of woman-
hood, she is sure of a portion of that immortality which has
been decreed to her illustrious life-partner, Jean Louis
Agassiz.

This chapter would not be complete without some refer-
ence to that large class of women travelers who, directly
or indirectly, have contributed so much to the advancement
of the natural sciences. The gifted Roumanian writer and
traveler, Princess Helena Kolzoff Massalsky, — better known
under her pseudonym, Doria d'Istria, — somewhere ex-
presses the opinion that a woman traveler admirably sup-
plements the scientific work of the male explorer by bring-
ing to it aptitudes that the latter does not possess. For she
notes many things in nature, as well as in the national life
and popular customs of the countries which she traverses,
which escape the more hebetudinous perceptions of men,
and thus a vast field, that would otherwise remain un-
known, is opened to observation and critical study.

One of the most noted travelers of her sex in the nine-
teenth century was the famous Ida Pfeiffer, of Austria.

256 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

During the years intervening between 1842 and 1858, the
date of her death, she traveled nearly two hundred thou-
sand miles and, in so doing, visited nearly every quarter of
the globe. When one recalls the difficulties and discom-
forts of transportation in the early part of the last century,
as compared with our present facilities and conveniences,
and bears in mind the fact that her traveling expenses for
an entire year were less than those of a Lamartine or a
Chateaubriand for a single week, we must admit that her
achievements were, indeed, extraordinary.

Besides being the author of numerous books which had
for many years a great vogue — books which, by reason of
the keen observations and the absolutely truthful narra-
tives of their author, are still of special value to the student
of geography and ethnology — she made collections illus-
trative of botany, mineralogy and entomology which were
subsequently secured for the British Museum and other
similar institutions in Europe.

No one more highly appreciated Frau Pfeiffer's efforts
in behalf of science than did the illustrious Alexander von
Humboldt, whose friendship was one of the greatest joys of
this remarkable woman's life. Through his recommenda-
tion and that of the noted geographer, Karl Ritter, she was
made an honorary member of the Geographical Society of
Berlin. Besides this, the King of Prussia conferred on her
the gold medal for arts and sciences.

Three other women, all representatives of Great Britain,
likewise deserve notice for their extensive travels and the
interesting and instructive accounts which they published
of them. These are Constance Gordon Gumming, Isabella
Bird Bishop and Amelia B. Edwards.

More notable in many respects than these three dis-
tinguished women were Miss Mary H. Kingsley and
Madame Octavie Coudreau. For their contributions to
science and for their daring adventures in savage lands,

WOMEN IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 257

they have won for themselves an unique position among
women explorers.

Miss Kingsley — the niece of the well-known writer and
naturalist, Charles Kingsley — exhibited much of her uncle 's
literary ability and love of nature. So complete was her
intellectual grasp of the most difficult problems, and so
rare was her overflowing sympathy for all of God's crea-
tures, that she was well described as possessing ' ' the brain
of a man and the heart of a woman."

In order to get at first-hand information that was neces-
sary to complete a work which her father, George Kingsley,
had, owing to his premature death, left unfinished, she de-
termined to visit that part of West Africa "where all
authorities agreed that the Africans were at their wildest
and worst." Accompanied only by the natives, she trav-
elled among cannibals, pushed her way through mangrove
swamps and pestilential morasses. She spent months in a
canoe exploring the territory watered by the Calabar and
Ogowe rivers, often in imminent peril of death from wild
animals or wilder men.

When not studying the manners and customs of the
native tribes, she was hunting fishes and reptiles in stream*
and quagmires and collecting insects in the weird, grim
twilight of the equatorial forest with its inextricable tangle
of creepers, its great hanging tapestries of vines and flow-
ers, its myriads of bush-ropes, suspended from the summits
of tall buttressed trees, "some as straight as plumb lines,
others coiled round and intertwined among each other until
one could fancy one was looking on some mighty battle
between armies of gigantic serpents that had been arrested
at its height by some mighty spell."

The results of Miss Kingsley 's wanderings in this dark
and uncanny wilderness and among the savage tribes vis-
ited by her were her two instructive volumes entitled
Travels in West Africa and West African Studies. In
addition to these two works from her pen there are de-

258 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

posited in the British Museum an interesting collection of
insects, fishes and reptiles — many of them new species and
some of them named in her honor — which testifies to her
activity as a collector and her enthusiasm as a naturalist.

Her brilliant and useful career was cut short in Cape
Colony, whither she had gone as an army nurse during the
Boer war. In view of her achievements one is not sur-
prised to learn that her countrymen regarded her prema-
ture taking-off as a national misfortune. The noblest mon-
ument to her memory is "The Mary Kingsley Society of
West Africa/7 whose object is to carry on, as far as may be,
the beneficent work she began on the West African coast
and to accomplish for English rule in this part of the
world what the " Royal Asiatic Society" has achieved for
British administration in India.

Madame Coudreau is designated in Qui Etes-Vous — the
French Who 's Who — as an exploratrice. This well charac-
terizes her; for, if not the first woman explorer by pro-
fession, she is certainly the most energetic and successful.

Her first work was in French Guiana, under instructions
from the colonial minister of France. This was in 1894.
The following year she began the scientific exploration of
the province of Para, in northern Brazil, in collaboration
with her husband, Henri Coudreau, who had previously
distinguished himself by his achievements as a writer and
as an explorer in French Guiana. The fruit of their joint
work from 1895 to 1899 was six quarto volumes profusely
illustrated by photographs which they had taken and by
carefully executed charts of the various rivers which they
had explored.

While engaged in the exploration of the Trombetas, a
tributary of the Amazon, Henri Coudreau was taken seri-
ously ill, and, after a few days ' struggle against the disease
with which he was stricken, he expired in the depths of the
forest primeval, where he was buried by his desolate and
disconsolate widow. After such a calamity any other

WOMEN IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 259

woman would have left the tropics at once and returned
to her home and friends. Not so Mme. Coudreau. With
matchless courage and determination she buried her grief
in the work in which her husband had been so interested,
and, after completing the unfinished survey, published the
results of this expedition under the title Voyage au Trom-
betas.

Having completed this work, she was engaged by the
states of Para and Amazonas to explore a number of other
rivers in the vast territory known as Amazonia. This com-
mission involved the most arduous and dangerous kind of
labor and was a task which few men would have been
willing to undertake. It is doubtful if any other woman
would have ventured on such an expedition, and it is quite
certain that no other one could have been found that was
so well equipped for this herculean undertaking or who
would have carried it to a more successful issue.

Mme. Coudreau was in the service of Amazonia, in the
capacity of official explorer, from 1899 to 1906. Most of
this time she spent in a canoe on the affluents of the Ama-
zon, or in her tent in the dense forests under the equator.
Her only companions were negroes, or Indians, or Brazil-
ian halfbreeds who served her as porters, cooks and boat-
men. Frequently they were in the forest wilds for many
months at a time and far away from every vestige of civil-
ized life. As it was impossible to take sufficient provisions
with them to last them during the whole of their journey,
they had to depend on wild fruits and such fish and game
as they were able to secure. Often they were forced to
live for weeks at a time on an unchanging diet of manioc
and tapir meat.

But their sufferings were not confined to hunger and
disagreeable — often indigestible — food. There were the
heavy steaming atmosphere and the broiling rays of a
superheated sun, especially when reflected from the mir-
ror-like surface of lake or river, which were so debilitating

260 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

and exhausting that physical exertion of any kind was at
times almost impossible. There were also the torrential
and incessant rains — making it impossible for them to cook
their food or dry their clothing — which added to their
miseries whether in camp or in their canoe.

Great, however, as were their trials on the river, they
were trifling in comparison with those in the woods. Here
locomotion was impeded by tangled undergrowth which
was bound together by strands of lianas and thorny vines
which constituted an impenetrable barrier until a passage
was hewn through it with a machete. Under foot was a
yielding morass which threatened to absorb them. Over-
head were countless chigoes, garapatas and fire-ants which
infested the body or buried themselves in the flesh. Or
there were clouds of mosquitoes which gave no rest day
or night. And worst of all was the ever-present danger
of fever and dysentery, not to speak of the dread diseases
so common in certain sections of the equatorial regions. It
was then that Mme. Coudreau had to act the part of a
physician, as well as of a leader, even though she was at
the time such a sufferer herself that she was barely able
to stand.

To make matters still more difficult for Mme. Coudreau,
her employees at times, especially when under the influence
of liquor which they contrived to obtain some way or other,
became mutinous and refused to accompany her to the end
of her journey. At other times the expedition was halted
by their fear of wild beasts or savage Indians, or by im-
aginary evils of many kinds, suggested to them by their
superstitious minds. On such occasions Mme. Coudreau
never failed to show herself a born leader of men, for she
invariably — alone as she was with a crew who were often
half savages — was successful in suppressing incipient rebel-
lion and in restoring obedience and order.1

iThe following dialogue between Mme. Coudreau and one of her
boatmen, Joas-Felix, who was the spokesman of his companions,

WOMEN IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 261

Continually confronted, as she was, by such trials and
difficulties, privations and dangers, one would imagine that
the delicately reared Frenchwoman would have sought im-
mediate release from an engagement that necessitated so
much exposure and suffering and sought surcease of sor-
row in the distractions and gaieties of pleasure-loving Paris.

Nothing, however, was farther from her thoughts. In-
trepid and resourceful, she feared no danger and hesitated

illustrates not only the bravery of the daring explorer, but also the
pusillanimity of her half-breed personnel when in the depths of the
forest at night:

" 'Madam has no fear?'

" Tear of what?'

" 'Of tigers.'

" 'No, it is not of tigers that I have fear.'

'"Of Indians f '

" 'Neither have I fear of Indians.'

" 'Then, madam, it is something which is in the woods, which
we do not know, that can harm us.'

" 'You know very well what frightens me. I am afraid that the
bats will attack my chickens during the night. If you hear them
making a noise you must get up.'

"I laugh heartily in observing their astonished look and ask
myself how men whose consciences are stained with many bloody
crimes can have fear here. Joas-Felix gives me the explanation:

" 'Madam makes game of us. None the less, madam, I am a man
in the city and in the savanna. With my poignard and machete I
fear nothing, neither man nor beast. But here, madam, where every-
thing is dark, even in the daytime; where an enemy may be lying
in wait for us behind every tree; it is not the same thing. It would
be impossible for me to live in the forest. One cannot see far
enough in it.'

"Now I understand better their terror. The mysterious depth
of the virgin forest impresses them. The opaque obscurity of the
night in the underwood contrasts too strongly with the moonlit
savanna where they have been reared. The low and sombre vault
of the woods oppresses them and they imagine they are going to be
crushed. They lose their heads and see in every tree a phantom
enemy. To reason with them is useless, for when fear takes pos-
session of them, there is nothing to be done." Voyage au May-
curu, p. 127.

WOMAN IN SCIENCE

before no difficulty, however great. As an explorer she
was as venturesome as Crevaux and as conscientious as La
Condamine. Like them, who were both her countrymen,
she spent many years of her life in the equinoctial regions,
and, like them, she contributed immensely to our knowledge
of the Land of the Southern Cross.

Never did the tropics have a greater fascination for
anyone than for Mme. Coudreau. During the twelve years
she spent there, exploring its rivers and traversing its
interminable forests, the spell of Amazonia was ever upon
her and was never broken, even for a moment.

"I have," she writes, "loved everything in Amazonia,
the great majestic woodland and the mysterious virgin
forest, the beautiful rivers with their traitorous waters and
thundering cataracts, the suffocating air and the perfumed
breeze, the burning sun and the sweet freshness of night,
the impressive voice of the wind among the trees and the
torrential rain. And, contrary to the usual custom of man
of bringing everything under his domination, it is I who
have become a captive of this savage life which I love, and
have permitted it to take possession of all my soul and all
my will."1

Elsewhere she declares: "In the solitude of the virgin
forest I am calm, tranquil, experience no ennui and am
almost merry. When I am obliged to leave the great wood-
land the power to struggle grows less in me. I become of
an excessive sensibility. I feel more keenly life's blows.
I am not armed for elbowing my way and making a place
for myself in the sunshine. I neither love nor understand
anything except my virgin forest. There, indeed, I suffer
from the inclemency of the weather, from hunger, from
sickness; but these are only physical sufferings and are
soon forgotten, while moral and interior pains, on the con-
trary, are ineradicable. ' ' 2

1 Voyage au Maycuru, p. 1, Paris, 1903.

2 Voyage au Rio Curud, p. 85, Paris, 1903.

WOMEN IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 263

And still again she tells us: "The solitude of the virgin
forest has become a necessity for me ; it attracts me by its
mysterious silence, and only in the great woods have I the
impression of being at home. ' ' *

Can we wonder that such an ardent lover of Nature and
such a strenuous votary of science was able to forget herself
in her work and was able, notwithstanding her toils and
her sufferings, to produce six quarto volumes of reports,
in as many years, on the unexplored regions which she had
so carefully surveyed and charted? Can we be surprised
that her labors received due recognition from learned soci-
eties in both the New and the Old World, and that she
was acclaimed as an explorer who had rendered distinct
service to the cause of natural science, as well as to geog-
raphy ? 2

When we recall the labors of this lone daughter of

1 Ibid., p. 1.

2 In order that the reader may realize the immense extent of
territory that was covered by this strenuous woman's explorations,
during the twelve years she spent in Amazonia, it suffices to give
the titles of her books, all of which are profusely illustrated by
photographs taken by herself and by accurate charts of rivers, whose
courses were previously almost unknown.

The books written in collaboration with her husband are Voyage
au Tapajos, Voyage au Xingu, Voyage au Tocantins- Araguaya, Voy-
age au Italoca et a I'Etacayuna, Voyage entre Tocantins et Xingu,
et Voyage au Yamunda.

The books written by Mme. Coudreau after her husband's death
are Voyage au Trombetas, Voyage au Cumind, Voyage au Rio Curud,
Voyage a la Mapuerd and Voyage au Maycuru.

When one remembers that many of the watercourses here named
would be considered large rivers outside of South America; that,
notwithstanding their countless rapids and waterfalls, necessitating
numberless portages, Mme. Coudreau explored all these rivers from
their embouchures to as near their sources as the water would carry
her rude dugouts, we can form some idea of the miles she traveled
and of the stupendous labor that was involved in making these long
journeys in the sweltering and debilitating and insect-laden atmos-
phere of the Amazon basin.

264 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

France in the wilds of the tropics, with no one to communi-
cate with except her half-civilized servants and boatmen,
we instinctively hark back to days not long past and esti-
mate the enormous progress women have made in social
and intellectual freedom within but a few decades.

Owing to the policy of repression which so long pre-
vailed regarding the intellectual efforts of women, and the
social obstacles which prevented them from publicly ac-
knowledging the offspring of their genius, women like the
Bronte sisters, George Sand and George Eliot were com-
pelled to conceal their identity under male designations.
Because it was considered immodest for a woman to appear
before the public as an author, Lady Nairne, after Burns,
the most popular song writer in Scotland, felt obliged to
keep secret the authorship of her beautiful poems.

Similarly, family honor made it incumbent on Fanny
Mendelssohn to refrain from publishing her musical com-
positions under her own name. Accordingly, they ap-
peared along with those of her brother Felix, and so similar
are they in color and sentiment to his own productions that
they are indistinguishable from them, unless the author's
signature be attached. To satisfy an inane public opinion,
they long contributed * ' to swell the volume of her brother 's
fame," and there is reason to believe that some of them
still appear under his name at the present day.

Yes, truly, when one recalls these and similar facts, one
cannot help exclaiming : ' ' What a marvelous change in the
attitude of the world toward women within the memories
of those still living!" Women like Miss Ormerod, Miss
Kingsley and Mme. Coudreau would have been ostracized if
they had dared to attempt, in the days of Lady Nairne, the
Bronte sisters and Fanny Mendelssohn, what they may
now do not only without censure but without exciting more
than passing comment. The ban has been lifted from
what was for ages tabu for women, and the sphere of their
intellectual activities is now almost coextensive with that

WOMEN IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 265

of the sterner sex. Not only does society no longer point
the finger of scorn at the woman naturalist or the woman
explorer, but it showers honors on her while living and
erects monuments to her memory when dead. A great
change, indeed, and one long and ardently desired. Verily,
tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in UUs.

CHAPTER VIII

WOMEN IN MEDICINE AND SUEGEEY

As woman was the first nurse, so was she also the first
practitioner of the healing art. Among savages the world
over it is the women, in the great majority of cases, who
have the care of the sick and wounded, and who, by reason
of their superior knowledge of simples for the cure of
diseases, occupy the position of doctors. In certain parts
of the uncivilized world there are, it is true, shamans or
medicine men; but these are conjurers or exorcists, who
profess to expel disease, or rather the evil spirits causing
the disease, by sorcery or incantation, rather than physi-
cians who essay to cure ailments or relieve suffering by the
use of substances which experience has showed to possess
remedial properties. In a word, the shaman is a kind of a
religious functionary who imposes on the ignorance of his
tribe and who holds his position by the fear he excites, and
not by any knowledge he possesses of the healing art. It
was the same, we may believe, in the early history of our
race — women, and not men, were the first physicians; and
they were also most probably the first surgeons.

According to Greek mythology, the god of the medical
art was J^sculapius, a male ; but his six daughters, as an-
tiquity beautifully expressed it, were not only goddesses
but were also medical mistresses — artifices medici — of suf-
fering humanity. Of these Hygiea was specially distin-
guished as the goddess of health, or, rather, as the con-
server of good health, while Panacea was invoked as the
restorer of health after it had been impaired or lost.

266

WOMEN IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY 267

One of the most beautiful pictures in the Iliad is that
representing the daughter of Augea, King of the Epei,
caring for the wounded and suffering Greeks on the plain
before Troy. She was:

"His eldest born, hight Agamede, with golden hair,
A leech was she, and well she knew all herbs on ground that
grew."

Nothing deterred by the din of battle around her, she pro-
vided cordial potions for the disabled warrior and prepared

"The gentle bath and washed their gory wounds."

What a beautiful prototype of another ministering angel
in the same land nearly thirty centuries later, amid similar
scenes of suffering — of one who, though unsung by immor-
tal bard, the world will never let die — the courageous, the
self-sacrificing Florence Nightingale.

That there were in Greece from the earliest times numer-
ous women possessed of a high degree of medical skill is
evidenced by many of the ancient writers. They were
what we would call medical herbalists, and not a few of
them exhibited a natural genius for determining the cur-
ative virtues of rare plants and a remarkable sagacity in
preparing from them juices, infusions and soothing ano-
dynes. Others there were who, in addition to evincing the
cunning of leechcraft in the therapeutic art, were distin-
guished for nimble hands in treating painful lesions and
festering sores, and who, when occasion required, were
experts in "quickly drawing the barb from the flesh and
healing the wound of the soldier."

In the Odyssey special mention is made of the surpassing
expertness of the Egyptian female leech, Polydamna, whose
name signifies the subduer of many diseases. The land of
the Nile, the poet tells us, "teems with drugs, " and

"There ev'ry man in skill medicinal
Excels, for these are sons of Paeon all,"

268 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

In this favored cradle of civilization, to which Greece owed
so much of its knowledge and culture, there were many
women who, like Polydamna, achieved distinction in the
healing art, and many, too, we have reason to think, who
communicated their knowledge to their sisters in the fair
land of Hellas.

But not only were there in Greece women physicians like
Agamede, who were noted for their general medicinal
knowledge and practice, but there were also others who
made a specialty of treating ailments peculiar to their own
sex. This we learn from a passage in the Hippolytus of
Euripides, wherein the nurse of Phaedra addressed the
suffering queen in the following words:

"If under pains

Thou labor, such as may not be revealed,
To succor thee thy female friends are here.
But if the other sex may know thy sufferings
Let the physician try his healing art."

More positive information, however, is afforded us by
the ancient Roman author Hyginus, who, in writing of the
Greek maiden, Agnodice, tells us how the medical profes-
sion was legalized for all the free-born women of Athens.
Instead of a literal translation of Hyginus, the version of
his story is given in the quaint language of one Mrs. Cel-
leor, a noted midwife in the reign of James II.

' ' Among the subtile Athenians, ' ' writes Mrs. Celleor, ' ' a
law at one time forbade women to study or practice medi-
cine or physick on pain of death, which law continued
some time, during which many women perished, both in
child-bearing and by private diseases, their modesty not
permitting them to admit of men either to deliver or cure
them. But God finally stirred up the spirit of Agnodice, a
noble maid, to pity the miserable condition of her own sex,
and hazard her life to help them ; which, to enable herself
to do, she apparelled her like a man and became the scholar

WOMEN IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY 269

of Hierophilos, the most learned physician of the time;
and, having learnt the art, she found out a woman that had
long languished under private diseases, and made proffer
of her service to cure her, which the sick person refused,
thinking her to be a man ; but, when Agnodice discovered
that she was a maid, the woman committed herself into her
hands, who cured her perfectly ; and after her many others,
with the like skill and industry, so that in a short time she
became the successful and beloved physician of the whole
sex."

When it became known that Agnodice was a woman ' ' she
was like to be condemned to death for transgressing the
law — which, coming to the ears of the noble women, they
ran before the Areopagites, and, the house being encom-
passed by most women of the city, the ladies entered before
the judges and told them they would no longer account
them for husbands and friends, but for cruel enemies, that
condemned her to death who restored to them their health,
protesting they would all die with her if she were put to
death. This caused the magistrates to disannul the law
and make another, which gave gentlewomen leave to study
and practice all parts of physick to their own sex, giving
large stipends to those that did it well and carefully. And
there were many noble women who studied that practice
and taught it publicly in their schools as long as Athens
flourished in learning."1

After the time of Agnodice many Greek women won dis-
tinction in medicine, some as practitioners in the healing
art, others as writers on medical subjects. Nor were their
activities confined to the land of Hellas. They were also
found succoring the infirm and instructing the poor and
ignorant in Italy, Egypt and Asia Minor. Among these
was Theano, the wife of Pythagoras, who, after her hus-
band's death, assumed charge of his school of philosophy,

i Quoted in Medical Women, p. 11, by Sophia Jex- Blake, M. D.,
Edinburgh, 1886. Cf. Hyginus, Fdbularum Liber, No. 274.

270 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

and who, like her husband and teacher, was distinguished
for her attainments in medicine. The names of many
others occur in the pages of Hippocrates, Galen and Pliny ;
and frequent references are made to the works and pre-
scriptions of women doctors who enjoyed more than ordi-
nary celebrity during their time. Of these female prac-
titioners many confined their practice to the diseases of
women and children, while others excelled in surgery and
pharmacy, as well as in general medical practice.

Among the medical women whom antiquity especially
honored, particularly during the Greco-Roman period, were
Origenia, Aspasia — not the famous wife of Pericles — and
Cleopatra, who was not, however, as is often asserted, the
ill-fated queen of Egypt. Likewise deserving of special
mention was Metradora, of whom there is still preserved in
Florence a manuscript work on the diseases of women,1
and Antiochis, to whom her admiring countrymen erected
a statue bearing the following inscription: "Antiochis,
daughter of Diodotos of Tlos ; the council and the commune
of the city of Tlos, in appreciation of her medical ability,
erected at their own expense this statue in her honor. ' '

Pliny, the naturalist, felicitates the Romans on having
been for nearly six hundred years free from the brood of
doctors. These he does not hesitate to berate roundly. His
statement regarding the non-existence of physicians, it
must be observed, is somewhat exaggerated. It is true that
during the first five centuries there were no professional
doctors who lived entirely on their practice. There were,
however, many men who had by long experience gained an

i Charles Daremberg, who, at the time of his death in 1872, was
professor of the history of medicine in the Faculty of Medicine in
Paris, had the intention of publishing this work ILepl rtav ywaixalw
ira£Qv. — On the Diseases of Women — but his premature death pre-
vented him from executing his project. It is to be hoped that
some one else, interested in woman's medical work, may at an
early date give this production to the public with an appropriate
commentary.

WOMEN IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY 271

extensive knowledge of drugs and simples, and who were
able to dress wounds and treat diseases with considerable
success.

The first Greek freeman to practice medicine in Rome
was one Archagatos, about two centuries B.C. He was soon
followed by one of his countrymen named Asclepiades.
These two soon built up a great reputation as successful
practitioners, and were held in the highest esteem by the
people of Rome. In consequence of this and of the favor-
able conditions offered foreigners for the practice of the
healing art, there was soon a large influx of physicians and
surgeons from Greece, not only into Rome but also into
other parts of Italy.

Not long after the arrival of Greek doctors in the capital
of the Roman world we learn of certain women physicians
in Rome who were held in high repute. Among these were
Victoria and Leoparda, both mentioned by the medical
writer, Theodorus Priscianus. To Victoria, Priscianus
dedicates the third book of his Rerum Medicarum, and in
the preface to this book he refers to her as one who has
not only an accurate knowledge of medicine, but also as
one who is a keen observer and experienced practitioner.

The word medica, which occurs in Latin authors of the
classical period, testifies to the existence of the woman doc-
tor as early as the age of Augustus.

But the most important documents bearing on women
physicians, not only in the city of Rome but also in Italy,
Gaul and the Iberian peninsula, are the large body of
epigraphic monuments which have recently been brought to
light, and which prove beyond all doubt that women were
not only obstetricians, but that they were successful prac-
titioners in the entire field of medical art. Thus a funeral
tablet found in Portugal tells of a woman who was a most
excellent physician — medica optima — while another de-
scribes the deceased not only as a woman incomparable for

WOMAN IN SCIENCE

her virtues, but also as a mistress of medical science,
antistes discipline in medicina fuit.

The Greek word for medica — iatromaia — occasionally
found in some of the inscriptions, seems to refer specially
to women of Greek origin or birth. This is particularly
true of a monument erected to one Valias, who is designated
as Kalista iatromaia — the best doctor.1

Among the many women who became converts to Chris-
tianity during the early ages of the church a goodly num-
ber were physicians. Unfortunately, our information re-
specting these votaries of the healing art is not as complete
as we could wish. One of the most noted of them is St.
Theodosia, whose name is given in the Roman martyrology
for the twenty-ninth of May. She was the mother of the
martyr, St. Procopius, and was distinguished for her
knowledge of medicine and surgery, both of which she
practiced in Rome with the most signal success. She died
a heroic death by the sword during the persecution of
Diocletian.

Another woman who was as eminent for her knowledge
of medicine as for her holiness of life was St. Nicerata,
who lived in Constantinople during the reign of the em-
peror Arcadius. She is said to have cured St. John Chrys-
ostom of an affection of the stomach from which he was
a sufferer.

To the Roman lady Fabiola, remarkable as the daughter
of one of the most illustrious patrician families of Rome,
but more remarkable for her sanctity and her boundless
charity toward the poor, was due the erection of the first
hospital — a noble structure which she founded in Ostia, at
the mouth of the Tiber, which was then the port of entry
to the capital of the Roman empire. Here the noble matron
received the poor and suffering from all parts, and did

i Cf . Hertzen et Eossi Inscriptions Urbis Roma Latinos, p. 1245,
No. 9478, Berlin, 1882.

WOMEN IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY 273

everything in her power to afford them succor in their
wants and infirmities.

It is difficult for us now, when hospitals and charitable
institutions of all kinds are so common, to understand what
an innovation Fabiola 's unheard-of institution was consid-
ered by her contemporaries. For her method of treating
the needy and the suffering was as different from that
which had hitherto obtained as were the debasing lessons
of heathendom from the elevating precepts of the Gospels.

No wonder that the news of this godlike work was soon
wafted to the uttermost bounds of the earth ; that, in the
words of St. Jerome, "summer should announce in Britain
what Egypt and Parthia had learned in the spring/' No
wonder that the same eloquent hermit of Bethlehem should
proclaim the foundress of this home of the indigent and
the afflicted to be "the glory of the church, the astonish-
ment of the Gentiles, the mother of the poor and the con-
solation of the saints. ' ' No wonder that, in contemplating
her countless acts of charity, he should ignore the fact that
Fabiola was a daughter of the Fabii and a descendant of
the renowned Quintus Maximus, who, by his sage counsel,
had saved his country from her enemies, and that, recalling
the words of Virgil, he should declare : ' l If I had a hun-
dred tongues and a hundred mouths and iron lungs, I
should not be able to enumerate all the maladies to which
Fabiola gave the most prodigal care and tenderness — to the
extent even of making the poor who were in health envy
the good fortune of those who were sick. "* No wonder that
Fabiola 's funeral, which brought together the whole of
Rome, was more like an apotheosis than the transfer of the
remains of the deceased to their last resting-place, and that
Jerome should declare, "the glory of Furius and Papirius

i ' ' Non mihi si linguae centum, oraque centum, f errea vox . . .
omnia morborum pereurrere nomina possim quse Fabiola in tanta
miserorum refregeria commutavit ut multi pauperum sani languenti-
bus inviderent. ' ' Epistola ad Oceanum.

WOMAN IN SCIENCE

and Scipio and Pompey, when they triumphed over the
Gauls, the Sammites, Numantia and Pontus" was less than
that which was spontaneously accorded to Fabiola, the
solace of the sick and the comforter of the distressed. For
she had in her hospital at Ostia established a type of insti-
tution that was to effect more for ameliorating the con-
dition of suffering humanity than anything that had before
been dreamed of; something that was to contribute im-
mensely to the efforts of physicians and surgeons in mini-
mizing the sad ravages of wounds and disease; something
whose beneficent effects were to be felt through the cen-
turies and in every part of the world down to the wards of
the military hospital at Scutari, guarded by the watchful
eyes of Florence Nightingale, and to the leper-tenanted
lazarettos, blessed by the ministrations of Father Damien
and the Sisters of Charity, on the desolate shores of plague-
stricken Molokai.

After the fall of the Roman empire and through the
long period of the Middle Ages, when the monasteries and
convents were almost the only centers of learning and cul-
ture for the greater part of Europe, the practice of medi-
cine was to a great extent in the hands of monks and nuns.
For every religious house was then a hospital as well as a
school, a place where drugs and ointments were com-
pounded and distributed, as well as a place where manu-
scripts were transcribed and illuminated. At a time when
there were but few professional physicians and when these
few were widely separated from one another, the only
places where the poor could always be sure to find free
medical treatment as well as abundant alms were those
sanctuaries of knowledge and charity where the love of
one's neighbor was never lost sight of in the love of sci-
ence and literature. And during this time, too, the care
of the sick was regarded as a duty incumbent on everyone,
but particularly on those devoted to the service of God in
religion. It was considered, above all, as a duty devolving

WOMEN IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY 275

on women, especially on the lady in the castle and on the
nun in the convent.

The old romance of Sir Isumbras gives us a charming
picture of the nuns of long ago receiving the wounded
knight and ministering unto him until he was made whole
and strong, as witness the following verses :

"The nonnes of him they were full fayne,
For that he had the Saracenes slayne

And those haythene honndes.
And of his paynnes sare ganne them rewe.
like a day they made salves new

And laid them till his woundes;
They gave him metis and drynkis lythe,
And heled the knyghte wunder swythe."

So universally during mediaeval times was the healing art
considered as pertaining to woman's calling that it became
a part of the curriculum in convent schools; and no girl's
education was considered complete unless she had an ele-
mentary knowledge of medicine and of that part of surgery
which deals with the treatment of wounds. For during
those troublous times a woman was liable to be called upon
at any time to nurse the sick wayfarer or dress the wounds
of those who had been maimed in battle or in the tourney.

Illustrations of these facts are found in many of the
romances and fabliaux of the Middle Ages. Thus, when a
sick or wounded man was given hospitality in a chateau
or castle it was not the seigneur, but his wife and daugh-
ters, as being better versed in medicine and surgery, who
acted as nurses and doctors and took entire charge of the
patient until his recovery.

In the exquisite little story of Aucassin et Nicolette, the
heroine is pictured as setting the dislocated shoulder of
her lover in the following simple but touching language :

"Nicolette searched his hurt, and perceived that his
shoulder was out of joint. She handled it so deftly with

276 LWOMAN IN SCIENCE

her white hands, and used such skillful surgery that, by
the grace of God, who loveth all true lovers, the shoulder
came back to its place. Then she plucked flowers and
fresh grasses and green leafage, and bound them tightly
about the setting with the hem torn from her shift, and
he was altogether healed."

And in the mediaeval Latin poem, Waltharius, written
by a German monk, Ekkehard, reference is made to a
sanguinary contest in which one of the combatants falls to
the earth seriously wounded. Seeing this, Alpharides, in
a loud voice, summons a young girl, who timidly comes for-
ward and dresses the unfortunate man's wound.1

Still more to our purpose is a passage from the famous
epic poem, Tristan and Isolde, written by Godfrey of Stras-
lurg, in which Isolde, accompanied by her mother and
cousin, is represented as administering restoratives to
Tristan, who had fallen exhausted after his combat with
the dragon. It shows that women, in accompanying an
army to the field of battle, always went provided with
bandages and medicaments for dressing wounds and frac-
tured limbs. Similarly Angelica, in Orlando Furioso, and
Ermina, in Jerusalem Delivered, are portrayed as surgeons
with deftness of hand and leeches with rare knowledge and
skiU.

The frequent introduction of women doctors into the
poems and romances of the Middle Ages would of itself,
if other evidence were wanting, suffice to show what an
important role women played in medicine and surgery at
a time when, in many parts of Europe, women were far
better educated and far more cultured than men — "when
the knights and barons of France and Germany were in-
clined to look upon reading and writing as unmanly and
almost degrading accomplishments, fit only for priests or

i Haec inter timidam revocat clamore puellam Alpharides, veniens
quse saucia quaeque ligavit.

— Ekkehardi Primi Waltharius, Berlin, 1873.

WOMEN IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY 277

monks, and especially for priests or monks not too well
born."1

In the instances just quoted, as well as those mentioned
by Homer and Euripides, the writers do no more than
faithfully reflect conditions which then obtained, and
truthfully report what were the occupations of women
when their status was so different from what it is to-day.
But, fortunately, we do not have to rely on works of the
imagination for our knowledge respecting the women prac-
titioners of the healing art, either during the Homeric
period or during that which intervened between the down-
fall of Rome and the dawn of the Renaissance. For the
history of medicine during medieval times affords too many
examples of women who became famous for their knowl-
edge of medicine, as well as for their success in surgical
and medical practice, to leave any doubt about the matter.
Besides this, we have still the writings of many of these
woman, and are thus able to judge of their competency in
those branches of knowledge on which they shed so great
luster.

One of the most noted of them was the Benedictine ab-
bess, St. Hildegard, of Bingen on the Rhine, who was emi-

i That the Germans, at the time under discussion, regarded learn-
ing as having an effeminating effect on men is well illustrated by
the following characteristic anecdote: "When Amasvintha, a very
learned woman who was a daughter of the Ostrogoth King, Theodoric,
selected three masters for the instruction of her son, the people
became indignant. ' Theodoric/ they exclaimed, 'never sent the
children of the Goths to school, learning making a woman of a man
and rendering him timorous. The saber and the lance are sufficient
for him.' " Procopius, De Bella GotUco, I, 2, Leipsic, 1905.

If we may judge by a letter from Pace to Dean Colet, the noted
classical scholar and founder of St. Paul's school in London, such
views found acceptance in England as late as the time of More and
Erasmus. For we are told of a British parent who expressed his
opinion on the education of men in these words: "I swear by God's
body I'd rather that my son should hang than study letters. The
study of letters should be left to rustics. "

278 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

nent not only as a theologian but also as a writer whose
treatises on various branches of science are justly regarded
as the most important productions of the kind during the
Middle Ages prior to the time of Albertus Magnus. Be-
sides this, she not only wrote many books on materia
medica, on pathology, physiology and therapeutics, but, as
a practitioner, she gloriously sustained the best traditions
of her sex in both theoretical and practical medicine.

Her work entitled Liber Simplicis Medicince, which deals
with what in the Saint's time was called "simples" — for
the belief was then current that each plant or herb was or
provided a specific for some disease — contains accounts of
many plants used in materia medica, as well as statements
of their importance in therapeutics. Her descriptions often
indicate an observer of exceptionally keen perception and
one whose knowledge of science was far in advance of her
epoch. The same observations may be made respecting
Hildegard's work, Liber Compositor Medicince, in which she
treats of the causes, signs and treatment of diseases.1

Still more remarkable, in many respects, is a treatise in
nine books, entitled Physica or Liber Subtilitatum Diver-
sarum Naturarum Creaturarum, which, among other
things, treats of the various elements, of plants, trees, min-
erals, fish, birds, quadrupeds, and of the manner in which
they may be of service to man. Of so great importance
was this book considered that several editions of it were
printed as early as the sixteenth century. No less an
authority than the late Eudolph Virchow, the founder of
cellular pathology, characterizes it as an early materia
medica, curiously complete, considering the age to which it
belongs."2 And Haeser, in his history of medicine,
i This work was for a long time regarded as lost, but a manu-
script copy was recently found in Copenhagen, and it has since been
published by Teubner of Leipsic, under the title of Hildegard's
Causes et Curce.

2 Archiv fur Pathologische Anatomie und Physiologie und fur
Klinische Medicin, Band 18, p. 286, Berlin.

WOMEN IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY 279

directs attention to the historical value of the book, de-
claring it to be "an independent German treatise, based
chiefly on popular experience."

Dr. F. A. Reuss, of the University of Wiirtzburg, at the
conclusion of his Prolegomena to the Physica published in
Migne's Patrologia, expresses himself as follows regarding
the writings and medical knowledge of the illustrious ab-
bess of Bingen: "Among all the saintly religieuses who,
during the Middle Ages, practiced medicine or wrote trea-
tises on it, the first, without contradiction, is Hildegard.
According to the monk Theodoric, who was an eye witness,
she had to so high a degree the gift of healing that no sick
person had recourse to her without being restored to health.
There is among the books of this prophetic virgin a work
which treats of physics and medicine. Its title is De
Natura Nominis Elementorum Diversarumque Creatur-
arum, and it embodies, as the same Theodoric fully ex-
plains, the secrets of nature which were revealed to the
saint by the prophetic spirit. All who wish to write the
history of the medical and natural sciences should read this
book, in which the holy virgin, initiated into all the secrets
of nature which were then known, and having received
special assistance from above, thoroughly examines and
scrutinizes all that which was, until then, buried in dark-
ness and concealed from the eyes of mortals. It is certain
that Hildegard was acquainted with many things of which
the doctors of the Middle Ages were ignorant, and which
the investigators of our own age, after rediscovering them,
have announced as something entirely new."1

The life and works of St. Hildegard throw a flood of
light on many subjects that have long been veiled in mys-
tery. It explains why the convents of the later Middle
Ages were so famed as curative centers and why the sick
flocked to them for relief from far and near. It reveals
the real agencies employed in effecting the extraordinary

i S. Hildegardis Opera Omnia, Ed. Migne, p. 1122, Paris, 1882.

280 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

cures that were reported in so many religious houses —
cures so extraordinary that they were usually regarded by
the multitude as miraculous — and discloses the secret of
the success of so many nuns in the alleviation of physical
and mental sufferings. It was not because they were
thaumaturges, but because they were good nurses, and
because of their thorough knowledge of the healing art,
that they were able to diagnose and prescribe for diseases
of all kinds with a success which, in the estimation of the
multitude, savored of the supernatural.

There was also another reason for the fame of convents
as sanctuaries of health. They were usually situated in
healthy locations where there was an abundance of pure
water, fresh air and cheerful sunshine. Then there were
likewise a wholesome diet, good sanitary conditions, and,
above all, regularity of life.

The same can be said of the hospitals connected with the
convents. They were not like some of the public hospitals
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in many of the
large cities of Europe — repulsive, prison-like structures,
with narrow windows and devoid of light and air and the
most necessary hygienic appliances — institutions that were
hospitals in name, but which were in reality too frequently
breeding places of disease and death.1

i ' ' In the municipal and state institutions of this period the
beautiful gardens, roomy halls and springs of water of the old
cloistral hospital of the Middle Ages were not heard of, still less
the comforts of their friendly interiors." A History of Nursing,
Vol. I, p. 500, M. Adelaide Nutting and Lavinia L. Dock, New York,
1907.

The mortality in some of the state hospitals from the latter part
of the seventeenth to the middle of the nineteenth century was
appalling, often as high as fifty and sixty per cent. This was due
not only to shockingly unsanitary conditions, but also to inordinate
overcrowding. A large proportion of the beds, incredible as it may
seem, were purposely made for four patients, and six were fre-
quently crowded into them. "The extraordinary spectacle was then
to be seen of two or three small-pox cases, or several surgical cases,

WOMEN IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY 281

Unlike these, the hospitals presided over by nuns of the
type of Hildegard were splendid roomy structures with
large windows and abundance of light, pure air, with
special provisions for the privacy of the patients, and with
sanitary arrangements that not only precluded the dis-
semination of disease but which contributed materially to
those marvelous cures which the good people of the time
attributed to supernatural agencies rather than to the
medical knowledge and skill of the devoted nuns,1 who
were the real conquerors of disease and death.

But the inmates of the cloister were not the only women
who, during the Middle Ages, achieved distinction by their
writings on medical subjects and by their signal success in
the practice of the healing art. In various parts of Eu-
rope, but especially in Italy and France, there were at
this time among women, outside as well as inside con-
vent walls, many daughters of ^Esculapius and sisters of
Hygeia who stood in such high repute among their contem-
poraries that they received the same honors and emolu-
ments as were accorded to their masculine colleagues.

This was particularly the case in Salerno, which was the
venerated mother of all Christian medical schools, and
which, for nine centuries, was universally regarded as ' ' the
unquestioned fountain and archetype of orthodox medi-
cine." Situated on the Gulf of Salerno, and laved by the

lying on one bed. " John Howard, in his Prisons and Hospitals,
pp. 176-177. Warrington, 1874, tells us of two hospitals that were
so crowded that he had "often seen five or six patients in one bed,
and some of them dying. "

It is gratifying to learn that the chief agents in changing this
revolting condition, due to faulty construction and management of
hospitals, were women. Prominent among these benefactors of hu-
manity were Mme. Necker, Florence Nightingale, and the wise and
alert superiors of the various nursing sisterhoods.

i How like Chaucer 's prioress who

"Was so charitable and so piteous,
And al was conscience and tender herte. ' '

282 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

cerulean waters of the Tyrrhenian sea, the Civitas Hip-
pocratica, as it was called on its medals, rejoiced in a sa-
lubrious climate, and was celebrated throughout the world
as the "City sacred to Phoabus, the sedulous nurse of
Minerva, the fountain of physic, the votary of medicine,
the handmaid of Nature, the destroyer of disease and the
strong adversary of death. ' ' x For to this favored city
flocked from all quarters the lame and the halt and those
afflicted with the tortures of disease and the disabilities of
advancing years. The noble and the simple, crowned heads
as well as the poorest of the poor, were found there, all of
them in quest of life's most precious boon — health and
strength.

Never did the far-famed sanctuary of the god of medi-
cine in Epidaurus witness such an influx of invalids as
gathered in the hospitals of Salerno and pressed through
the streets of the Hippocratic city, seeking the aid of those
doctors whose marvelous cures had given them a world-
wide reputation. Small wonder, then, that the Regimen
Santatis Salernitanum — that famous code of health of the
school of Salerno — has been translated into almost all the
languages of modern Europe, and that since 1480 no fewer
than two hundred and fifty editions of it have been pub-
lished. "Not to have been familiar with it from beginning
to end, not to have been able to quote it orally as occasion
might require, would, during the Middle Ages, have cast
serious suspicion upon the professional culture of any phy-

i Cf . Lib. de Virtutibus et Laudibus, by JEgidius, head physician
to Philip Augustus of France, in which occur the following verses:

Urbs Phoebo sacrata, Minervae sedula nutrix,
Fons physicsB, pugil eucrasiae, cultrix medicinae,
Assecla Naturae, vitae paranympha, salutis
Promula fida; magis Lachesis soror, Atropos hostis.
Morbi pernicies, gravis adversaria mortis.

quoted in the appendix, p. xxxii, to S. de Renzi's, Storia Documen
tata della Scuola Medica di Salerno, Naples, 1857.

WOMEN IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY 283

sician. ' ' 1 But the noblest claims of the Hippocratic city
to the gratitude of humanity yet remain to be told. A
German traveler in the thirteenth century wrote :

"Laudibus seternum nullum negat esse Salernum
Illuc pro morbis totus circumfluit orbis."2

This was because Salerno was universally recognized as
the "day star'* and "morning glory" of the best culture in
the healing art, and, still more, because of the thorough
instruction she gave in her schools of medicine and the pre-
eminence she so long held in every department of medical
lore.

The course of study in medicine was long and thorough,
and the candidate applying for a degree had to pass a
rigid examination and give proof not only of his profi-
ciency in every branch of the healing art, but also of per-
fect acquaintance with the various branches of science and
letters as well. At the time of Frederick II, who organ-
ized all the different schools of Salerno into a single uni-
versity, a three years' course in philosophy and literature
was required before one could present himself for entrance
into the school of medicine. The courses in medicine lasted
five years, at least, after which a year of practice with an
old physician was required. In addition to this, if the
candidate wished to practice surgery he was obliged to
devote one year to the study of human anatomy and to the
dissection of human bodies. Considering the progress of
knowledge since the time of Frederick II, it must be ad-
mitted that the legal requirements enforced by the faculty
of Salerno compare favorably with those of the best of our
medical schools of to-day.

Still more to the credit of Salerno, long known as the

1 Cf . The introduction to the English translation of the Regimen
Sanitatis Salernitanum, p. 28, by J. Ordronaux, Philadelphia, 1870.

2 ' ' Immortal praise adorns Salerno 's name

To seek whose shrine the world once came. tr

284 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

Athens of the two Sicilies, was her boundless liberality
toward scholarship and culture regardless of sex. For.
with a chivalrous admiration for intellect, wherever found,
and with a sense of intellectual justice that has put to
shame all medical schools outside of Italy, until less than
fifty years ago, the school of Salerno was the first to throw
open its portals to women as well as men, and give to an
admiring world a number of women — those celebrated
mulieres Salernitance — who were eminent not only as physi-
cians, but also as professors of the theory and practice of
medicine. For this reason, if for no other, it can be truly
affirmed that ' ' No school of medicine in any age or country,
if only for this, can ever over-peer her in renown; and,
even as formerly in the universities of Europe, at the bare
mention of the name of the learned Cujacius, every scholar
instinctively uncovered himself, so at the very name of
Salernum, the fount and nurse of rational medicine, every
physician should recall her memory 'with mute thanks and
secret ecstasy' as among the most spotless and venerated
chapters in the history of his art."1

The most noted professor and successful practitioner
among the women of Salerno was Trotula, wife of the dis-
tinguished physician, John Platearius, and a member of the
old noble family of the Ruggiero. She flourished during
the eleventh century and enjoyed a reputation as a physi-
cian that was not inferior to that of the most noted doctors
of her time. Besides occupying a chair in the school of
medicine and having an extensive practice, she was the
author of many works on medicine which had a great
vogue among her contemporaries. Some of them, especially
those relating to diseases of her own sex,2 were published

1 See Storia Documentata della Scuola Medico, di Salerno, lit. sup.,
p. 474 et seq., and p. Ixxvi et seq. of Appendix; also Ordronaux,
ut sup., p. 16.

2 Probably her most noted work is the one which bears the title
De Morbis Mulierum et Eorum Cura — The Diseases of Women and
Their Cure,

WOMEN IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY 285

several times after the invention of printing, and many
manuscript copies of her works are still found in various
libraries of Europe. But she did not confine her practice
to the diseases of women. She was also well versed in gen-
eral medicine and exhibited, besides, as her works testify,
marked skill as a surgeon in many cases that would even
now be considered as peculiarly difficult of treatment.

One of her books was entitled De Compositione Medico-
mentorum — the Compounding of Medicaments — and it was
this work, doubtless, that gave her much of the fame she
enjoyed beyond the confines of Italy. Ruteboeuf, a noted
French trouvere of the thirteenth century, gives us a quaint
picture of a scene frequently witnessed in his day. Crowds
were frequently attracted by herbalists — venders of sim-
ples— who, stationed at street corners or in other public
places, near tables covered with a cloth of flaring colors,
were wont to descant, somewhat after the style of certain
of our patent-medicine hawkers and quack-salvers, upon
the extraordinary curative properties of the various drugs
and panaceas which they had for sale.

"Good people," one of these traveling herb doctors
would begin, "I am not one of those poor preachers, nor
one of those poor herbalists who carry boxes and sachets
and spread them out on a carpet. No, I am a disciple of
a great lady named Madame Trotte of Salerno, who per-
forms such marvels of every kind. And know ye that she
is the wisest woman in the four quarters of the world. ' '

Ordericus Vitalis, an English Benedictine monk, in his
Historia Ecclesiastica, tells us of the impression made by
Trotula on Rudolfo Malacorona, one of those famous itiner-
ant scholars of the Middle Ages, who spent their lives in
wandering from one university to another in pursuit of
knowledge. He had been a student from his youth and
was a man of remarkable attainments in every department
of learning. After visiting and conferring with the learned
men of the most celebrated universities of France and

286 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

Italy, he finally arrived at Salerno, where, he informs us,
he found no one who could cope with him in disputation
except quandam sapientem matronam — a certain very
learned woman.1 This was Trotula, who, by reason of the
extraordinary cures she effected, was known among her
contemporaries as magistra operis — a consummate prac-
titioner. When, however, we consider the thorough course
of study that every one aspiring to a degree in medicine
was obliged to complete, women as well as men, it is not
so surprising that Trotula should be regarded both as a
learned woman and as a successful physician.

Among other women doctors who did honor to Salerno
and whose names have come down to us were three who are
known in history as Abella, Eebeca de Guarna and Mercuri-
ade. All of them achieved a great reputation by their
writings on medical subjects, especially Mercuriade, who
distinguished herself in surgery as well as in medicine.
Still another woman deserving special mention is Fran-
cesca, wife of Matteo de Romana, of Salerno. After pass-
ing a very severe examination before a board composed of
physicians and surgeons, she was accorded the doctorate in
surgery. An official document of the time referring to this
event reads as follows: " Whereas the laws permit women
to practice medicine, and whereas, from the viewpoint of
good morals, women are best adapted to the treatment of
their own sex, we, after having received the oath of fidel-
ity, permit the said Francesca to practice the said art of
healing," etc.2

' '

Physicse quoque seientiam tarn copiose habuit ut in urbe
Psaleritana, ubi maxime medicorum scholse ab antique tempore ha-
bentur, neminem in medicinali arte, praeter quandam sapientem
matronam, sibi parem inveniret. " Migne, Patrologiae Latinae, Tom.
188, Col. 260.

2 As this decree is of singular interest and importance, a copy
of the original is here given in full:

"Karolus, etc., Universis per Justitieratum Principatus citra Ser-
ras Montorii constitutis presentes litteras inspecturis fidelibus pa-

WOMEN IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY 287

In view of the facts above mentioned regarding the Uni-
versity of Salerno — the excellence of its work, its liberality
and breadth of view, its attitude toward the higher educa-
tion of women, and its preeminence for so many centuries
as a school of medicine — is it surprising that it was, until
comparatively recent times, considered l ' the mater et caput
of medical authority in ethical matters," and that, so late
as 1748, the Medical Faculty of Paris should address an
official letter to the faculty of Salerno requesting its judg-
ment regarding the rights of precedence as between physi-
cians and surgeons ? But what is surprising, and what, too,

terms et suis salutem, etc. In actionibus nostris utilitati puplice
libenter oportune perspicimus et honestatem morum in quantum suadet
modestia conservamus. Sane Francisea uxor Mathei de Eomana de
Salerno in Regia Curia presens exposuit quod ipsa circa principale
exercitium cirurgie sufficiens circumspecto in talibus judicio reputa-
tur. Propter quod excellence nostre supplicavit attentius ut licen-
tiam sibi dignaremus concedere in arte hujusmodi practicandi. Quia
igitur per scriptum puplicum universitatis terre Salerni presentatum
eidem Eegie Curie, inventum est lucide quod Francisca prefata fidelis
est et genere orta fidelium ac examinata per medicos Eegios pa-
ternos nostrosque cirurgicos, in eadem arte cirurgie tamquam ydiota
suffieiens est inventa, licet alienum sit feminis conventibus interrese
virorum, ne in matronalis pudoris contumelia irruant et primum cul-
pam vetite transgressionis incurrant. Quia tamen de juris indicto
medicine officium mulieribus est concessum expedienter attento quod
ad mulieres curandas egrotas de honestate morum viris sunt femine
aptiores, not recepto prius ab eadem Francisca solito fidelitatis et
quod iuxta tradiciones ipsius artis curabit fideliter corporaliter Jura-
mento, licentiam curandi et practicandi sibi in eadem arte per Jus-
titieratum jam dictum auctoritate presentium impartimus. Quare
fidelitati vestre precipimus quatenus eandem Franciscam curare et
practicari in prefata arte per Justitieratum predictum ad honorem
et fidelitatem paternam et nostram ac utilitatem fidelium presentium
earumdam libere permittatis, nullum sibi in hoe impedimentum vel
obstaculum interentes. Datum Neapoli per dominum Bartholomeum
de Capua, etc., Anno domini mcccxxi, die x Septembris v, indictionis
Eegnorum dicti domini patris nostri anno xiii.

Collectio Salernitana, Tom. Ill, p. 338, by G. Henschel, C. Darem-
berg, and S. de Eenzi, Naples, 1852-59.

288 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

passes all understanding, is that the University of London,
after being empowered by royal charter to do all things
that could be done by any university, was legally advised
that it could not grant degrees to women without a fresh
charter, because no university had ever granted such de-
grees.1

While women were winning such laurels in Salerno in
every department of the healing art, their sisters north of
the Alps were not idle. As early as 1292 there were in
Paris no less than eight women doctors — called miresses or
mediciennes — whose names have come down to us, not to
speak of those who practiced in other parts of France.
There was also a certain number of women who devoted
themselves to surgery and called by the old Latin authors
of the time cyrurgicce.

In Paris, however, conditions for studying and practic-
ing medicine and surgery were far from being as favorable
to women as they were in Salerno. As there were no
schools open to them for the study of these branches, they
had to depend entirely for such knowledge as they were
able to acquire on the aid they could get from practicing
doctors, the reading of medical books and their own experi-
ence. The consequence was that they were not at all so
well equipped for their work as were the women who
enjoyed all the exceptional advantages offered the students
at Salerno. None of them was noted for scholarship, none
of them was a writer of books, and only one of them —

i Universities in the Middle Ages, Vol. II, Part II, p. 712, by
H. Eashdall, Oxford, 1895. The most exhaustive work on the Uni-
versity of Salerno and its famous doctors, men and women, is a joint
work in five volumes entitled Collectio Salernitana; ossia Documenti
Inediti e Trattati di Medicina appartenenti alia scuola Salernitana,
raccolti e illustrati, by G. Henschel, C. Daremberg e S. Eenzi, Naples,
1852-59. Cf. also, Storia Documentata della Scuola Medica di Sa-
lerno, by S. de Eenzi, 'Naples, 1857; L'Ecole de Salerne, by C. Meaux,
with introduction by C. Daremberg, Paris, 1880, and Piero Giacosa's
Magistri Salernitani Nondum Editi, Turin, 1891.

WOMEN IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY 289

Jacobe Felicie, about whom more presently — rose above
mediocrity.

The reason for the great difference between the condi-
tions of the women doctors of Paris and those of Salerno is
not far to seek. The Faculty of Medicine in Paris was,
from the beginning of its existence, unalterably opposed to
female medical practitioners. As early as 1220 it promul-
gated an edict prohibiting the practice of medicine by any
one who did not belong to the faculty, and, according to
its constitutions and by-laws, only unmarried men were
eligible to membership.

For a long time the edict remained a dead letter. But
eventually, as the faculty grew in power and influence, it
was able to enforce the observance of its decrees. One of
its first victims was Jacobe Felicie, just mentioned, who was
hailed before court for practicing medicine in contraven-
tion of its edict issued many years before.

Jacobe Felicie was a woman of noble birth, and had won
distinction by her success in the healing art. As the testi-
mony at her trial revealed, she never treated the sick for
the sake of gain. In nearly all cases the sick who had
addressed themselves to her had been abandoned by their
own physicians. All the witnesses who had been called
testified that they had been cured by Jacobe Felicie, and
all expressed their deepest gratitude to her for her care
and devotion. But, in spite of all these facts, and in spite
of the brilliant defence that this worthy woman made,
she was condemned to pay a heavy fine — condemned be-
cause, as the indictment read, she had presumed to put her
sickle into the harvest of others — falcem in messem mittere
alienam — and this was a crime.1 The faculty was a close
corporation and insisted that its members should have a
monopoly of all the honors and emoluments that were to
accrue from the treatment of the sick and suffering. What

1 Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, Tom. II, p. 150, and
pp. 255 and 267, by Denifle and Chatelain, Paris, 1889-1891.

290 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

a curious adumbration of similar proceedings within the
memory of many still living !

The prosecution of Jacobe Felicie recalls that of Agno-
dice in Greece long ages before. And the plea urged for
the necessity of a female physician — that many a woman
would rather die than reveal the secrets of her infirmity to
a man 1 — was the same as that offered by the women of
Athens before the council of the Areopagus. It was the
same agonizing cry that had been heard thousands of times
before and which has been heard thousands of times since.
Isabella of Castile was not the first of the long list of
victims who, for lack of a doctor of their own sex, have
been sacrificed through womanly modesty, and, more's the
pity, she will not be the last.

Unfortunately for the women of France, the result of
the prosecution of Mme. Felicie was the very reverse of
that instituted against Agnodice; for the latter came off
victorious, while the former was condemned and punished.
So crushing was the blow dealt to women practitioners,
outside of obstetrics, that they did not recover from its
effects for more than five hundred years. For it was not
until 1868 that the Ecole de Medicine of Paris opened its
doors to women, and it was not until nearly twenty years
later that female physicians were able to enter the hospi-
tals of the French capital as internes.2

Until quite recent years there is very little to be said of
women physicians in England and Germany. Their prac-
tice, outside of that of certain herb doctors, was confined

i ' ' Mulier antea permitteret se mori, quam secreta infirmitatis
sui homini revelare propter honestatem sexus muliebris et propter
verecundiam quam revelando pateretur." Chartularium Universi-
tatis Parisiensis, Tom. II, p. 264, Paris, 1891.

2 It may interest the reader to know that the first two women to
get the doctorate in the Paris School of Medicine were Miss Eliza-
beth Garret, an English woman, and Miss Mary Putnam, an Ameri-
can. The first woman permitted to practice in the Paris hospitals
was likewise an American, Miss Augusta Klumpke, of San Francisco.

WOMEN IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY 291

chiefly to midwifery. There was no provision made in
either of these countries for the education of women in
medicine and surgery, and such a thing as a college where
they could receive instruction in the healing art was un-
known. It is true that an ecclesiastical law of Edgar,
King of England, permitted women as well as men to prac-
tice medicine, but this law was subsequently abolished by
Henry V.1

During the reign of Henry VIII a law was again en-
acted in favor of women physicians; for at that time an
act was passed for the relief and protection of "Divers
honest psones, as well men as women, whom God hathe
endued with the knowledge of the nature, kind and opera-
gon of certeyne herbes, rotes and waters, and the using and
ministering them to suche as be payned with customable
diseases, for neighbourhode and Goddes sake and of pitie
and charitie, because that "The Companie and Fellowship
of Surgeons of London, mynding only their owne lucres
and nothing the profit or case of the diseased or patient,
have sued, vexed and troubled7 the aforesaid 'honest
psones/ who were henceforth to be allowed 'to practyse,
use and mynistre in and to any outwarde sore, swelling or
disease, any herbes, oyntments, bathes, pultes or emplasters,
according to their cooning, experience and knowledge —
without sute, vexation, penaltie or loss of their goods.' "2

The italicized words in this quotation prove that the
women doctors of England had the same difficulties as their
sisters in France, and that the real reason of the opposition
of the male practitioners was that they wished to monopo-

1 * ' Possunt et vir et f oemina medici esse. ' ' Cf . Chiappelli, Medi-
cina negli Ultimi Ire Secoli del Media Evo, Milan, 1885.

2 Quoted in Woman's Work and Woman's Culture, p. 87, Joseph-
ine E. Butler, London, 1869. Dom Gasquet in his English Monastic
Life, p. 175, tells us that in the Wiltshire convents "the young
maids learned needlework, the art of confectionery, surgery — for
anciently there were no apothecaries or surgeons; the gentlewomen
did cure their poor neighbors — physic, drawing, etc."

WOMAN IN SCIENCE

lize the practice of medicine. They, like the medical fac-
ulty of Paris, strenuously objected to women "putting the
sickle into their harvest," and they, accordingly, left noth-
ing undone to circumvent the intrusion of those whom they
always regarded as undesirable competitors.

It was argued by the men that women, to begin with,
lacked the strength and capacity necessary for medical
practice. It was also urged that it was indelicate and un-
womanly for the gentler sex to engage in the healing art,
and that, for their own good, they should be excluded from
it at all costs. Those who were willing to waive these
objections contended that women had not the knowledge
necessary for the profession of medicine and should be
excluded on the score of ignorance. When women sought
to qualify themselves for medical practice by seeking in-
struction under licenced practitioners or in medical schools,
they found a deaf ear turned to their requests. The doc-
tors declined to teach them and the medical schools, one
and all, closed their doors against them.

Thus it was that in England, France and Germany the
practice of medicine and surgery was always practically in
the hands of men until only a generation ago. Even the
English midwives gradually ' ' fell from their high estate, ' '
and were left far behind the female obstetricians of Ger-
many and France. For these two countries can point to
a number of midwives who, by their knowledge, successful
practice, and the books they wrote, achieved a celebrity
that still endures.

Chief among these in Germany were Regina Joseph von
Siebold, her daughter Carlotta, and Frau Teresa Frei, all
of whom, in the early part of the last century, enjoyed an
enviable reputation in the Fatherland.

The first named, after following a course of lectures on
physiology and the diseases of women and children, and
passing a brilliant examination in the medical college of
Darmstadt, devoted herself to the practice of obstetrics,

WOMEN IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY

and with so great success that the University of Giessen in
1819 conferred on her the degree of doctor of obstetrics.
Her daughter, Carlotta, after studying obstetrics under her
mother, went to the University of Gottingen, where she
devoted herself to physiology, anatomy and pathology.
After passing an examination and successfully defending a
number of theses in the University of Giessen, she was also
proclaimed a doctor of obstetrics. At a later date Frau
Frei received a similar degree.1

More noted as accoucheuses and gynecologists than the
three distinguished women just mentioned were Mme. Marie
Louise La Chapelle and Mme. Marie Bovin, who, shortly
after the French Revolution, entered upon those wonderful
careers in their chosen specialties which have given them
so unique a place in the annals of medicine.

Mme. La Chapelle was particularly celebrated for the

i The first woman to receive the doctorate of medicine in Germany
was Frau Dorothea Christin Erxleben. Hers, however, was a wholly
exceptional case, and required the intervention of no less a person-
age than Frederick the Great. In 1754, Frau Erxleben, who had made
a thorough course of humanities under her father, presented her-
self before the faculty of the University of Halle, where she passed
an oral examination in Latin which lasted two hours. So impressed
were the examiners by her knowledge and eloquence that they did
not hesitate to adjudge her worthy of the coveted degree, which was
accorded her by virtue of a royal edict.

Her reception of the doctorate was made the occasion of a most
enthusiastic demonstration in her honor. Felicitations poured in
upon her from all quarters in both prose and verse. One of them,
in lapidary style, runs as follows:

"Stupete nova litteraria,
In Italia nonnumquam,
In Germania nunquam
Visa vel audita
At quo rarius eo carius."

This, freely translated, adverts to the fact that an event, which be-
fore had been witnessed only in Italy, was then being celebrated in
Germany for the first time, and was, for that very reason, specially
deserving of commemoration.

294 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

numerous improvements she effected in lying-in hospitals,
for the large number of skilled midwives whom she fur-
nished, not only to France, but also to the whole of Eu-
rope, and, above all, for the excellent treatises which she
wrote on obstetrics, which gave her a reputation second to
none among her contemporaries, men or women. Her
Pratique des Accouchement s, in three volumes, based on
the immense number of fifty thousand cases at which she
presided, reveals an operator of rarest skill and genius.
This production was long regarded as a standard work on
the topics discussed, and for years exerted an immense
influence in the medical world.

Less skillful as an operator, but of greater ability as a
doctor than Mme. La Chapelle, was her illustrious con-
temporary, Mme. Bovin. Possessing extraordinary insight
as an investigator and marvelous sagacity as a diagnos-
tician, Mme. Bovin achieved the distinction of being the
first really great woman doctor of modern times. Her
marvelous success as a practitioner — Dupuytren said she
had an eye at the tip of her finger — her extended knowl-
edge of the entire range of gynecology, but above all her
numerous treatises on the subject matter of her life work,
gave her a prestige that none of her sex had ever before
enjoyed, and commanded the admiration of the doctors of
the world. Her Memorial de I' Art des Accouchements
passed through many editions and was translated into
several European languages. And so highly were her sci-
entific attainments valued in Germany that the University
of Marburg recognized them by conferring on her — hon-
oris causa — the degree of doctor of medicine and, had its
rules permitted the admission of women, the Koyal Acad-
emy of Medicine would have honored her with a place
among its members. She was also the recipient of many
other honors, besides being a member of several learned
societies. But the greatest monument to her genius is a
large illustrated treatise in two volumes, in which she

WOMEN IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY 295

exhibits a wonderful knowledge of anatomy, physiology,
surgery, pathology and therapeutics. It gave her a large
following in Germany as well as in France, and there were
not wanting distinguished German accoucheurs who fol-
lowed Mme. Bovin's teachings to the letter.

The remarkable German and French women just named
were all practically self-made women. They won fame as
they had acquired knowledge — chiefly by courage, in spite
of the countless obstacles that beset their paths. They
owed nothing to schools or universities, nothing to govern-
ment patronage or assistance, nothing to the medical fra-
ternity as a whole. Universities would not admit them to
their lecture rooms or laboratories, and the various medical
faculties opposed them as intruders into their jealously
guarded domain, and as competitors whose aspirations
were to be frustrated, whatever the means employed. It
is true that, when some of the women mentioned had won
world-wide renown by their achievements, they were made
the recipients of belated honors by certain universities and
learned societies; but these societies and universities were
then honoring themselves as much as the women who re-
ceived their degrees and diplomas of membership.

How different it was in Italy, which, since the fall of the
Roman Empire, has ever been in the van of civilization,
and which has always continued the best traditions of
Graeco-Roman learning and culture — Italy, which has been
the home of such supreme masters of literature, science,
art as Dante, Petrarch, Galileo, Leonardo da Vinci, Ra-
phael, Michaelangelo, Brunnelleschi — Italy, the mother of
universities, the birthplace of the Renaissance, and the
recognized leader of intellectual progress among the nations
of the world. Here in the favored land of the Muses and
the Graces, women enjoyed all the rights and privileges
accorded to men ; here the doors of schools and universities
were open to all regardless of sex; and art, science, liter-
ature, law, medicine, jurisprudence counted its votaries

296 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

among women as well as among men; here, far from en-
countering jealousy and opposition in the pursuit of knowl-
edge or in the practice of the professions, women never
found aught but generous emulation and sympathetic co-
operation.

For a thousand years women were welcomed into the
arena of learning and culture on the same footing as men.
In Salerno, Bologna, Padua, Pavia, they competed for the
same honors and were contestants for the same prizes that
stimulated the exertions of the sterner sex. Position and
emolument were the guerdons of merit and ability, and the
victor, whether man or woman, was equally acclaimed and
showered with equal honor. Women asked for no favors
in the intellectual arena and expected none. All they de-
sired were the same opportunities and the same privileges
as were granted the men, and these were never denied them.
From the time when Trotula taught in Salerno to the
present, when Giuseppina Catani is professor of general
pathology in the medical faculty of Bologna, the women of
Italy always had access to the universities and were at
liberty to follow any course of study they might elect. We
thus find them achieving distinction in civil and canon
law, in medicine, in theology even, as well as in art, sci-
ence, literature, philosophy and linguistics. No depart-
ment of knowledge had any terrors for them, and there
was none in which some of them did not win undying fame.
They held chairs of language, jurisprudence, philosophy,
physics, mathematics, medicine and anatomy, and filled
these positions with such marked ability that they com-
manded the admiration and applause of all who heard them.

This is not the place to tell of the triumphs of the women
professors in the Italian universities, or to recount the
achievements of those who were honored with degrees
within their classic walls. Let it suffice to recall the names
of a few of those who won renown in medicine and sur-

WOMEN IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY 297

gery and whose names are still in their own land pro-
nounced with respect and veneration.

One of the most noted practitioners in Southern Italy,
after the death of Trotula and her compeers, was one
Margarita, who had studied medicine in Salerno. One of
her patients was no less a personage than Ladislaus, King
of Naples. Among those that had diplomas for the prac-
tice of surgery were Maria Incarnata, of Naples, and
Thomasia de Matteo, of Castro Isiae.

That women enjoyed in Rome the same privileges in the
practice of medicine and surgery as their sisters in the
southern part of the peninsula is manifest from an edict
issued by Pope Sixtus IV in confirmation of a law promul-
gated by the Medical Faculty of Rome, which reads as
follows: "No man or woman, whether Christian or Jew,
unless he be a master or a licentiate in medicine, shall pre-
sume to treat the human body either as a physician or as
a surgeon."1

In central and northern Italy — in Florence, Turin,
Padua, Venice — as well as in the southern part, we find
constantly recurring instances of women practicing medi-
cine and surgery and winning for themselves an enviable
reputation as successful practitioners.

But after the decline of Salerno, consequent on the
establishment by Frederick II of a school of medicine in
Naples, the great center of medicine and surgery, as of civil
and canon law, was Bologna.2 So renowned did it become

1 ( { Nemo masculus aut f oemina, seu Christianus vel Judaeus, nisi
Magister vel Licentiatus in Medicina foret, auderet humano corpori
mederi in physica vel in chyrurgia." Marini, Archiatri Pontifici,
Tom. I, p. 199, Koma, 1784.

2 Thomas Aquinas, the Angel of the Schools, who had taught in
Salerno, and was well acquainted with the leading universities of
Europe, was wont to say "Quattuor sunt urbes caeteris prseeminentes,
Parisius in Scientiis, Salernum in Medicinis, Bononia in legibus,
Aurelianis in actoribus — " there are four preeminent cities: Paris,

298 iWOMAN IN SCIENCE

as a teaching and intellectual center that it was, as Sarti
informs us, known throughout Europe as Civitas Docta —
the learned city — and Mater Studiorum — the mother of
studies. On its coins were stamped the words Bononia
Docet — Bologna teaches — and on the city seal, which is still
used for certain puhlic documents, were the words Legum
Bononia Mater — Bologna, the Mother of Laws.

Here, more than in Salerno, more than in any other city
in the world, was, for long centuries, witnessed a blooming
of female genius that has, since the time of Gratian and
Irnerius, given the University of Bologna preeminence in
the estimation of all friends of woman's education and
woman's culture. For here, within the walls of what was
for centuries the most celebrated university in Christen-
dom, women had, for the first time, an opportunity of
devoting themselves at will to the study of any and all
branches of knowledge. And it can be truthfully affirmed
that no seat of learning can point to such a long list of
eminent scholars and teachers among the gentler sex as is
to be found on the register of Bologna 's famous university.
For here, to name only a few, achieved distinction, either
as students or as professors, such noted women as Bitisia
Gozzadina, Bettina and Novella Calendrini, Dorotea Boc-
chi, Giovanna and Maddalena Bianchetti, Virginia Mal-
vezzi, Maria Vittoria Dosi, Elisabetta Sirani, Ippolita
Grassi, Properzia de Rossi, Maria Mastellagri, Laura Bassi,
Maddelena Noe-Candedi, Clotilda Tambroni and Anna
Manzolini. In this honor list we have a group of savantes

in the sciences; Salerno, in medicine; Bologna, in law; Orleans,
in actors. Op. 17. De Virtutibus et Vitiis, Cap. ult.

The mediaeval poet, Galfrido, expressed the same idea in verse
when he wrote:

"In morbis sanat medici virtute Salernum
JEgros: in causis Bononia legibus armat
Nudos: Parisius dispensat in artibus illos
Panes, unde cibat robustos: Aurelianis
Educat in cunis actorum lacte tenellos. "

WOMEN IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY

that were famed throughout Europe for their attainments
in law, philosophy, science, ancient and modern languages,
medicine, and surgery — the rivals, and sometimes the
superiors, in scholarship of the ablest men among their
distinguished colleagues.

It would be a pleasure to recount the achievements of
these justly celebrated daughters of Italy; but lack of
space precludes the mention of more than one of them.
This was Maria dalle Donne, who was born of poor peas-
ants near Bologna, and who at an early age exhibited in-
telligence of a superior order. After pursuing her studies
under the ablest masters, she obtained from the University
of Bologna, maxima cum laude, the degree of doctor in
philosophy and medicine. On account of her knowledge of
surgery, as well as of medicine, she was soon afterward put
in charge of the city's school for mid wives. When Na-
poleon, in 1802, passed through Bologna he was so struck
by the exceptional ability of the young dottoressa that, on
the recommendation of the savant Caterzani, he had insti-
tuted for her in the university a chair of obstetrics — a
position which she held until the time of her death, in
1842, with the greatest credit to herself and to the institu-
tion with which she was identified.

Maria dalle Donne is a worthy link between that long
line of women doctors, beginning with Trotula, who have
so honored their sex in Italy, and those still more numer-
ous practitioners in the healing art who, shortly after her
death, began to spring up in all parts of the civilized
world.1

i It may be remarked that it was a woman, Lady Mary Montagu,
who introduced inoculation with small-pox virus into Western Europe,
and that it was also a woman — a simple English milkmaid — who
communicated to Jenner the information which led to his discovery
of a prophylactic against small-pox. But of far greater importance
was the introduction into Europe of that priceless febrifuge and
antiperiodic — chinchona bark. This was due to the Countess of
Chinchon, vicereine of Peru. Having been cured by its virtues of an

300 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

For it was about this time that the movement which had
long been agitated in behalf of the higher education of
women began suddenly to assume extraordinary vitality,
not only throughout Europe but in America as well. And
to no women did this movement appeal so strongly as to
those who had long been looking forward to an opportunity
to qualify themselves for the learned professions, especially
medicine. No sooner did they descry the first flush of dawn
on their long-deferred hopes than they began to consider
ways and means for putting their fondly nurtured projects
into execution.

Seven years, almost to the day, after the death of Maria
dalle Donne, Miss Elizabeth Blackwell, a young woman in
America, of English birth, decided to enter college with a
view of studying medicine and surgery. But, at the very
outset, she encountered all kinds of unforeseen difficulties
— difficulties that would have caused a less courageous and
determined woman to give up her plans in despair. She
was told, in the first place, that it was highly improper
for a woman to study medicine and that no decent woman
would think of becoming a medical practitioner. As to a
lady studying or practicing surgery that, of course, was out
of the question.

But a more serious obstacle than the conventionalities in
the case was the difficulty of finding a medical college that
was willing to admit a woman to its lecture rooms and
laboratories. Miss Blackwell applied to more than a dozen

aggravated case of tertian fever in 1638, while living in Lima, she
lost no time, on her return to Spain, in making known to the world
the marvelous curative properties of the precious quinine-producing
bark. The powder made from the bark was most appropriately called
Pulvis ComitesscB — the countess's powder — and by this name it was
long known to druggists and in commerce. Thanks to Linnaeus, the
memory of the gracious lady will always be kept green, because her
name is now borne by nearly eight score species of the beautiful
trees which constitute the great and incomparable genus Chinchona.
See A Memoir of the Lady Ana de Osorio, Countess of Chinchon,
and Vice-Queen of Peru, by Clements B. Markham, London, 1874.

WOMEN IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY 301

of the leading institutions of America, and received a posi-
tive refusal to her request. Finally, when hope had almost
vanished, she received word from a small college in Geneva,
New York, announcing that her application had been favor-
ably considered and that she would be admitted as a stu-
dent whenever she presented herself.

The truth is that the faculty of the college was opposed
to the young woman's admission, but wished to escape the
odium incident to a direct refusal by referring the ques-
tion to the class with a proviso which, it was believed,
would necessarily exclude her. ' l But in this it was greatly
surprised and disappointed. For the entire medical class,
to the number of about one hundred and fifty, decided
unanimously in favor of the fair applicant's admission.
And they did more than this. They put themselves on
record regarding the equality of educational opportunities
for women and men in a way that must have put their
timid professors to shame. Their resolution, accompanying
an invitation to the young woman to become a member of
the student body, was worded as follows:

" ' Resolved, That one of the radical principles of a re-
publican government is the universal education of both
sexes ; that to every branch of scientific education the door
should be equally open to all; that the application of
Elizabeth Blackwell to become a member of our class meets
our entire approbation, and, in extending our unanimous
invitation, we pledge ourselves that no conduct of ours
shall cause her to regret her attendance at this institu-
tion.' "

The students were as good as their word. Their conduct,
as Miss Blackwell wrote years afterward, was always ad-
mirable and that of "true Christian gentlemen." But the
women of Geneva were shocked at the female medical stu-
dent. They stared at her as a curious animal; and the
theory was fully established that she was "either a bad
woman, whose designs would gradually become evident, or

302 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

that, being insane, an outbreak of insanity would soon be
apparent. ' n

In due time Miss Blackwell finished her course in medi-
cine and surgery, and graduated at the head of her class.
The orator of the day, who was a member of the faculty,
naturally referred to the new departure that had been
made — the admission of a woman for the first time to a
complete medical education — and among other things de-
clared that the experiment, of which every member of the
faculty was proud, "had proved that the strongest intellect
and nerve and the most untiring perseverance were com-
patible with the softest attributes of feminine delicacy and
grace. ' ' 2

The awarding of the degree of M.D. for the first time to
a woman in America excited general comment and wide-
spread interest, not only in the United States, but in
Europe as well. The public press was not unfavorable in
its opinion of the new departure, and even Punch could
not resist writing some verses, sympathetic, albeit humor-
ous, in honor of the fair M.D.3

i Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women,
p. 70, by Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, London, 1895. 2 Ibid., p. 91.
3 "Young ladies all, of every clime,

Especially of Britain
Who wholly occupy your time

In novels or in knitting,
Whose highest skill is but to play,

Sing, dance or French to clack well,
Reflect on the example, pray,

Of excellent Miss Blackwell.

"For Doctrix Blackwell, that's the way

To dub in rightful gender —
In her profession, ever may

Prosperity attend her.
Punch a gold-headed parasol

Suggests for presentation
To one so well deserving all

Esteem and Admiration."

WOMEN IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY 303

After spending some time abroad studying in the great
hospitals of Europe, Miss Blackwell started the practice of
medicine in New York City. At first, as she declares in
her autobiographical sketches, it was "very difficult, though
steady, uphill work. I had, ' ' she tells us, ' ' no medical com-
panionship, the profession stood aloof, and society was dis-
trustful of the innovation. ' '

The aloofness of the profession arose from a dread of
successful rivalry, and the men did not wish to encourage
"the invasion by women of their own preserves. " "You
cannot expect us/' one of them frankly admitted to her,
"to furnish you with a stick to break our heads with."

But, undeterred by opposition, Miss Blackwell continued
her work, daily making converts to the new movement and
receiving substantial aid, as well as sympathetic coopera-
tion, from many people, both men and women, prominent
in society and public life. In 1854 she started a free dis-
pensary for poor women. Three years later she founded
a hospital for women and children, where young women
physicians as well as patients could be received. These
were the humble beginnings of the present flourishing insti-
tutions known as the New York Infirmary and the College
for Women. And in less than ten years after her gradu-
ation, Miss Blackwell saw the new departure in medical
practice successfully established, not only in New York,
but also in other large cities of the United States. In
1869 the early pioneer medical work by women in America
was completed.

"During the twenty years which followed the gradua-
tion of the first woman physician, the public recognition
of the justice and advantage of such a measure had stead-
ily grown. Throughout the northern states the free and
equal entrance of women into the profession of medicine
was secured. In Boston, New York and Philadelphia spe-
cial medical schools for women were sanctioned by the

304 ;WOMAN IN SCIENCE

legislatures, and in some long-established colleges women
were received as students in the ordinary classes. ' n

Meanwhile, the women in Europe were not idle nor heed-
less of the example set by their brave sisters in America.
The University of Zurich threw open its portals to women,
and was soon followed by those of Bern and Geneva. The
first woman to obtain a degree in medicine in Zurich — it
was in 1867 — was Nadejda Suslowa, a Russian. She was
soon followed by scores of others from Europe and Amer-
ica, who found greater advantages and more sympathy in
Swiss universities than elsewhere.

In 1869 the Medico-Chirurgical Academy of St. Peters-
burg conferred the degree of M.D. upon Madame Kasche-
warow, the first female candidate for this honor. When
her name was mentioned by the dean it was received with
an immense storm of applause which lasted several min-
utes. The ceremony of investing her with the insignia of
her dignity being over, her fellow students and colleagues
lifted her on a chair and carried her with triumphant
shouts throughout the halls.

The first woman graduate from the University of France
was Miss Elizabeth Garrett, of England. She received her
degree in medicine in 1870, and the following year the
same institution conferred the doctor's degree on Miss
Mary C. Putnam, of New York.

After these precedents had been established, the uni-
versities of the various countries on the continent, follow-
ing the examples set by those in the United States and
Switzerland, opened one after the other their doors to
women, and in most of them accorded them all the privi-
leges of cives academici enjoyed by the men.

Great Britain held out against the new movement long

after most of the continental countries had fallen into line,

nor did she surrender until after a protracted and bitter

fight, during which the men leading the opposition ex-

iQp. cit., p. 241.

WOMEN IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY 305

hibited evidences of selfishness and obscurantism that now
seem incredible.

The leader in Great Britain of pioneer medical work for
women was Miss Sophia Jex-Blake, whose academic path-
way was beset with difficulties far sterner than had in the
United States confronted her friend and colleague, Miss
Blackwell.

Hearing much of the tolerance and liberality of the Uni-
versity of London, she applied to it for admission as a
student, but was informed at once that the charter of the
institution "had purposely been so worded as to exclude
the possibility of examining women for medical degrees/'

After this rebuff she made application to the University
of Edinburgh, which, like the other Scotch universities,
had always boasted of its broad-mindedness and freedom
from educational trammels. She was received provision-
ally, and was, after a while, joined by six other women
who had in view the same object as herself. For a time,
notwithstanding opposition from certain quarters, every-
thing was quiet and apparently satisfactory. But the
gathering storm soon broke, and the seven young women,
as they were one day entering the university gates, were
actually mobbed by a ruffianly band of students who had
all along been opposed to the presence of women in the
class and lecture rooms. They pelted the helpless females
with street mud and hurled at them all the vile epithets
and heaped upon them all the abuse that their foul tongues
could command. These outrageous proceedings on the part
of the rabble of rowdies were allowed to continue for sev-
eral days, and, had it not been for a brave band of chival-
rous young Irishmen among the students, who formed
themselves into a bodyguard for the protection of their fair
classmates, and were, in consequence, known as ' ' The Irish
Brigade," the hapless women students would not have
escaped bodily harm. What a marked contrast between
the conduct toward Miss Blackwell of the gallant students

306 ;WOMAN IN SCIENCE

of the modest little American town and that of the cow-
ardly ruffians of the vaunted ' ' Athens of the North ! ' '

But this was not all. The seven young women in ques-
tion had matriculated as students of the university with
the understanding that they were to have all the rights
and privileges of the male students. But after the dis-
graceful conduct of the mob just referred to, they discov-
ered that the authorities of the university were prepared
to break faith with them, and prevent them from getting
their coveted degrees, and thus debar them from all chance
of medical practice.

The reason why the university was induced to annul its
contract, after the women on their part had fully complied
with all its stipulations, soon became apparent. It was
purely and simply to make it impossible for women to
secure a license as medical practitioners. Both in and
outside of Edinburgh the conviction daily grew stronger
that women doctors were a menace to the monopoly so long
enjoyed by the medical fraternity, and that the movement
in their favor should be crushed by fair means or foul
before it got beyond control. The Spectator made this clear
by stating at the time of the controversy that "every pro-
fession in this country " — England — "is more or less of a
trades union/' and yet the members of these professions
"would shake their heads and prate about the necessity
of stamping out trades unionism among workmen."
" Women, " whined one of the doctors, "would snatch the
bread from the mouths of poor practitioners." Another
doctor who had championed the cause of women physi-
cians, when commenting on the hypocritical objection that
it was unbecoming for women to practice medicine or sur-
gery, expressed the same idea in other words. "It ap-
pears," he declared, "that it is most becoming and proper
for a woman to discharge all the duties which are inci-
dental to our profession for thirty shillings a week ; but, if
she is to have three or four guineas a day for discharging

WOMEN IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY 307

the same duties, then they are immoral and immodest and
unsuited to the soft nature that should characterize a
lady."

After Miss Jex-Blake and her companions learned that
the university was determined to refuse them the degrees
to which they were entitled, they brought suit against it for
breach of contract. But, after a long and expensive trial,
the judge rendered a decision against them. They then
appealed to Parliament, and, after a protracted and strenu-
ous campaign on the part of friends whom they had en-
listed in their cause, they saw their opponents not only
dragged at the chariot wheels of progress but forced to
help to turn them; for, in 1878, after nearly ten years of
a persistent, continuous struggle such as had rarely been
witnessed in woman's long battle for things of the mind —
a struggle in which the intrepid, dauntless Miss Jex-Blake
"made the greatest of all the contributions to the end at-
tained"— the women of Great Britain had the supreme
satisfaction of winning what was probably the most glori-
ous victory which their sex had ever won.1 The war
was over and henceforward they were free — as were their
sisters in other parts of the world — as the women in Italy
had been for a thousand years — to devote themselves at
will to the study and practice of the healing art without
let or hindrance.

What a wonderful change has taken place in the medi-
cal world almost within the space of a single generation!
The tiny grain of mustard that was sown by two lone
women, the Misses Blackwell and Jex-Blake, in their
chosen field of effort has grown and ' ' waxed a great tree. ' '
1 For an interesting account of the long campaign for the ad-
mission of women to medical schools and practice, see Medical
Women — A Thesis and a History, by Dr. Sophia Jex-Blake, Edin-
burgh, 1886.

For a more elaborate work on women in medicine, the reader may
consult with profit, Histoire des Femmes Medecins, by Mile. Melanie
Lepinska, Paris, 1900.

508 JVOMAN IN SCIENCE

Women doctors are now found in all parts of the civilized
world and are numbered by thousands. And so great has
been their professional success, so widespread is the desire
to secure their services, especially in countries like Amer-
ica and England, where opposition was in the beginning
especially bitter, that the proportion of women practition-
ers in medicine and surgery is now regarded as the best
index of a nation's enlightenment.

The healing art of Greece and Rome has broadened out
into the noble sciences of medicine and surgery of to-day.
For, based as they now are on the sciences of chemistry,
botany, biology, hygiene, physiology, anatomy and bacteri-
ology, which have all witnessed such extraordinary devel-
opments during the last half century, they both deserve a
preeminent place in the history of the sciences. And the
success which has crowned woman's efforts in surgery and
medicine is not only a conclusive indication of her capac-
ity, so long denied by her self-interested opponents, but
also the most convincing indication that she is at last
properly occupied in a field of activity from which she
was too long excluded. Her contributions as writer and
investigator toward the progress of both sciences, even dur-
ing the short time in which she has been able to give proof
of her ability, have been notable and augur well for the
share she will have in their future advancement. But
more important still is the refining influence she has al-
ready exerted on both professions, and the relief she has
been able to afford to countless thousands of her own sex
who would otherwise have been the voluntary victims of
untold misery. Women doctors are, indeed, not only
worthy representatives of ^sculapia Victrix and of the
two sciences which they have so elevated and so ennobled,
but are also ministering angels to poor, suffering human-
ity comparable only with the heroic Sisters of Charity and
the devoted nurses of the Red Cross.

CHAPTER IX

WOMEN IN AECH^EOLOGY

Archaeology, in its broadest sense, is one of the most
recent of the sciences, and may be said to be a creation
of the nineteenth century. In its restricted sense, how-
ever, it dates back to the beginning of the Italian Renais-
sance. For it was at this period that the collector's zeal
began to manifest itself, and that were brought together
those priceless treasures of ancient art which are to-day
the pride of the museums of Rome and Florence. It was
then that Pope Sixtus IV and Julius II, his nephew, laid
the foundations of the great museums of the Capitol and
the Vatican, and enriched them with such famous master-
pieces as the Ariadne, the Nile, the Tiber, the Laocoon and
the Apollo Belvidere. Their example was quickly followed
by such cardinals as Ippolito d'Este, Fernando de' Medici,
and by representatives of the leading princely houses of
the Italian peninsula. In rapid succession the palaces of
the Borghese, Chigi, Pamphili, Ludovisi, Barbarini and
Aldobrandini became filled with the choicest Greek and
Roman antiques. In the course of time many of these
treasures found their way to the museums of Venice, Ma-
drid, Paris, Munich and Dresden, while still others were
purchased by wealthy art connoisseurs in various parts of
Europe and Great Britain.

In the beginning these antiques in marble and bronze
were used chiefly for decorative purposes. ' * Courts, stairs,
fountains, galleries and palaces were adorned with statues,
busts, reliefs and sarcophagi applied in such a manner as

.309

310 JVOMAN IN SCIENCE

to become incorporated in contemporary art and thereby
to gain fresh life."1

These treasures of antiquity, statues, bas-reliefs, mosaics,
coins, medals, busts, sarcophagi, and productions of ceramic
art, although at first used almost exclusively for decorating
palaces and villas and enriching museums, were eventually
to become of inestimable value in the study of the history
of art and the civilization of Greece and Rome, as well as
of the various nations of antiquity with which they had
come into contact. Besides this, they supplied the neces-
sary raw material not only for classical archaeology, but
also for that more comprehensive science of archaeology
which deals with the art, the architecture, the language,
the literature, the inscriptions, the manners, customs and
development of our race from prehistoric times until the
present day.

Among the women who took a prominent part in col-
lecting material toward the advancement of archaeologic
science were those illustrious ladies — as celebrated for their
knowledge and culture as for their noble lineage and their
patronage of men of letters — who presided over the bril-
liant courts of Urbino, Mantua, Milan and Ferrara.

Preeminent among these were Elizabetta Gonzaga,
Duchess of Urbino, and Isabella d'Este, Marchioness of
Mantua. The palace of the former — "that peerless lady
who excelled all others in excellence" — was famous for its
precious antiques in bronze and marble, but above all for
its superb collection of rare old books and manuscripts in
Greek, Latin and Hebrew.

Isabella d'Este, who was through life the most intimate
friend of Elizabetta Gonzaga, was acclaimed by her con-
temporaries as "the first lady in the world." She was a
true daughter of the Renaissance, in the heart of which
she was brought up; and "the small, passing incidents of

i A. Michselis, A Century of Archaeological Discoveries, p. 6, New
York, 1908.

WOMEN IN ARCHAEOLOGY 311

her everyday life are to us memorials of the classic age
when the gods of Parnassus walked with men.'71 She was
an even more enthusiastic collector than the Duchess of
Urbino, and her magnificent palace in Mantua was filled
with the choicest works of Greek and Roman art that were
then procurable.

She has been described as one who secured everything
to which she took a fancy. She had but to hear of the
discovery of a beautiful antique, a rare work in bronze or
marble uncovered by the spade of the excavator, when she
forthwith made an effort to procure it for her priceless
collection. If that was not possible, she would not rest
until she could secure something else even more precious.
She aimed at supremacy in everything artistic and intel-
lectual, and would be content with nothing short of per-
fection. Hence it is that her collection of antiques, like
those of her friend, the Duchess of Urbino, is rightly
regarded as having been of singular value in preparing
the way for the foundation of scientific archaeology — a
foundation that was laid by the eminent German scholar,
Winckelmann, in the eighteenth century by the publication
of his masterly work — History of the Art of Antiquity.

The first woman of eminence to take an active part in
archosologic excavation was the youngest sister of Napo-
leon Bonaparte, "the beautiful, clever and ambitious
Caroline." When Joachim Murat became king of Naples,
after his brother-in-law, Joseph Bonaparte, had in 1808
been transferred to the throne of Spain, his wife, Queen
Caroline, gave at once a new impetus to the work of the ex-
cavation of Pompeii along the lines planned a few years be-
fore by the eminent Neapolitan scholar, Michele Arditi.
She exhibited the keenest interest in the work, and the
notable discoveries which were made under her inspiring
supervision of this important undertaking show how much

1 The Most Illustrious Ladies of the Renaissance, p. 152, by
Christopher Hare, London, 1904.

312 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

classical archaeology owes to her intelligent and munificent
patronage.

Queen Caroline proved her interest in the excavations
that were to contribute so much to our knowledge of an-
tiquity "by appearing frequently at Pompeii and stimu-
lating the workmen to greater efforts. She frequently
spent entire days, during the great heat of summer, at the
excavations, to encourage the lazy workmen and to reward
them in the event of success. The funds were increased
so as to make the employment of six hundred men possi-
ble. The Street of Tombs was next uncovered, forming a
complete and solemn picture, greatly impressing the be-
holder even to-day. For the first time a complete outline
of an ancient marketplace and its surroundings could be
obtained. The market, closed and inaccessible to wheeled
traffic, was surrounded by a colonnade filled with monu-
ments, with the great temple in the background, and be-
yond the arcades were other temples or public buildings,
among the principal being the stately Basilica. Constant
•and increased efforts were thus crowned by important re-
sults. The Queen did not withhold generous assistance.
The French architect, Fr. Mazois, received from her fifteen
hundred francs while preparing his monumental work at
Pompeii."1

It is not too much to say that Queen Caroline's archae-
ological work at Pompeii was as far-reaching in its results
as was that of her illustrious brother in the land of the
Pharaohs. It drew in the most impressive manner the
attention of the world to the vast treasures of art which
lay concealed under the earth-covered ruins of the once
noted cities of the ancient world, and stimulated scholars
and learned societies to undertake similar researches in

iMichaBlis, Op. cit., p. 20, Cf. also Fiorelli's Pompeinarum An-
tiquitatum Historia, Vol. I, Pars. Ill, Naples, 1860. Arditi charac-
terized Queen Caroline's interest in the excavations as " entusiasmo
veramente ammirdbile. ' '

WOMEN IN ARCHAEOLOGY 313

Sicily, Greece, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, and the almost
forgotten islands of the ^Egean Seas.

While this energetic sister of the great Napoleon was
occupied in bringing to light those priceless treasures of
art which had for seventeen centuries lain beneath the
ashes of Vesuvius, a bright, refined, spirituelle young girl,
born in Dublin and bred in England, was unconsciously
preparing herself for a brilliant career in the branch of
archaeology known as Christian iconography. Her name
was Anna Murphy, better known to the world as Mrs.
Jameson. At an early age she gave evidence of unusual
intelligence, and she had hardly attained to womanhood
when she was noted for her knowledge of languages and
for her remarkable attainments in art and literature. Nu-
merous journeys to France, Italy and Germany and a sys-
tematic study in the great museums and art galleries of
these countries, but, above all, her association with the
most distinguished scholars of Europe, completed her edu-
cation and prepared her for those splendid works on Chris-
tian art which have made her name a household word
throughout the world.

Mrs. Jameson was a prolific writer, but those of her
works on which her fame chiefly rests are the ones which
are classed under the general title, Sacred and Legendary
Art. They treat of God the Father and Son, of the Ma-
donna and the Saints, as illustrated in art from the earliest
ages to modern times. So masterly and exhaustive was
her treatment of the difficult subjects discussed in this
chef d'&uvre of hers that no less an authority than the
eminent German archaeologist, F. X. Kraus, writes of this
elaborate production as follows:

" Neither before nor since has the subject matter of this
work been handled with such skill and thoroughness. The
older iconographic works were mere dilettanteism. For the
first time since classical archaeology had applied the prin-

WOMAN IN SCIENCE

ciples of modern criticism to Greek and Roman iconogra-
phy, and had presented an example of scientific treatment
free from such reproach, was a serious iconography of our
early Christian monuments possible. Mrs. Jameson was
the first to attempt this on a large scale. It was clear to
her — and here lay the advance which her work reveals —
that in order to accomplish her colossal task two things
must be realized. She must not build on a foundation of
material that is imperfect or brought together in a haphaz-
ard way. She must not only see and test everything avail-
able in the way of monuments, but she must likewise place
the productions of literature and poetry beside those of the
plastic arts. It was clear to her, also, that, in this case,
one would throw light on the other, and that the investi-
gator who would lay claim to the name of archaeologist
must, moreover, study the spirit of a people in all its
monumental and literary manifestations.

"Mrs. Jameson strove to learn the mind and the mode
of early Christian times from the works of the Fathers.
She saw in the hymns of the Middle Ages and in the
writings of the mystics the sources of the art ideas which
disclose themselves in the wall and glass paintings of our
cathedrals and in the entrancing creation of a Fiesole. She
had also the special advantage of being thoroughly imbued
with Dante's ideas of the plastic arts of the Middle Ages.

"And all this is evidenced in a form which exhibits
neither dry dissertation nor wearisome nomenclature.
Each of her articles is a little essay. It teaches us what
place the Madonna, or St. Catherine, or some other saint
has held in the memory and in the imagination of past
centuries. We behold the sainted forms flitting before our
eyes in all the charm of poetic perfection which was given
them by the childlike phantasy of the Middle Ages, and
in all the power which they exercised over men's minds,
and which, however we may view the religious side of the

WOMEN IN ARCHAEOLOGY 315

question, certainly had the effect of creating forms of
infinite beauty and pictures of unspeakable reality."1

When we recollect that Mrs. Jameson achieved so much
before the foundations of Christian archaeology had been
fully laid ; before de Rossi 's monumental publications had
supplied the means of interpreting early Christian sculp-
ture; before critics and archaeologists were at one regard-
ing the significance of early Christian and Middle Age
symbolism, or agreed on the principles that were to guide
to a correct understanding of the pictures of Roman and
Gothic art, and while students were yet in ignorance as
to the real influence of Byzantine art on that of western
Europe, we cannot but wonder at the courage and the
energy of this gifted woman in undertaking and in bring-
ing to a happy issue a work which, even to-day, with all
our increased facilities and greater array of facts, would
be considered a herculean task.

As we read her admirable volumes on Sacred and Legen-
dary Art we can, as did a close friend of hers, see the en-
raptured author "kindle into enthusiasm amidst the gor-
geous natural beauty, the antique memorials and the sacred
Christian relics of Italy/' and we are prepared to believe,
with the same friend, that there was not ' ' a cypress on the
Roman hills, or a sunny vine overhanging the southern
gardens, or a picture in those vast somber galleries of for-
eign palaces, or a catacomb spread out, vast and dark,
under the martyr churches of the City of the Seven Hills,
which was not associated with some vivid flashes of her
intellect and imagination." And we can also understand
how "the strange, mystic symbolism of the early mosaics
was a familiar language to her," and why she should ex-
perience special delight when she found herself "on the
polished marble of the Lateran floor or under the gor-
geously somber tribune of the Basilica of Santa Maria

i Frauenarbeit in der Archceologie in Deutsche Rundschau, March,
1890, page 396.

316 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

Maggiore, reading off the quaint emblems or expounding
the pious thoughts of more than a thousand years ago/'1

It is gratifying to know that Queen Victoria recognized
the surpassing merits of this noble woman by placing her
on the civil list, and that our own Longfellow was able
to say of her masterpiece, Sacred and Legendary Art, l 1 It
most amply supplies the cravings of the religious sentiment
of the spiritual nature within. ' '

A countrywoman of Mrs. Jameson and her contempo-
rary, who also deserves an honorable place in the literature
of archaeology, is Louise Twining. Although inferior in
intellectual attainments and literary activity to the accom-
plished author of Sacred and Legendary* Art, her two
works on Types and Figures of the Bible Illustrated ~by
Art and Symbols and Emblems of Early Mediaeval Chris-
tian Art have given her a well-deserved reputation on the
Continent as well as in the British Isles. The latter vol-
ume Mrs. Jameson herself declares in her Legends of the
Madonna to be " certainly the most complete and useful
book of the kind which I know of. ' '

A third woman who has won fame for her sex in the
island kingdom in the domain of archaeology is Miss Mar-
garet Stotes. Her activities, however, have been chiefly
confined to the antiquities of Ireland, on which she is a
recognized authority.

The notable part she took in editing Lord Dunraven's
great work, Notes on Irish Architecture, established her
reputation on a firm basis. Among her other important
works are Early Christian Art in Ireland and Christian
Inscriptions in the Irish Language, chiefly collected and
drawn by George Petrie, one of the annual volumes of the
Royal Historical and Archaeological Association of Ireland.
This work has justly been described as an epoch-making
contribution to Christian epigraphy and to our rapidly

i Memoirs of the Life of Anna Jameson, pp. 296-297, by her
niece, Geraldine Macpherson, London, 1878.

WOMEN IN ARCHAEOLOGY 317

developing knowledge of Keltic language and literature.
The learned Dr. Krauss, than whom there is no more com-
petent judge, in referring to this splendid performance,
does not hesitate to affirm, ' * No man could have done better
than this brave college girl, whom I would wish to greet
across the Channel with a cordial Macte virtute."

The women archaeologists so far mentioned, with the ex-
ception of Queen Caroline Murat, were conspicuous as writ-
ers rather than active investigators in the field. There have
been, however, quite a number who have won distinction as
" archaeologists of the spade" — women who, either alone or
with their husbands, have superintended excavations in
different lands, which have yielded results of untold scien-
tific value. Among the most conspicuous of these are Mme.
Sophia Schliemann, Mme. Dieulafoy and the enterprising
Yankee girl, Miss Harriet A. Boyd.

Of these the first named is the wife of the late Dr. Henry
Schliemann, who immortalized himself by his famous ex-
cavations at Troy, Tiryns and Mycenae — enterprises which
solved for us the great problem of nearly thirty centuries
and demonstrated in the most startling manner "the truth
of the foundations on which was framed the poetical con-
ception that has for thousands of years called forth the
enchanted delight of the educated world. " During his
meteoric career as an archaeologist, Schliemann was able
to realize the dreams of his youth, and succeeded in unveil-
ing the mystery that had so long hung over Sacred Ilios,
and to give the heroes of the Iliad a local habitation on the
rediscovered Plain of Troy. And his glorious achieve-
ments we must credit largely to that brave and devoted
woman — his wife — who was ever at his side to share in
his trials and labors and to raise his drooping spirits in
hours of depression, or when hostile criticism treated him
as a visionary in the pursuit of a chimera.

Mrs. Schliemann is a Greek lady who was born and bred
under the shadow of the Acropolis and a worthy descend-

318 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

ant of those proud Athenian women who wore the golden
grasshopper in their hair as a sign that they were natives
of the City of the Violet Crown. She was not only dow-
ered with intellectual gifts of a high order, but she was
also her husband's most congenial companion and sympa-
thetic friend in all his literary work, while she was his
very right hand in those glorious enterprises at Hissarlik
and Mycenae, which secured for both of them undying
fame.

Dr. Schliemann was the first to attest the never-failing
assistance which he received from this noble woman who, as
he informs us, was ' ' a warm admirer of Homer ' ' and ' i with
glad enthusiasm" joined her husband in executing the
great work which he had conceived in his early boyhood.
Usually they worked together, but at times Mrs. Schlie-
mann superintended a gang of laborers at one spot while
the Doctor was occupied at another in the immediate vicin-
ity. Thus it was she who excavated the heroic tumulus of
Batieia in the Troad — that Batieia who, according to
Homer, was a queen of the Amazons and undertook a
campaign against Troy.1

Mme. Jane Dieulafoy is noted as the collaborator of her
husband, Marcel Dieulafoy, in the important archaeological
mission to Persia that was entrusted to him by the French
government. The results of this mission, in which Mme.

illios, the City and Country of the Trojans, pp. 657-658, by Dr.
Henry Schliemann, New York, 1881.

As an illustration of Mrs. Schliemann 's devotion to the work
which has rendered her, as well as her husband, immortal, a single
passage from the volume just quoted, p. 261, is pertinent. Keferring
to the sufferings and privations which they endured during their
third year's work at Hissarlik, Dr. Schliemann writes as follows:

"My poor wife and myself, therefore, suffered very much since
the icy north wind, which recalls Homer's frequent mention of the
blasts of Boreas, blew with such violence through the chinks of our
house-walls, which were made of planks, that we were not even able
to light our lamps in the evening, while the water which stood near

WOMEN IN ARCHAEOLOGY 319

Dieulafoy had a conspicuous part, were published in Paris
in 1884 in five octavo volumes.

It was during this expedition to the ancient empire of
Cyrus and Artaxerxes that this indefatigable couple be-
came interested in the ruins of Susa, the ancient capital
of the Persian kings. On their return to France they suc-
ceeded in securing money and supplies for conducting ex-
cavations among these ruins which, in the end, yielded
results which were, in some respects, as important as those
which rewarded the labors of the Schliemanns in Greece
and Asia Minor.

So completely had Susa — the City of the Lilies — been
buried and forgotten for nearly two thousand years that
even its site was almost as much a matter of dispute as
was that of ancient Troy. And yet it was one of the
greatest and richest cities of antiquity — the city of Esther
and Daniel, the city of the mighty Assuerus who reigned
from India even unto Ethiopia, over a hundred and twenty-
seven provinces — the city where the great Alexander cele-
brated his nuptials with Statira, the daughter of Darius,
with a magnificent festival at which, according to Plu-
tarch, " there were no fewer than nine thousand guests, to
each of which he gave a golden cup for the libations. ' '

In December, 1884, the two brave and venturesome ex-
plorers were on their way to Susa with high hopes, but
not without a full knowledge of the difficulties and dangers
that they would have to confront among the fanatical no-
mads of Arabistan, where the very name of Christian in-
spires rage and horror. It meant, as Mme. Dieulafoy her-

the hearth froze into solid masses. During the day we could, to
some degree, bear the cold by working in the excavations; but,
in the evenings, we had nothing to keep us warm except our en-
thusiasm for the great work of discovering Troy."

So high was Dr. Schliemann's opinion of his wife's ability as an
archaeologist that he entrusted to her — as well as to their daughter,
Andromache, and son, Agamemnon — the continuation of the work
which death prevented him from completing.

320 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

self tells us, "to cross the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the
Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf and the deserts of Elam
three times in less than a year ; to pass whole weeks with-
out undressing; to sleep on the bare ground; to struggle
nights and days against robbers and thieves ; to cross rivers
without a bridge; to suffer heat, rain, cold, mists, fever,
fatigue, hunger, thirst, the stings of divers insects; to lead
this hard and perilous existence without being guided by
any interest other than the glory of one's country."1

In spite, however, of all the opposition which they en-
countered among the fanatical Mussulmans of Arabistan
and of the dreadful sufferings incident to living in a desert
where it was at times impossible to secure the necessaries
of life, their mission was successful, and their account of
their finds in the ancient capital of Elam was as thrilling
in its way as anything reported of the excavations at Troy
or Pompeii. Their splendid collection of specimens of an-
cient Persian art and architecture, now on exhibition in
the Museum of the Louvre, testifies to the successful issue
of their expedition and to their indomitable energy in con-
ducting researches under the most untoward conditions.2

iSee Mme. Dieulafoy's graphic account of the expedition in a
work which has been translated into English under the title, At
Susa, the Ancient Capital of the Kings of Persia, Narrative of
Travel Through Western Persia and Excavations Made at the Site
of the Lost City of the Lilies, 1884-1886, Philadelphia, 1890.

See also her other related work — crowned by the French Academy
— entitled, La Perse, La Chaldee et la Susiane, Paris, 1887.

2 Among the specimens secured were two of extraordinary beauty
and interest. One of them is a beautiful enameled frieze of a lion
and the other, likewise a work in enamel, represents a number of
polychrome figures of the Immortals — the name given to the guards
of the Great Kings of Persia. Both are truly magnificent specimens
of ceramic art, and compare favorably with anything of the kind
which antiquity has bequeathed to us. Commenting on the pictures
of the Persian guards, Mme. Dieulafoy writes: " Whatever their
race may be, our Immortals appear fine in line, fine in form, fine
in color and constitute a ceramic work infinitely superior to the bas-
reliefs, so justly celebrated, of Lucca della Bobbia." Op. cit., p. 222.

WOMEN IN ARCH/EOLOGY 321

So highly did the French government value the part Mme.
Dieulafoy had taken in this arduous enterprise that it con-
ferred on her a distinction rarely awarded to a woman
for scientific work — that of Chevalier of the Legion of
Honor.

As an archaeologist, the gifted and energetic American
woman, Miss Harriet Boyd — now Mrs. C. H. Hawes — has
achieved an international reputation for her remarkable
excavations in the island of Crete. She is a frequent con-
tributor to archaeological journals; but it is upon her
splendid work in the field that her fame will ultimately
rest.

Her first work of importance was undertaken as Fellow
of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.
This was in 1900, and the field of her investigations was the
Isthmus of Hierapetra in Crete. Here she excavated nu-
merous tombs and houses of the early Geometric Period,
circa 900 B.C., and paved the way for those brilliant dis-
coveries which rewarded her labors during the following
three years.

The investigations conducted during these three years
under Miss Boyd's directions yielded results of transcen-
dent value. Assisted by three young American women —
the Misses B. E. Wheeler, Blanche E. Williams, and Edith
H. Hall — she superintended the work of more than a hun-
dred native employees whom she had on her payroll. By
good fortune in the choice of a site for excavation and by
well-directed efforts she was soon able to unearth one of
the oldest of Cretan cities and to expose to view the ruins
of what was probably one of the ninety cities which Homer
tells us in his Odyssey graced the land of Crete — "a fair
land and a rich, in the midst of a wine-dark sea."

So remarkable were the finds in this long-buried Minoan
town and so well preserved are its general features that it
has justly been called the Cretan Pompeii. It antedates
by long centuries the oldest cities of Greece and was a

322 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

flourishing center of commerce ages before the heroes of
the Iliad battled on the plains of Troy.

It is not too much to say that the extraordinary discov-
eries made by this enterprising Yankee girl at Gournia,
no less than those made by British and Italian archaeolo-
gists at Knossos and Phaestos, have completely revolution-
ized our ideas respecting the state of culture of the inhabi-
tants of Crete during the second and third millenia before
the Christian era. They have thrown a flood of light on
the origins of Mediterranean culture, and have, at the same
time, supplied material for a study of European civiliza-
tion that was before entirely wanting.

An enduring monument to Miss Boyd's ability as an
archaeologist is her notable volume containing an account
of her excavations at Gournia, Vasilike and other prehis-
toric sites on the Isthmus of Hierapetra. It will bear
comparison with any similar productions by the Schlie-
manns or the Dieulafoys. A later work on Crete, the Fore-
runner of Greece, which she wrote in collaboration with
her husband, Mr. C. H. Hawes, is also a production of
recognized merit. As a study on the origin of Greek civili-
zation it opens up many new vistas in pre-history and illu-
mines many questions that were before involved in mystery.

Besides Mrs. Hawes, three other American women have
achieved marked distinction by their archaeological re-
searches. These are Mrs. Sarah Yorke Stevenson, Miss
Alice C. Fletcher and Mrs. Zelia Nuttall.

Mrs. Stevenson has long been identified with the progress
of archaeological research, especially with that in Egypt
and the Mediterranean. A prominent member of many
learned societies, she is likewise a writer and lecturer of
note. She enjoys the distinction of being the first woman
whose name appears as a lecturer on the calendar of the
University of Harvard. In acknowledgment of her
scholarly ability and eminent services in the development
of its Department of Archaeology, the University of Penn-

WOMEN IN ARCHAEOLOGY

sylvania has conferred upon her the honorary degree of
Doctor of Science.

That American women have not been behind their sisters
in Europe in their enthusiasm for archaeological investiga-
tion is evinced by the researches and writings of Miss
Alice C. Fletcher and Mrs. Zelia Nuttall, both of whom
enjoy an international reputation in the learned world.

Miss Fletcher's chosen field of labor has been in ethnol-
ogy and anthropology. Her studies of the folk lore and
the manners and customs of various tribes of North Ameri-
can Indians have a distinct and permanent value, while
those of her contributions which have been published by
the Smithsonian Institution and the Bureau of Ethnology
— contributions based on personal knowledge of a long
residence among the tribes she writes about — show that she
has exceptional talent for the branches of archaeology to
which she has devoted many years of earnest and successful
study.

Mrs. Nuttall is the daughter of an American mother
and an English father. Thanks to the care that was
bestowed on her education by her parents and to her long
residence in the different countries of Europe, she is profi-
cient in seven languages. This knowledge of tongues has
been of inestimable advantage to her in her researches in
European libraries and in those historical and archaeologi-
cal investigations which have rendered her famous. She
has devoted special attention to the early history, lan-
guages, religions and calendar systems of the primitive
inhabitants of Mexico and Central America, in all of which
she is a recognized authority.

When, some years ago, the mysterious ruins of Mexico
began to attract the special attention of archaeologists, Mrs.
Nuttall was selected by the University of California as the
field director of the commission which it sent to pursue
archaeological researches in this Egypt of the New World.
A more competent or a more enthusiastic director could

WOMAN IN SCIENCE

not have been chosen. Her finds in the Pyramids of the
Sun and Moon at Teotihuacan and elsewhere in our sister
republic were especially important. In recognition of her
achievements President Porfirio Diaz nominated Mrs. Nut-
tall honorary professor in the Mexican National Museum.
She was also offered the position of curator of the archae-
ological Museum of Mexico; but this office she declined.
She holds membership in a large number of learned socie-
ties in America and Europe and is a frequent contributor
to numerous magazines on historical and archaeological sub-
jects. She has had the good fortune to discover a number
of important manuscripts illustrating the early history of
Mexico. Chief among these are a Hispano- American manu-
script which she dug out of one of the libraries of Madrid
and another which was found in a private collection in
England and reproduced in facsimile in this country. In
honor of its fair discoverer it is now known as the Codex
Nuttall, and is regarded by experts as one of the most
precious records of ancient Mexico.

What is probably Mrs. Nuttall's most valuable contribu-
tion to archaeological science is her erudite work entitled
The Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civili-
zations. It is a comparative research based on a study of
the ancient Mexican, religious, sociological and calendar
systems, and represents thirteen years of assiduous labor.
It is a worthy monument to the scientific ability of this
gifted Americanist, and one which brilliantly illumines
some of the most controverted points of comparative archae-
ology.

The Nestor of women archaeologists is Donna Ersilia
Caetani-Bovatelli — the daughter of the famous Dante
scholar, the late Duke Don Michel Angelo Caetani-Sermon-
etta. Since the days of Boniface VIII, whom Dante scorn-
fully denounced as lo principe de' Pharisei, the family of
the Caetani has been one of the most illustrious of the

WOMEN IN ARCHAEOLOGY 325

Roman nobility, and is to-day ranked with those of the
Colonna and Orsini.

Besides his thorough knowledge of Dante, whose Divina
Commedia he regarded as the great artistic production of
the human mind — a work which he knew by heart — the
Duke of Sermonetta was deeply versed in philology and
archseology. No one was more familiar with the history
and antiquities of Rome than he was, nor a greater friend
and patron of scholars of every nationality. The Palazzo
Caetani was the resort of not only the savants of Rome,
but also and especially of those who gathered from all
quarters of the world to study the rich collections of antiq-
uities for which the Eternal City is so famous. Here the
ablest authorities in history and archaeology discussed the
latest discoveries among the ruins of Greece and Asia
Minor, and the most recent finds in the Forum or amidst
the crumbling ruins of the palaces of the Caesars.

Having such a father and brought up in such an envi-
ronment it is not surprising that Donna Ersilia acquired
at an early age that taste for archaeology which was, as
events proved, to constitute the chief occupation of her
long and busy life. Having enjoyed and studied literature
and the languages under the best masters in Rome, she
was thoroughly prepared for the work of deciphering
Greek and Latin inscriptions and for an intelligent study
of the ancient monuments of Italy and Hellas.

Her learned countryman, A. de Gubernatis, assures us
that she has such a thorough knowledge of Latin and Greek
that she writes both with ease and elegance, and that she
is endowed with an admirable memory for philology and
archaeology. Besides being a mistress of several modern
languages, she is also familiar with Sanscrit.

Since the death of her husband, in 1879, she has devoted
all her time, outside of that given to the care and educa-
tion of her children, to the pursuit of classical archaeology,
in which she has long been regarded as an authority of the

326 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

first order. Her salon, unlike those of the frivolous lead-
ers of high life, has for many years been the favorite
rendezvous in Rome of learned men and women from every
clime. Here were seen the noted historians Gregorovius,
Theodore Mommsen, and Giovanni Battista de Rossi, the
illustrious founder of Christian archaeology. Here the rep-
resentatives of the French, German and American schools
of archaeology meet to exchange views on their favorite
science and to find inspiration in the knowledge and enthu-
siasm of their gifted hostess, who always takes an active
part in their recondite discussions, and never fails to con-
tribute her share to these meetings, which have contributed
so much toward the advancement of science and the history
of antiquity. Whether the discussion turn on the decipher-
ing of an ancient text, the inscription of a monument or a
recently excavated sarcophagus, Donna Ersilia's opinion
is eagerly sought, and her judgment is generally unerring.

This cultured and erudite daughter of sunny Italy has
been a prolific writer on her favorite branch of research.
Besides contributing to such publications as the Nuova
Antologia and the bulletins of the archaeological commis-
sions in Rome, she has found time to prepare for the press
a number of volumes of the highest value on divers ques-
tions of Roman and Greek archaeology.

It is interesting, in this connection, to note the fact that,
after Mme. Curie had been refused admittance into the
French Academy, one of the members of this institution,
who had voted against her on the ground that she was a
woman, had occasion to attend a meeting of the Academy
of the Lincei in Rome, an association which plays the same
role in Italy as does the French Academy in France, and
found, to his astonishment, that the dean of the depart-
ment of archaeology, as well as the presiding officer of some
of the most important meetings of the academy, was a
woman. She was no other than Donna Ersilia Caetani-
Bovatelli, the learned and gracious scion of an honored

WOMEN IN ARCHAEOLOGY 327

race. So taken aback was the Gallic opponent of feminisms
that he could but exclaim: "Diable! they order things
differently in Italy from what we do in la belle France."

Considering their attainments and achievements, the two
women who occupy the highest place as archaeologists in
the English-speaking world are Mrs. Agnes Smith Lewis
and Margaret Dunlop Gibson. They are the twin daugh-
ters of the Rev. John Smith, an English clergyman, and
have long enjoyed an enviable reputation among Scriptural
scholars and Orientalists.

During their youth they had the advantage of instruc-
tion under the best masters, and, among other things,
acquired a wide knowledge of the modern and classical
languages. Subsequent study and frequent visits to Greece
and the Orient made them proficient in modern Greek,
Arabic, Hebrew and Syriac. Becoming interested in the
search for ancient manuscripts, they resolved to make the
long and arduous journey to the Greek convent of St.
Catherine on Mt. Sinai.

In the latter part of January, 1892, these two brave and
enterprising women left Suez for their destination in the
heart of the Arabian desert. They were accompanied only
by their dragoman and Bedouin servants. Eleven camels
carried the two travelers, their baggage, tents and pro-
visions for fifty days. They had laid in supplies not only
for the two or three weeks they were to spend on the way
to and from Sinai, but also for the month they expected
to remain at the Convent of St. Catherine.

Arriving at the end of their journey, they were most
cordially received by the monks, who afforded them every
facility for examining the treasures of their unique and
venerable library. They immediately set to work, and
before they left the room in which the manuscripts were
preserved they had made one of the most remarkable finds
of the century. For, in closely inspecting a dirty, for-
bidding old manuscript whose leaves had probably not

328 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

been turned for centuries, they discovered a palimpsest, of
which the upper writing contained the biographies of
women saints, while that beneath proved to be one of the
earliest copies of the Syriac Gospels, if not the very earliest
in existence.

No find since the celebrated discovery by Tischendorf
of the Sinaitic Codex, in the same convent nearly fifty
years before, ever excited such interest among Scriptural
scholars or was hailed with greater rejoicings. It was by
all Biblical students regarded as an invaluable contribution
to Scriptural literature, and as a find which "has doubled
our sources of knowledge of the darkest corner of New
Testament criticism." To distinguish it from the Codex
Sinaiticus, the precious manuscript brought to light by
Mrs. Lewis has been very appropriately named after the
fortunate discoverer, and will hereafter be known as the
Codex Ludovicus.1

Another find of rare importance made by the gifted twin
sisters was a Palestinian Syriac lectionary similar to the
hitherto unique copy in the Library of the Vatican. A
1 One passage in this codex bears so strongly on a leading argu-
ment of this work that I cannot resist the temptation to give it with
Mrs. Lewis ' own comment:

"The piece of my work," she writes, In the Shadow of Sinai,
p. 98 et seq., "which has given me the greatest satisfaction, consists
in the decipherment of two words in John IV, 27. They were well
worth all our visits to Sinai, for they illustrate an action of our
Lord which seems to be recorded nowhere else, and which has some
degree of inherent probability from what we know of His character.
The passage is 'His disciples came and wondered that with the
women he was standing and talking' ....

"Why was our Lord standing? He had been sitting on the
wall when the disciples left Him; and, we know that He was tired.
Moreover, sitting is the proper attitude for an Easterner when en-
gaged in teaching. And an ordinary Oriental would never rise of his
own natural free will out of politeness to a woman. It may be that
He rose in His enthusiasm for the great truths He was uttering;
but, I like to think that His great heart, which embraced the lowest
of humanity, lifted Him above the restrictions of His race and age,

WOMEN IN ARCHAEOLOGY 329

special interest attaches to this lectionary from the fact
that it is written in the language that was most probably
spoken by our Lord.

Among other notable discoveries of Mrs. Lewis and her
sister during the four visits1 which they made to Mt. Sinai
and Palestine between the years 1892 and 1897 were a
number of manuscripts in Arabic and a portion of the
original Hebrew manuscript of Ecclesiastes which was
written about 200 B.C. Previously the oldest copies of this
book of the Old Testament were the Greek and Syriac
versions.

What is specially remarkable about the discoveries made
by Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Gibson is that they were able to
make so many valuable finds after the convent library at
Mt. Sinai had been so frequently examined by previous
scholars. The indefatigable Tischendorf made three visits
to this library and had but one phenomenal success. But
neither "he nor any of the other wandering scholars who
have visited the convent attained/' as has been well said,
"to a tithe of the acquaintance with its treasures which
these energetic ladies possess. "

But more remarkable than the mere discovery of so many
invaluable manuscripts, which was, of course, an extraor-
dinary achievement, is the fact that these manuscripts,
whether in Syriac, Arabic or Hebrew, have been trans-
lated, annotated and edited by these same scholarly women.
Already more than a score of volumes have come from
their prolific pens, all evincing the keenest critical acumen

and made Him show that courtesy to our sex, even in the person
of a degraded specimen, which is considered among all really pro-
gressive peoples to be a mark of true and noble manhood. To shed
even a faint light upon that wondrous story of His tabernacling
amongst us is an inestimable privilege and worthy of all the trouble
we can possibly take."

1Mrs. Gibson, unaccompanied by her sister, has since made two
more visits to Mt. Sinai in order to complete the work so auspiciously
begun.

330 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

and the highest order of Biblical and archaeological scholar-
ship. The reader who desires a popular account of their
famous discoveries should by all means read Mrs. Gibson's
entertaining volume, How the Codex Was Found, and Mrs.
Lewis' charming little work entitled, In the Shadow of
Sinai. As to those men — and the species is yet far from
extinct — who still doubt the capacity of women for the
higher kinds of intellectual effort, let them glance at the
pages of the numerous volumes given to the press by these
richly dowered women under the captions of Studia Sinai-
tica and Horce Semiticce; and, if they are able to compre-
hend the evidence before them, they will be forced to admit
that the long-imagined difference between the intellectual
powers of men and women is one of fancy and not one of
reality.1

And yet, strange to relate, while Mrs. Lewis and Mrs.
Gibson were electrifying the learned world by their achieve-

i The following partial list of the works of these erudite twins
on subjects connected with Scripture and Oriental literature gives
some idea of their extraordinary attainments and of their prodigious
activity in researches that are usually considered entirely foreign
to the tastes and aptitudes of women.

Some Pages of the Four Gospels Retranscribed From the Sinaitic
Palimpsest, with a translation of the whole text by Agnes Smith
Lewis.

An Arabic Version of St. Paul's Epistles to the Romans, Corin-
thians, Galatians and part of Ephesians. Edited from a ninth cen-
tury MS. by Margaret Dunlop Gibson.

Apocrypha Sinaitica. Containing the Anaphora Pilati in Syriac
and Arabic: the Syriac transcribed by J. Rendel Harris, and the
Arabic by Margaret Dunlop Gibson; also two recensions of the Rec-
ognitions of Clement, in Arabic, transcribed and translated by Mar-
garet Dunlop Gibson.

An Arabic Version of the Acts of the Apostles and the Seven
Catholic Epistles, from an eighth or ninth century MS., with a
treatise on the Triune Nature of God and translation. Edited by
Margaret Dunlop Gibson.

Apocrypha Arabica, Edited by Margaret D. Gibson, containing
1, Kitab al Magall or the Boole of the Rolls; 2, The Story of the

WOMEN IN ARCHAEOLOGY 331

ments in the highest form of scholarship, the slow-moving
University of Cambridge was gravely debating "whether
it was a proper thing to confer degrees upon women, ' ' and
preparing to answer the question in the negative. The
fact that there were "representatives of the unenfran-
chised sex at their gates who had gathered more laurels
in the field of scholarship than most of those who belong
to the privileged sex ' ' did not appeal to the university dons
or prevent them from putting themselves on record as
favoring a condition of things which, at this late age of
the world, should be expected only among the women-
enslaving followers of Mohammed.

The saying that "a prophet hath no honor in his own
country" was fulfilled to the letter in the case of the two

AphiJcia Wife of Jesus Ben Sir a (Carshuni) ; 3, Cyprian and Just a,
in Arabic and Greek.

Select Narratives of Holy Women, from the Syro-Antiochene or
Sinai Palimpsest, as written above the Old Syriac Gospels in A. D.
778. Translation by Agnes Smith Lewis.

Apocrypha Syriaca Sinaitica, being the ProtevangeUum Jacobi
and Transitus Marice, from a Palimpsest of the fifth or sixth century.
Edited by Agnes Smith Lewis.

Forty-One Facsimiles of Dated Christian Arabic Manuscripts,
with Text and English Translation, arranged by Agnes Smith Lewis
and Margaret Dunlop Gibson, with introductory observations in
Arabic calligraphy by the Eev. David S. Margoliouth.

The Didascalia Apostolorum in Syriac, edited from a Mesopo-
tamian MS, with various readings and collations of other MS, by
Margaret Dunlop Gibson.

The Arabic Version of the Acta Apocrypha Apostolorum, edited
and translated by Agnes Smith Lewis, with fifth century fragments
of the Acta Thomce, in Syriac.

The Gospel of Isbodad in Syriac and English, by Margaret D.
Gibson.

Acta Mythologica Apostolorum in Arabic, with translation by
Agnes Smith Lewis.

For an elaborate and sympathetic account of the labors and dis-
coveries of Mrs. Lewis and her sister, the reader is referred to an
article from the pen of the learned Professor V. Eyssel, in the
Schweiserische Theologische Zeitschrift, XVI, Jahrgang, 1899.

332

LWOMAN IN SCIENCE

women who had shed such luster on the land of their birth.
While foreign institutions were vying with one another
in showering honors on the two brilliant Englishwomen,
with whose praises the whole world was resounding, the
University of Cambridge was silent. The University of
St. Andrews conferred on them the degree of LL.D., while
conservative old Heidelberg, casting aside its age-old tra-
ditions, made haste to honor them with the degree of Doc-
tor of Divinity. In addition to this, Halle made Mrs.
Lewis a Doctor of Philosophy. One would have thought
that sheer shame, if not patriotic spirit, would have com-
pelled the university in whose shadows the two women had
their home, and in which Mrs. Lewis' husband had held for
years an official appointment, to show itself equally appre-
ciative of superlative merit and equally ready to reward
rare scholarship, regardless of the sex of the beneficiaries.
But no. The illustrious archaeologists and Biblical scholars
were women, and this fact alone was in the estimation of
the Cambridge authorities enough to withhold from them
that recognition which was so spontaneously accorded them
by the great universities of the Continent.

Nor was this the only instance of the kind. While the
celebrated twin sisters just referred to were so materially
contributing to our knowledge of Biblical lore, another
Englishwoman, Jane E. Harrison, who lived within hearing
of the church bells of Cambridge, was lecturing to de-
lighted audiences in Newnham College on the history,
mythology and monuments of ancient Athens, and writing
those learned works on the religion and antiquities of
Greece which have given her so conspicuous a place among
modern archaeologists.1 But, as in the case of her dis-

i For an evidence of this learned lady >s competency to deal with
the most recondite stores of history and archaeology, the reader is
referred to two of her later works, viz., Primitive Athens as Described
by Thucydides, Cambridge, 1906, and Prolegomena to the Study of
Greek Religion, Cambridge University Press, 1903.

WOMEN IN ARCHAEOLOGY 333

tinguished neighbors, the discoverers of the Codex Ludo-
vicus, the degrees she was honored with came not from
Cambridge, with which, through her fellowship in Newn-
ham, she was so closely connected.

And while this gifted lady was deserving so well of sci-
ence and literature, the undergraduate students of Cam-
bridge, following the cue given by the twenty-four hundred
graduates who had just rejected the proposal to give hon-
orary degrees to women who could pass the required ex-
aminations, were giving an exhibition of rowdyism which
far surpassed that which, a few years before, had so dis-
graced the University of Edinburgh, when the same ques-
tion of degrees for women was under consideration.

According to the report of an eye witness of the turbu-
lent scene at Cambridge, "The undergraduate students
appeared to be, as a body, viciously opposed to the pro-
posal to give degrees to women, and became fairly riotous.
They hooted those who supported the reform and fired
crackers even in the Senate House and made the night
lurid with bonfires and powder. They put up insulting
effigies of girl students, and such mottoes as 'Get you to
Girton, Beatrice. Get you to Newnham. Here is no place
for maids ! ' '

Verily, when such scenes are possible in one of the
world's great intellectual centers — a place where, above all
others, women should receive due recognition for their
contributions toward the progress of knowledge — one is
constrained to declare that what we call civilization is still
far from the ideal. And, when one witnesses the total in-
difference of institutions like Cambridge and the French
Academy to the splendid achievements of women like Mrs.
Lewis, Mrs. Gibson and Mme. Curie, one cannot but ex-
claim in words Apocolyptic: "How long, 0 Lord, holy
and true," is this iniquitous discrimination against one-
half of our race to endure ? 0 Lord, how long ?

CHAPTER X

WOMEN AS INVENTORS

"There have been very learned women as there have
been women warriors, but there have never been women
inventors. ' n Thus wrote Voltaire with that flippancy and
cocksureness which was so characteristic of the author of
the Dictionnaire PhilosopJiique — a man who was ever ready
to give, offhand, a categorical answer to any question that
came before him for discussion. His countryman, Proud-
hon, expressed the same opinion in other words when he
wrote, Les femmes n'ont rien invent e, pas meme leur
quenouille — women have invented nothing, not even their
distaff.

Had these two writers thoroughly sifted the evidence
available, even in their day, for a proper consideration of
this interesting subject, they would, both of them, have
reached a very different conclusion from that which is ex-
pressed in the sentences just quoted. Had they consulted
the records of antiquity, they would have learned that most
of the earliest and most important inventions were attrib-
uted to women; and, had they studied the reports of ex-
plorers among the savage tribes of the modern world, they
would have found that these early legends and traditions

i ' l On a vu des femmes tres savantes, comme en f ut des guerrieres,
mais il n'y en eut jamais d 'inventrices. " Dictionnaire Philosophique,
sub voce Femmes. Condorcet, in commenting on this statement, re-
marks that "if men capable of invention were alone to have a place
in the world, there would be many a vacant one, even in the acade-
mies. ' '

334

WOMEN AS INVENTORS 335

regarding the inventions of women were fully confirmed
by what was being done in their own time. Man's first
needs were food, shelter and clothing; and tradition in all
parts of the world is unanimous in ascribing to woman the
invention, in essentially their present forms, of all the
arts most conducive to the preservation and well-being of
our race.

In Egypt, as Diodorus Siculus informs us, the inventors
of specially useful things were, as a reward of their deserts,
enrolled among the gods, as were certain heroes among
the ancient Greeks and Romans. Foremost among these
was Isis, who laid the foundation of agriculture by the in-
troduction of the culture of wheat and other cereals. Be-
fore her time the Egyptians lived on roots and herbs. In
lieu of these crude articles of food, Isis gave them bread
and other more wholesome aliments. She invented the
process of making linen and was the first to apply a sail
to the propulsion of a boat. To her also was attributed
the art of embalming, the discovery of many medicines and
the beginnings of Egyptian literature.

Even more prominent was Pallas Athene, one of the
greatest divinities of the Greeks. Virgil, in his Georgics,
invokes her as

"Inventor, Pallas, of the fattening oil,
Thou founder of the plow and the plowman's toil."

But not only was she regarded as the olece invent rix —
inventress of the olive — as Virgil phrases it, but also as
the inventor of all handicrafts, whether of women or men.
Like Isis, she was deemed the originator of agriculture and
many of the mechanic arts. But, above all, she was the
inventor of musical instruments and those plastic and
graphic arts which have for ages placed Greece in the fore-
front of civilization and culture.

From the beginning it was woman who first made use
of wool and flax for textile fabrics ; and of this prehistoric

836 >VOMAN IN SCIENCE

woman one can affirm what Solomon, in his Book of
Proverbs, said of the virtuous woman of his day :

"She seeketh wool and flax and worketh diligently with her

hands ;

She layeth her hands to the spindle and her hands hold the
distaff."

She was also the first one to weave cotton and silk. It
was Mama Oclo, the wife of Manco Capac, as the Inca
historian, Garcilasso de la Vega, tells us, who taught the
women of ancient Peru ' ' to sew and weave cotton and wool
and to make clothes for themselves, their husbands and
children."

And it was a woman, Se-ling-she, the wife of the em-
peror, Hwang-te, who lived nearly three thousand years
before Christ, to whom the most ancient Chinese writers
assign the discovery of silk. Her name is perpetuated in
the name China, the goddess of silkworms, and under this
appellation she still receives divine honors.

The preparation and weaving of silk were introduced
into Japan by four Chinese girls, and the new industry
soon became there, as in China, one of the chief sources,
as it is to-day, of the country's wealth. To perpetuate the
memory of these four pioneer silk weavers the grateful
Japanese erected a temple in their honor in the province
of Setsu.

According to tradition, the eggs of the silk moth and the
seed of the mulberry tree were conveyed to India, con-
cealed in the lining of her headdress, by a Chinese princess.
She was thus instrumental in establishing in the region
watered by the Indus and the Ganges the same industry
which her countrywomen had introduced into the Land
of the Kising Sun.

Cashmere shawls and attar of roses, the costliest of per-
fumes, are attributed to an Indian empress, Nur Mahal,
whom her husband, in view of her achievements, as well as

WOMEN AS INVENTORS

337

on account of his passionate love for her, called "The
Light of the World."1

And what shall we say of those exquisite creations of
woman's brain and hand — needle-point and pillow lace?
These two inventions, like the manufacture of silk, have
given employment to tens of thousands of women through-
out the world ; and, in such countries as Italy, Belgium and
France, where lace-making has received special attention,
they have for centuries been most prolific sources of reve-
nue. Silk fabrics in ancient Rome were worth their weight
in gold. The finest specimens of point lace are, even to-
day, as highly prized as precious stones, and, like the great
masterpieces of plastic art, are handed down as heirlooms
from generation to generation. In no other instance, ex-
cept possibly in the hairspring of a watch, is there such an
extraordinary difference in value between the raw material
and the finished product as there is in the case of the finest
thread lace.

A great sensation was caused in Italy a few decades ago
when a humble workwoman, Signora Bassani, succeeded in
rediscovering the peculiar stitch of the celebrated Venetian
point, which had been lost for centuries. She was at once
granted a patent for her invention, which was by her
countrymen regarded as an event of national importance.

After painting and sculpture, probably no art has con-
tributed more to the development of the esthetic sense

i That marvelous structure known as the Taj Mahal — India 'a
noblest tribute to the grace and goodness of Indian womanhood —
is sometimes said to be a monument to the memory of Nur MahaL
This is not the case. This matchless gem of architecture —
" . . . The proud passion of an emperor's love
Wrought into living stone, which gleams and soars
With body of beauty shrining soul and thought. "

is a monument to Nur Mahal's niece and successor as empress, Mum-
taz-Mahal — The Crown of the Palace — who, like her aunt, was a
woman of rare beauty and talent and endeared herself to her people
by her splendid qualities of mind and heart.

338 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

among the nations of the world than has the art whose
chief tools are the needle and the bobbin in the deft hands
of a beauty-loving woman. If the name of the first lace-
maker had not been lost in the mists of antiquity, it is
reasonable to suppose that she, too, would long since have
had a monument erected to her memory, as well as the
weavers of silk and makers of attar of roses and cashmere
shawls. She was surely as deserving of such an honor.

More conclusive information respecting woman as an
inventor is, strange as it may appear, afforded by a sys-
tematic study of the various races of mankind which are
still in a state of savagery. Such a study discloses the
interesting fact that woman, contrary to the declaration of
Proudhon, has not only been the inventor of the distaff,
but that she has furthermore — pace Voltaire — been the
inventor of all the peaceful arts of life, and the inventor,
too, of the earliest forms of nearly all the mechanical
devices now in use in the world of industry.

Architecture, as well as many other things, was credited
by the ancient Greeks to Minerva. This was a poetical
way of stating the fact — now generally accepted by men of
science — that women were the first homemakers. But the
first home was a very simple and a very humble structure.
When not a cave, it was a simple shelter made of bark or
skins, sufficient to afford protection to the mother and her
child. Subsequently it was a lodge made of earth, of stone
or wattle work or adobe.

Women were, in the light of anthropology, as well as in
that of mythology and tradition, the first to discover the
nutritive and medicinal values of fruits, seeds, nuts, roots
and vegetables. They were consequently the first garden-
ers and agriculturists and the first to build up a materia
medica. While men were engaged in the chase or in war-
fare, women were gradually perfecting those divers domes-
tic arts which, in the course of time, became their recog-
nized specialties. They soon found that it was better to

WOMEN AS INVENTORS 339

cultivate certain food plants and trees than to depend on
them for nourishment in the wild state. This was par-
ticularly true in the case of such useful and widely dis-
tributed species as wheat, rice, maize, the yam, potato,
banana and cassava.

At first most of these food products were used in the
raw state, but woman's quick inventive genius was not
long in making one of the most important and far-reaching
discoveries — a method for producing fire. In a certain
sense this was the greatest discovery ever made, and the
Greeks showed their appreciation of the value of it by
asserting that fire was stolen from heaven. Considering its
multifarious uses in heating and cooking, thereby im-
mensely adding to the comfort and well-being of primitive
man, we are not surprised that in certain parts of the
world fire has always been considered something sacred,
and that the old Romans instituted Vestal Virgins, and
the ancient Peruvians Virgins of the Sun, to preserve this
precious element and have it ever ready when required for
sacrifice or for any of their various liturgical functions.
If any one ever deserved a ' ' monument more durable than
bronze," it was the woman who, "on the edge of time,"
first drew the Promethean spark from a piece of pyrites by
striking it with flint or produced it by the friction of two
pieces of wood.

After building a home and establishing in it a fireplace
for the preparation of food, woman's next concern was to
secure more raiment than was afforded by the traditional
fig leaf. This she found in the bark of certain trees, in
the fiber of hemp and cotton and in the wool of sheep
and goats. "With these and her distaff she spun thread,
and from the thread thus obtained she was by means of
her primitive loom — likewise her invention — able to pro-
vide all kinds of textile fabrics for clothing for herself
and family.

But there was much more to invent before the home of

340 ;WOMAN IN SCIENCE

primitive man, or rather primitive woman, could be con-
sidered as fairly equipped. Furniture and culinary uten-
sils were required, and these, too, were provided by the
deft and cunning fingers of woman. She was the first pot-
ter and the first basketmaker; and anyone who has lived
among the savages of any land, especially among the
aborigines in the interior of South America, knows what
an important part is played in domestic economy by native
basketry and ceramic ware. Both of these articles were at
first of the simplest character, but woman 's innate esthetic
sense soon enabled her to produce those highly ornate speci-
mens of pottery and basketry that are so highly prized in
the public and private collections of this country and
Europe.

The first device for converting grain into flour was, like
the many other articles already named, the invention of
woman. Whether the simple mortar and pestle of the
North American Indian, or the Mexican metate and muller,
or the Irish quern, it was, in every case, the product of
woman's brain and handiwork, as it was also the basal
prototype of our most improved types of flouring mills.
And so was the soapstone pot — the predecessor of the iron
or brass kettle — a woman's invention, as well as many
similar contrivances for preparing food.

But what is probably the most remarkable culinary in-
vention of woman in the state of savagery is her unique
contrivance for converting the poisonous root of the
manihot utilissima — the staple food of tropical America —
into a wholesome and nutritious aliment. It is a bag,
called matapi, which serves both as a press and as a sieve.
For the inhabitants of the vast basins of the Amazon and
the Orinoco, where the chief articles of diet are derived
from the manihot and the plantain, this invention of
woman is the most important ever made and ranks in im-
portance with the discovery by the same skilled food pur-
veyor of the dietetic value of manihot itself.

WOMEN AS INVENTORS 341

The first knife was a woman's invention, as the arrow-
head and the spear point were the inventions of her hunter
husband. It was in the beginning a most primitive imple-
ment ; but, whether in the form of a simple flake of flint of
obsidian, or in that of an Eskimo ulu — the woman 's knife —
it was the archetype of all the forms of cutlery now in
use. With this rude knife the primitive housewife skinned
and carved the game brought to her by her male compan-
ion. With it she scraped the interior of the hide and cut
it up into articles of clothing. She was thus the first fur-
rier and tailor. With it she made the first sandals and
moccasins, and, in doing so, became the first shoemaker and
the original St. Crispin.

To woman, the originator of the first home, is due also
the invention of the oven and the chimney. She was also
the first maker of salt — that all-important condiment and
sanitary agent — and the first to obtain nitre from wood
ashes. She was the first engineer, as is evinced in her
invention of the parbuckle and in the bamboo conduit,
which was the predecessor of the great canals of Baby-
lonia1 and the imposing aqueducts of ancient Rome.

Important, however, as are all the foregoing inventions,
we must not forget what was an equally important con-
tribution by woman to the welfare and progress of our
race — the domestication of animals. No discovery after
that of artificially producing fire has contributed more
toward the development of our race than the taming of
milk- and fleece-bearing animals, like the cow, the sheep,
the goat and the llama, or of burden-bearing animals, like
the horse, the ass, the camel and the reindeer, or of hunt-,
ing and watching animals like the faithful, ubiquitous
dog. For, in the first place, the domestication of these

iThe inventor of canals as well as of bridges over rivers and
causeways over morasses was, according to Greek historians, the
famous Assyrian queen, Semiramis, the builder of Babylon with its
wonderful hanging gardens.

WOMAN IN SCIENCE

supremely useful animals diminished man's labor as bur-
den bearers. It likewise supplemented the fecundity of
women and facilitated the multiplication of the race, be-
cause it supplied to the child a nourishment that previ-
ously could be obtained only from the mother, who had
been obliged to suckle her young several years longer than
was necessary after the friendly goat and cow came to her
aid. Still another consequence of the domestication of
animals was that it immensely diminished the amount of
woman's care and labor, afforded her the necessary leisure
to develop the arts of refinement, and stimulated intellec-
tual growth in a way that otherwise would have been
impossible.

It is often stated by certain writers who love to indulge
in fanciful speculations that women inventors got their
ideas as home builders and weavers and potters from nest-
building birds, from web-weaving spiders, and from clay
workers like termites and mud wasps. Be this as it may,
the fact remains in all its inspiring truth that, in the
matter of industrialism, as opposed to the militancy of
man, we can unhesitatingly declare, with Virgil, Dux
femina facti — woman was the leader in all the arts of
peace — arts which have been slowly perfected through the
ages until they present the extraordinary development
which we now witness.

When we contemplate the splendid porcelain wares of
Meissen and Sevres, or the countless varieties of cutlery
produced in the factories of Sheffield, or the beautiful tex-
tile fabrics from the looms of Lowell and Manchester, or
the delicate silks woven in the famous establishments of
Lombardy and Southern France, or the countless forms of
footwear made in Lynn and Chicago, or the exquisite furs
brought from Siberia and the Pribyloff Islands, and dyed
in Leipsic and London, or the astonishing output of food
products from the factories of Pittsburgh and the immense
roller mills of Minneapolis, we little think that the colossal

WOMEN AS INVENTORS 343

wheels of these vast and varied industries were set in
motion by the inventive genius of woman in the dim and
distant prehistoric past.

And yet such is the case. Her handiwork from the
earliest pottery may be traced through its manifold stages
from its first rude beginnings to the most gorgeous crea-
tions of ceramic art. The primeval knife of flint or ob-
sidian has become the keen tool of tempered steel; the
simple distaff has issued in the intricate Jacquard loom;
the metate and pestle actuated by a woman's arm have, by
a long process of evolution, developed into our mammoth
roller mills impelled by water power, steam or electricity.1

But these extraordinary changes from the rude imple-
ments of prehistoric time to the complicated machinery
of the present is but a change of kind, not one of prin-
ciple. It is a change due to specialization of work which
became possible only when men, liberated from the avoca-
tions of hunting and warfare, were able to take up the
occupations of women, and develop them in the manner
with which we are now familiar.

Why men, rather than women, should have achieved this
work of specialization ; whether it was due to social causes
or to woman's physical and mental organization, or to
these various factors combined, we need not inquire; but
such is the fact. Whereas in primitive times every woman
having a home was a cook, a butcher, a baker, a potter, a
weaver, a cutler, a miller, a tanner, a furrier, an engineer,
man, in assuming the work which was originally exclusively
feminine and performed by one and the same person, has
subdivided and specialized by improved forms of machin-
ery and otherwise, so that what is now done is accomplished

i Among the works which treat of the subject-matter of the fore-
going pages the reader may consult with profit, Woman's Share in
Primitive Culture, by O. T. Mason, London, 1895; Man and Woman,
the introductory chapter, by Havelock Ellis, London, 1898; and His-
toire Nouvelle des Arts et des Sciences, by A. Kenaud, Paris, 1878.

344 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

more rapidly and to better purpose, and with correspond-
ingly greater results in the development of industry and
in the progress of civilization.

And the remarkable fact is that many of the most im-
portant of these improvements due to specialization have
been made within the memory of those yet living, while
still others have been originated in quite recent years.
Nevertheless, great as has been the work of specialization
and coordination in every department of human industry
during the last few decades, it is, to judge by the reports
of the Patent Office, as yet in little more than its initial
stage.

We are now prepared for the consideration of the part
woman has taken in this specializing movement and for a
discussion of her share in modern inventions and in the
improvements of those manifold inventions which were
due to her genius and industry untold ages ago. Con-
sidering the short time during which her inventive mind
has been specially active, and the many handicaps which
have been imposed on her, the wonder is not that she has
achieved so little in comparison with man, but rather that
she has accomplished so much.

The first woman to receive a patent in the United States
was Mary Kies. It was issued May 5, 1809, for a process
of straw- weaving with silk or thread. Six years later
Mary Brush was granted a patent for a corset. It seems
to have been quite satisfactory, for no other patent for
this article of feminine attire was issued to a woman until
1841, when one was granted to Elizabeth Adams. During
the thirty-two years which elapsed between the issuing of
a patent to Mary Kies and Elizabeth Adams, but twenty
other patents were granted to women. The chief of these
were for weaving hats from grass, manufacturing mocca-
sins, whitening leghorn straw, for a sheet-iron shovel, a
cook stove and a machine for cutting straw and fodder.

During the decade following 1841, fourteen pateots were

WOMEN AS INVENTORS 345

issued to as many different women. Among the articles
patented by them were an ice-cream freezer, a weighing
scale and a fan attachment for a rocking chair. It was
not recorded, however, that this last invention, valuable
as it was apparently, ever became particularly popular.
But by far the most remarkable of woman's inventions
during this period was a submarine telescope and lamp,
for which a patent was awarded in 1845 to Sarah Mather.

From 1851 to 1861, twenty-eight patents were issued to
women — just twice the number awarded them during the
preceding decade. Most of these patents were for articles
of domestic use or feminine apparel. Four of them, how-
ever, comprised a scale for instrumental music, for mount-
ing fluid lenses, a fountain pen and an improvement in
reaping and mowing machines.

The following decade is remarkable for the wonderful
increase in the number of inventions due to women, for
there was a sudden jump from twenty-eight to four hun-
dred and forty-one patents awarded them between the
years 1861 and 1871. Women now began to have confidence
in their inventive faculties, and, no longer content with ex-
ercising their genius on articles of clothing and culinary
utensils, sewing, washing and churning machines, they
began to devote their attention to objects that were en-
tirely foreign to their ordinary home activities. This is
clearly evinced by the patents they obtained for such
inventions as improvements in locomotive wheels, devices
for reducing straw and other fibrous substances for the
manufacture of paper pulp, improvements in corn huskers,
low-water indicators, steam and other whistles, corn plows,
a method of constructing screw propellers, improvements
in materials for packing journals and bearings, in fire
alarms, thermometers, railroad car heaters, improvements
in lubricating railway journals, in conveyors of smoke and
cinders for locomotives, in pyrotechnic night signals, bur-
glar alarms, railway car safety apparatus, in apparatus

346 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

for punching corrugated metals, desulphurizing ores and
other similar inventions in the domain of mechanical en-
gineering, inventions that, at first blush, would seem to be
quite alien to the genius and capacity of woman.

From now on women's inventions in the United States
increased at an extraordinary rate, for from 1871 until
July 1, 1888, when the first government report was made
on the patents issued to women inventors, she had to her
credit nearly two thousand inventions, many of which were
of prime importance.1

During the seven years following 1888 she was awarded
twenty-five hundred and twenty-six patents — more than
the total number that had been granted her during the
preceding seventy-nine years. Between 1895 and 1910,
three thousand six hundred and fifteen more patents were
placed to her credit, making a grand total for her first cen-
tury of inventive achievement of eight thousand five hun-
dred and ninety-six patents. No Patent Office reports are
available since 1910, but the number of inventions for
which "women have received patents since Mary Kies was
awarded hers on May 5, 1809, for "straw-weaving with silk
or thread," cannot be far from ten thousand. This fact
will, doubtless, be a revelation to that large class of men
who still seem to share the views of Voltaire and Proudhon
that women are incapable of inventing even the simplest
article of domestic use.

The following story well illustrates the prevailing igno-
rance regarding the part women have taken in the inven-
tion of certain articles that are so common that most
people think they were never patented.

"I was out driving once with an old farmer in Ver-
mont," writes Mrs. Ada C. Bowles, "and he told me,

iCf. Women Inventors to whom patents have been granted by
the United States Government, Compiled under the Direction of the
Commissioner of Patents, Washington, 1888. See also subsequent
reports of the Patent Office.

WOMEN AS INVENTORS 547

'You women may talk about your rights, but why don't
you invent something?' I answered, 'Your horse's feed
bag and the shade over his head were both of them in-
vented by women.' The old fellow was so taken aback
that he was barely able to gasp, ' Do tell ! ' '

Had he investigated further he would have found that
the flynet on his horse's back, the tugs and other harness
trimmings, the shoes on his horse's feet1 and the buggy
seat he then occupied were all the inventions of women.
He would, doubtless, also have discovered that the curry-
comb he had used before starting out on his drive, as well
as the snap hook of the halter and the checkrein and the
stall unhitching device were likewise the inventions of
members of that sex whose capacity he was so disposed to
depreciate ; for women have been awarded patents — in some
instances several of them — for all the articles that have
been mentioned. He might furthermore have learned that
the fellies in his buggy wheels and his daughter's side
saddle had been made under women's patents; and that,
to complete his surprise and confusion, the leather used
in his harness had been sewn by a machine patented by a
woman who was not only an inventor but who was also for
many years the manager and proprietor of a large harness
factory in New York City.

What particularly arrests one's attention in reading the
Patent Office reports is not only the large number of inven-
tions by women, but also the very wide range of the devices
which they embrace. It is not surprising to find them
inventing and improving culinary utensils, house furniture
and furnishings, toilet articles, wearing apparel and sta-
tionery, trunks and bags, toys and games, designs for
printed and textile fabrics, for boxes and baskets, screens,
awnings, baby carriers, musical instruments, appliances for

i To one woman, Mary E. Poupard, of London, England, were
granted in a single year no less than three patents for horse-shoes —
two of the patents being for sectional and segmental horse-shoes,

348 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

washing and cleaning, attachments for bicycles and type-
writing machines, art, educational and medical appliances ;
for these things are in keeping with their proper metier;
but it is surprising for those who are not familiar with the
history of modern inventions to learn of the share women
have had in inventing and improving agricultural imple-
ments, building appurtenances, motors of various kinds,
plumbing apparatus, theatrical stage mechanisms, and,
above all, countless railway appliances from a coupling or
fender to an apparatus for sanding railroad tracks, or a
device for unloading boxcars.

Those who are still of the opinion of Voltaire and Proud-
hon — and their name is legion — respecting woman's inver
tive powers, might be willing to accord to her the capacity
to design a new form of clothes pin, or hair crimper, or
rouge pad, or complexion mask, or powder puff, or baby
jumper; but they would limit her ability to contrivances
of this character. But what would these same people say
if they were told that over and above the things just men-
tioned for which many women have actually received
patents, the much depreciated female sex had been granted
patents for locomotive wheels, stuffing boxes, railway car
safety apparatus, life rafts, cut-offs for hydraulic and other
engines, street cars, mining machines, furnaces for smelt-
ing ores, sound-deadening attachments for railway cars,
feed pumps and transfer apparatus for traction cars, ma-
chines for driving hoops on to barrels, apparatus for de-
stroying vegetation on and removing snow from railroads,
coke crushers, artificial stone compositions, elevated rail-
ways, new forms of cattle cars, dams and reservoirs, weld-
ing seams of pipes and hardening iron, alloys for bell
metal and alloys to resemble silver, methods of refining
and hardening copper, processes for concentrating ores,
improvement in elevators and designs for raising sunken
vessels? And yet, incredible as it may appear to these
scoffers at woman's genius, patents for all these inventions,

WOMEN AS INVENTORS 34*9

methods and processes — many of them of exceeding value —
and for hundreds of others of a similar nature, have been
issued to women during recent years. And the activity
of the fair inventors, far from abating, is becoming daily
more pronounced, and promises to reward their efforts with
far greater triumphs. Indeed, women are becoming so
active in the numerous fields of invention — even in such
unlikely ones as metallurgy and civil, mechanical and elec-
trical engineering — that they bid fair to rival men in what
they have long regarded as their peculiar specialty.

In 1892 a woman in New York was granted two patents,
one for a process of malting beer and the other for hooping
malt liquors. These inventions, however, are not so for-
eign to the avocation of woman as they at first appear.
For, if we may believe the teachings of ethnology and pre-
historic archaeology in this matter, women were the first
brewers. The one, therefore, who two decades ago secured
the two patents just mentioned was but taking up anew
an occupation in which her sex furnished the first inven-
tion many thousand years ago.

An instructive fact touching woman's inventive achieve-
ments is that her fullest success is coincident with her
enlarged opportunities for education, and began with the
breaking down of the prejudices which so long existed
against her having anything to do with the development of
the mechanical or industrial arts. When one recollects
that the public schools of Boston, established in 1642, were
not open to girls until a century and a half later, and then
only for the most elementary branches and for but one-
half the year ; and that girls did not have the benefit of a
high school education in the center of New England cul-
ture until 1852 ; and when one furthermore recalls the atti-
tude of the general public toward women and girls ex-
tending their activities beyond the nursery and the kitchen,
it is easy to understand that there was not much encourage-

350 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

ment for them to exercise their inventive talent, even if
they had felt an inclination to do so.

The experience of Miss Margaret Knight, of Boston, who
in 1871 was awarded a valuable patent for making a paper-
bag machine is a case in point and well illustrates some of
the difficulties that women inventors had to contend with
only a few decades ago.

"As a child," she writes to a friend, "I never cared for
the things that girls usually do; dolls never had any
charms for me. I couldn't see the sense of coddling bits of
porcelain with senseless faces; the only things I wanted
were a jackknife, a gimlet and pieces of wood. My friends
were horrified. I was called a tomboy, but that made
very little impression on me. I sighed sometimes because
I was not like other girls, but wisely concluded that I
couldn't help it, and sought further consolation from my
tools. I was always making things for my brothers. Did
they want anything in the line of playthings, they always
said, 'Mattie will make them for us.' I was famous for
my kites, and my sleds were the envy and admiration of
all the boys in town. I'm not surprised at what I've
done ; I 'm only sorry I couldn 't have had as good a chance
as a boy, and have been put to my trade regularly. ' '

Even after she had demonstrated her skill as an inventor,
Miss Knight had to encounter the skepticism of the work-
men to whom she entrusted the manufacture of her ma-
chines. They questioned her ability to superintend her
own work, and it was only her persistency and remarkable
competency that ultimately converted their incredulity into
respect and admiration.

Since women have come into the possession of greater
freedom than they formerly enjoyed, and have been af-
forded better opportunities of developing their inventive
faculties, many of them have taken to invention as an occu-
pation, and with marked success. They find it the easiest
and most congenial way of earning a livelihood, and not a

WOMEN AS INVENTORS 351

few of them have been able thereby to accumulate comfort-
able fortunes, besides developing industries that have given
employment to thousands of both sexes.

Thus the straw industry in the United States is due to
Miss Betsy Metcalf, who, more than a century ago, pro-
duced the first straw bonnet ever manufactured in this
country. Since then the industry which this woman origi-
nated has assumed immense proportions. The number of
straw hats now made in Massachusetts alone, not to speak
of those annually manufactured elsewhere, runs into the
millions.

Scarcely less wonderful is the industry developed by
Miss Knight, already mentioned, through her marvelous
invention for manufacturing satchel-bottom paper bags.
Many men had previously essayed to solve the problem
which she attacked with such signal success, but all to no
purpose. So valuable was her invention considered by
experts that she refused fifty thousand dollars for it
shortly after taking out her patent.

Often what are apparently the most trivial inventions
prove the most lucrative. Thus, a Chicago woman receives
a handsome income for her invention of a paper pail. A
woman in San Francisco invented a baby carriage, and
received fourteen thousand dollars for her patent. The
gimlet-pointed screw, which was the idea of a little girl,
has realized to its patentee an Independent fortune. Still
more remarkable is the Burden horseshoe machine, the in-
vention of a woman, which turns out a complete horseshoe
every three seconds and which is said to have effected a
saving to the public of tens of millions of dollars.

The cotton gin, one of the most useful and important of
American inventions — a machine that effected a complete
revolution in the cotton industry throughout the world — is
due to a woman, Catherine L. Greene, the wife of General
Nathaniel Greene, of Revolutionary fame. After she had
fully developed in her own mind a method for separating

352

WOMAN IN SCIENCE

the cotton from its seed, which was after her husband's
death, she intrusted the making of the machine to Eli
Whitney, who was then boarding with her, and who had
a Yankee's skill in the use of tools. Whitney was several
times on the point of abandoning as impossible the task
which had been assigned to him, but Mrs. Greene's faith
in ultimate success never wavered, and, thanks to her per-
sistence in the work and the putting into execution of her
ideas, her great undertaking was finally crowned with suc-
cess. She did not apply for a patent for her invention in
her own name, because so opposed was public opinion to
woman's having part in mechanical occupation that she
would have exposed herself to general ridicule and to a
loss of position in society. The consequence was that Whit-
ney— her employee — got credit for an invention which, in
reality, belonged to her. She was, however, subsequently
able to retain a subordinate interest in it through her sec-
ond husband, Mr. Miller.

This is only one of many instances in which patents,
taken out in the name of some man, are really due to
women. The earliest development of the mower and
reaper, as well as the clover cleaner, belongs to Mrs. A. H.
Manning, of Plainfield, New Jersey. The patent on the
clover cleaner was issued in the name of her husband ; but,
as he failed to apply for a patent for the mower and reaper,
his wife was, after his death, robbed of the fruit of her
brain by a neighbor, whose name appears on the list of
patentees of an invention which originated with Mrs. Man-
ning.

A few years ago men of science awoke to the startling
fact that the earth's supply of nitrates was being rapidly
exhausted. It was then realized that, unless some new
store of this essential fertilizer could be found, it would
soon be impossible to provide the food requisite for the
world's teeming millions. What was to be done? Never
was a more important problem presented to science for

WOMEN AS INVENTORS 353

solution, and never did science more quickly and effica-
ciously respond. It was soon recognized that the earth's
atmosphere was the only available storehouse for the much-
needed nitrogen. Forthwith scientists and inventors the
world over proceeded to tap this source of supply and to
convert its vast stores of nitrogen into the nitrates which
are so indispensable to vegetable life.

To form some idea of the importance of the problem and
the urgency of its solution, it may be stated that the
amount of fertilizer required for the cotton crop alone in
the Southern States in 1911 was no less than three million
tons. What, then, must have been the total amount used
through the world for cereals and other crops that need
constant fertilizing? The famous nitrate deposits of Chili
could supply only a small fraction of the stupendous
amount required, and they, according to recent calcula-
tions, cannot continue to meet the present demands on them
for more than a hundred years longer, at most.

The process involved, when once conceived, was simple
enough, for it merely required the conversion of the nitro-
gen of the air into nitric acid, which in turn was employed
in the production of nitrate of lime. But, simple as it was,
mankind had to wait a long time for its origination, and
action was taken only when necessity compelled. At pres-
ent there are numerous nitrate factories in France, Ger-
many, Austria, Sweden, Norway and the United States,
and the output is already enormous and constantly increas-
ing. Electricity, that mysterious force which has so fre-
quently come to man's assistance during the last few
decades, is the agent employed.

But who was the originator of the idea of utilizing the
atmosphere for the production of nitrates? Who took out
the first patent for a process for making nitrates by using
the nitrogen of the air? It was a Frenchwoman — Mme.
Lefebre, of Paris — long since forgotten. As early as 1859
she obtained a patent in England for her invention, but,

354 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

as the need of fertilizers was not so urgent then as it is
now, it was allowed to drop into oblivion, and the matter
was not again taken up until a half-century later, when
others secured the credit for an idea which was first con-
ceived by a woman who happened to have the misfortune
to live fifty years in advance of her time.

It were easy to extend the list of important inventions
due to women and of patents which were issued in the
name of their husbands or other men ; to tell of inventions,
too, of whose fruits, because they happened to be helpless
or inexperienced women, the real patentees were often
robbed; but the foregoing instances are quite sufficient to
show what woman's keen inventive genius is capable of
achieving in spite of all the restrictions put on her sex,
and in spite of her lack of training in the mechanic arts.

Had women, since the organization of our Patent Office,
enjoyed all the educational opportunities possessed by men ;
had they received the sam.e encouragement as the lordly
sex to develop their inventive faculties ; had the laws of the
country accorded them the rewards to which their labor
and genius entitled them, they would now have far more
inventions to their credit than those indicated in our gov-
ernment reports; and they would, furthermore, be able to
point to far more brilliant achievements than have hereto-
fore, under the unfavorable conditions under which they
were obliged to work, been possible. But when we recall
all the obstacles they have had to overcome and remember
also the fact that most of the patents referred to in the
preceding pages have been secured by women living in the
United States — little being said of the modern inventions
of women in foreign countries — we can see that their rec-
ord is indeed a splendid one, that their achievements are
not only worthy of all praise, but also a happy augury for
the future. When they shall have the same freedom of
action as men in all departments of activity in which they
exhibit special aptitude, when they shall have the same

WOMEN AS INVENTORS 355

advantages of training and equipment and the prospect of
the same emoluments as the sterner sex for the products of
their brainwork and craftsmanship, then may we expect
them to achieve the same distinction in the mechanic arts
as has rewarded their efforts in science and literature;
and then, too, may we hope to see them once more regain
something of that supremacy in invention which was theirs
in the early history of our race.

CHAPTER XI

WOMEN AS INSPIREBS AND COLLABOKATOKS IN SCIENCE

One of the most interesting literary figures of the fifth
century was Caius Apollinaris Sidonius, who, after holding
a number of important civil offices, became the bishop of
Clermont. The most valuable of his extant works are his
nine books of letters which are a mine of information
respecting the history of his age and the manners, customs
and ideals of his contemporaries.

In one of these letters, addressed to Hesperius, a young
friend of his who exhibited special talent in polite liter-
ature, he expresses a sentiment which applies as well to
the votary of science as to the man of letters. Referring
to the assistance which women had given to their husbands
and friends in their studies, he conjures him to remember
that in days of old it was the wont of Martia, Terentia,
Calpurnia, Pudentilla and Rusticana to hold the lamp
while their husbands, Hortensius, Cicero, Pliny, Apuleius
and Symmachus, were reading and meditating.1

This picture of women as light-bearers to the great ora-
tors and philosophers just named is symbolic of them as
the helpmates and inspirers of men in every field of human
activity and in every age of the world's history. Always
and everywhere, when permitted to occupy the same social
plane as men, women have been not only as lamps unto the

i Sis oppido meminens quod olim Martia Hortensio, Terentia
Tullio, Calpurnia Plinio, Pudentilla Apuleio, Kusticana Symmacho
legentibus meditantibusque candelas and candelabra tenuerunt. Lib.
II, Epist. 10.

356

WOMEN AS INSPIRERS 657

feet and as lights unto the paths of their male compeers in
the ordinary affairs of life, but have also been their guiding
stars and ministering angels in the highest spheres of in-
tellectual effort.

For nearly fifteen centuries St. Jerome has had the grati-
tude of the church for his masterly translation, known as
the Vulgate, of the Hebrew Scriptures. But, had it not
been for his two noble friends, Paula and Eustochium, who
were as eminent for their intellectual attainments as they
were for their descent from the most distinguished families
of Rome and Greece, there would have been no Vulgate.
For they were not only his inspirers in this colossal under-
taking, but they were his active and zealous collaborators
as well.

Dante and Petrarch are acclaimed as the morning stars
of modern literature, but both of them owed their immor-
tality to the inspiration of two pure-minded and noble-
hearted women.

In the concluding paragraph of his Vita Nuova — the
most beautiful love story ever written — Dante records his
purpose to say of his inspirer, the gentle, gracious Beatrice
Portinari, "what was never said of any woman." The
outcome of this exalted purpose was the Divina Commedia,
the world's greatest literary masterpiece.

Petrarch, the father of humanism, is the first to give
Laura de Noves credit for his attainments as a poet. In
one of his poems he sings :

"Blest be the year, the month, the hour, the day,
The season and the time, and point of space,
And blest the beauteous country and the place
Where first of two eyes I felt the sway."

Elsewhere in one of his prose dialogues with St. Augus-
tine he declares, "Whatever you see in me, be it little or
much, is due to her; nor would I ever have attained to
this measure of name and fame unless she had cherished

358 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

by those most noble influences that my feeble implanting
of virtues which nature had placed in this breast. ' n

A no less remarkable inspirer, but in an entirely differ-
ent sphere of activity, was the devout and spotless Italian
maiden, Chiara Schiffi, better known as St. Clara. She was,
as is well known, the ardent cooperator of St. Francis
Assisi in his great work of social and religious reform
which has contributed so much toward the welfare of
humanity. But it is not generally known what an im-
portant part she had in this great undertaking, and how
she sustained the Poverello during long hours of trial and
hardship. It was during these periods of care and struggle
that we see how courageous and intrepid was ' ' this woman
who has always been represented as frail, emaciated,
blanched like a flower of the cloister."

"She defended Francis not only against others but also
against himself. In those hours of dark discouragement
which so often and so profoundly disturb the noblest souls
and sterilize the grandest efforts, she was beside him to
show the way. When he doubted his mission and thought
of fleeing to the heights of repose and solitary prayer, it
was she who showed him the ripening harvest with no
reapers to gather it in, men going astray with no shepherd
to herd them, and drew him once again into the train of

i ' ' Verum hoc — sen gratitudini seu ineptise ascribendum — non
sileo, me quantulucunque conspicis, per illam esse, nee unquam ad
hoc, si quid est nominis aut glorias fuisse venturum, nisi virtutum
tenuissman sementem, quasi pectore in hoc natura locaverat, nobilissi-
mis his affectibus coluisset. Francisci Petrarchse, Colloquiorum Liber
quern Secretum Suum Inscripsit, pp. 105-106, Berne, 1603.

In his canzone beginning with the words Perche la vita e breve,
Petrarch declares to his inspirer —

"Thus if in me is nurst

Any good fruit, from you the seed came first;
To you, if such appear, the praise is due,
Barren myself till fertilized by you."

WOMEN AS INSPIRERS 359

the Galilean, into the number of those who give their lives
as a ransom for many. ' ' *

It is under the shade of the olive trees of St. Damian,
with his sister-friend Clara caring for him, "that he com-
poses his finest work, that which Ernest Renan called the
most perfect utterance of modern religions sentiment, The
Canticle of the Sun.'92

This canticle, however, beautiful as it is, lacks, as has
well been remarked, one strophe. "If it was not upon
Francis ' lips, it was surely in his heart : ' '

"Be praised, Lord, for Sister Clara;
Thou hast made her silent, active, and sagacious,
And, by her, thy light shines in our hearts." *

It was through the inspiration and influence of Theodora
that the famous Church of St. Sophia, that matchless poem
in marble and gold, that imperishable monument to the
glory of the true God, came into existence. It was through
her that Justinian conceived the idea of those Pandects
and Institutes which constitute the greatest glory of his
reign, and which are the basis of the Code Napoleon and of
all modern jurisprudence.

It was to Vittoria Colonna that Michaelangelo dedi-
cated many of the most exquisite productions of his peer-
less genius. "He saw," as has been said, "with her eyes
and acted by her inspiration."

Almost every one of Chopin's compositions was inspired
by women, and a large proportion of them are dedicated
to them. The same may be said of Mozart, Mendelssohn,
Schubert, Beethoven, Weber, Schumann and other illustri-
ous composers. All these sons of genius believed with
Castiglione that ' ' all inspiration must come from woman ; ' '

*Tln,e Life of St. Francis of Assisi, by Paul Sabatier, p. 166,
New York, 1894.

2 Ibid., p. 167.

3 Ibid., p. 307.

360 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

that she had been expressly created and sent into the world
to inspire them with intelligence and creative power.

M. Claviere declares that l ' There is hardly a philosopher
or a poet of the sixteenth century whose pages are not illu-
minated or gladdened by the smile of some high-born
lady."1

"What the brilliant Frenchman says of the influence of
woman on the poets and philosophers of a single century
could with equal truth be said of the poets and philoso-
phers of every century from Anacreon and Plato to the
present day. And, still more, it can be predicated of
woman's inspiration and influence in every department of
intellectual effort, in art and architecture, in music and
literature, in science in all its departments, whether deduc-
tive or inductive.

It has been well said, "Were history to be rewritten,
with due regard to women 's share in it, many small causes,
heretofore disregarded, would be found fully to explain
great and unlooked-for results. . . . For it is not in out-
ward facts, nor great names, nor noisy deeds, nor genealo-
gies of crowned heads, nor in tragic loves, nor ambitious or
striking heroism, nor crime, that we find proofs of the con-
stant and secret working whereby woman most effectually
asserts herself. Certainly she has played her part in the
outward and visible history of the world, but in that his-
tory which is told and written, which is buried in archives
and revivified in books, woman's part is always small when
set beside that of her companion, man. She contributes
but little, and at this she may surely rejoice, to the tales
of battles and treaties of successions and alliances, of vio-
lence, fraud, suspicions and hatreds. But if the inward
history of human affairs could be described as fully as the
outward facts ; if the story of the family could be told to-
gether with the story of the nation; if human thoughts
could with certainty be divined from human deeds, then

i The Women of the Renaissance, p. 394, New York, 1901.

WOMEN AS INSPIRERS

361

the chief figure in this history of sentiment and morals
would certainly be that of Woman the Inspirer."1

This same statement would hold equally good if applied
to the part taken by women in the history of science. Their
achievements have, in most cases, been so overshadowed by
those of men that their work has been usually regarded as
a negligible quantity. But when one considers the main-
springs of actions, and examines the silent undercurrents
which escape the notice of the superficial observer, one
finds, as in social and political history, that the most im-
portant scientific investigations are often conducted, and
the most momentous discoveries are made, in consequence
of the promptings of some devoted woman friend, or in
virtue of the still, small voice of a cherished wife, or sister,
who prefers to remain in the background in order that all
the glory of achievement may redound to the man.

There have been, it may safely be asserted, few really
eminent men in science, as there have been few really
eminent men in art or letters, or in the great reform and
religious movements of the world, who have not been
assisted by some woman light-bearer, as were Hortensius
by Martia, Tully by Terentia and Pliny by Calpurnia.
There have been few that have not, during hours of doubt
and discouragement, been sustained and stimulated as was
Francis by Clara, and Jerome by Paula and Eustochium.
And there have been still fewer who have not had, like
Petrarch and Dante, their Laura or their Beatrice of whom
each could say :

"This is the beacon guides to deeds of worth,
And urges me to see the glorious goal:
This bids me leave behind the vulgar throng."

In the preceding chapters we have had notable examples
of women whose beneficent influence and cooperation have

1 Women of Florence, by Isodoro del Lungo, p. xxvii, London^
1907,

362 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

enabled distinguished men of science to achieve results that
would otherwise have been impossible. Among these — to
mention only a few — were Mme. Lavoisier and Mme. Curie
in chemistry, Mme. Lapaute and Miss Herschel in astron-
omy, Mrs. Agassiz and Mme. Coudreau in natural science
and exploration, Mme. Schliemann and Mme. Dieulafoy
in archaeology.

One of the most illustrious women inspirers of France
was Catherine de Parthenay, who, after attaining woman-
hood, became the brilliant Princess de Rohan, and was
recognized as one of the most learned and most remarkable
women of the sixteenth century. As a young girl she
exhibited rare intelligence and displayed special aptitude
for the exact sciences. For this reason her mother saw
to it that her child had the benefit of instruction under the
ablest masters that could be secured.

The most noted of these was Francois Viete, the learned
French mathematician, who is justly regarded as the
father of modern algebra. In his day, especially in the
higher classes of society, the education given to women
was often more thorough than that afforded to men. For
this reason, too, women not infrequently became distin-
guished in astronomy, which was then usually known
under the name of astrology.

Viete, in initiating his gifted pupil into the principles
of this science, became himself so enthusiastic a student of
astronomy that he determined to prepare an elaborate work
on the subject — something on the plan of the Almagest of
Ptolemy — a work which he designated Harmonicum Ce-
leste.

In order that the instruction given his pupil might not
be lacking in precision, Viete wrote out, with the most
scrupulous care, the lessons designed for her benefit. The
manuscripts containing these lessons were long preserved
among the family archives, but nearly all of them were

WOMEN AS INSPIRERS 363

unfortunately consigned to the flames during the French
Eevolution in 1793.

No one was more interested in Viete 's mathematical re-
searches— those researches which have rendered him so
famous in the history of science — than was the Princess de
Rohan. The former pupil was the first to receive notice of
her distinguished master's discoveries and the first to con-
gratulate him on his success.

It was to this cherished pupil, who always remained his
friend and benefactress, that Viete dedicated his important
work on mathematical analysis entitled In Artem Analyti-
cam Isagoge. The words of the dedication are a tribute to
the learning and the genius of the pupil as well as an
expression of the gratitude of the teacher. It reads as
follows :

"It is to you especially, august daughter of Melusine,
that I am indebted for my proficiency in mathematics, to
attain which I was encouraged by your love for this sci-
ence, as well as your great knowledge of it, and by your
mastery of all other sciences, which one cannot too much
admire in a person of your noble lineage. ' J1

More interesting, and at the same time more pathetic,
were the relations of an Italian nun, Sister Maria Celeste,
and the man whom Byron so happily designates as

"The starry Galileo, with his woes."

Sister Celeste, who was a Franciscan nun in the convent of
St. Matthew, in Arcetri, was the great astronomer's eldest
and favorite daughter. They were greatly attached to
* This passage from the dedication is so important that I repro-
duce the Latin original: "Omnino vitam, aut, si quid mihi carius
est, vobis autem debeo, tibi autem, o diva Melusinis, omne pre-
sertim Mathematicis studium, ad quod me excitavit turn tuus in earn
amor, turn summa artis illius, quam tenes, peritia, immo vero nun-
quam satis admiranda in tuo tamque regii et nobilis generis sexu
Encyclopaedia." Francois Viete, Inventeur de I'Algebre Moderne,
p. 20, par Frederic Bitter, Paris, 1895.

364 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

each other, and the gentle religieuse was not only her
father's confidante and consoler in the hours of trial and
affliction, but was also his inspirer and ever-vigilant guar-
dian angel. She watched over him, not as a daughter over
a father, but as a mother watches over an only son.1

All this is beautifully exhibited in her one hundred and
twenty-four letters which were published in 1891 for the
first time. A few of these letters, it is true, were published
as early as 1852 by Alberi, in his edition of the complete
works of Galileo, and others were given to the press at
subsequent dates ; but the world had to wait more than two
and a half centuries for a complete collection of all the
known letters of this remarkable daughter of an illustrious
sire.

These documents are precious for the insight they give
into the sterling character of a noble woman, but they are
beyond price as sources of information respecting the tend-
erly affectionate relations which existed between her and
one of the foremost men of science, not only of his own age,
but of all time. They show how he made her his confidante
in all his undertakings, and how she was his amanuensis,
his counselor, his inspirer; how her love was an incentive
to the work that won for him undying fame ; how she was
his support and comfort when suffering from the jealousy
of rivals or the enmity of those who were opposed to his
teachings.

These letters cover a period of nearly eleven years — the
most momentous years of her father's busy and troubled
life. Now playful, quaint, elfish, then serious, vivid, confi-
dential, they show that the writer's intelligence was as
rare as her nature was loyal and affectionate. At times
she half -apologizes for the length of a letter, "but you

i ' ' E nell ' amore della figlia il grande astronomo trovo non
soltanto un conforto a suoi affanni, ma anche una guida benefica alia
quale sembro egli abandonarsi con cieca tenerezza figliale. " La
Storia del Feminismo, p. 509, by. G. L. Arrighi, Florence, 1911.

WOMEN AS INSPIRERS 365

must remember," she adds in excuse, "that I must put
into this paper everything that I should chatter to you in
a week."

No daughter was ever prouder of her father or loved
him with a more abounding love. "I pride myself," she
says, "that I love and revere my dearest father more, by
far, than others love their fathers, and I clearly perceive
that, in return, he far surpasses the greater part of other fa-
thers in the love which he has for me, his loved daughter. ' '

When he was ill she prepared dishes and confections
that she knew would tempt his appetite. But she was not
satisfied with looking after the welfare of his body, for
she took occasion to send with the cakes and preserved
fruits a sermonette for the benefit of his soul.

An extract from one of her letters gives an insight into
the character of this devoted daughter, who, Galileo says
in a letter to his friend, Elia Diodati, "was a woman of
exquisite mind, singular goodness and most tenderly at-
tached to me."

"Of the preserved citron you ordered," she writes him
on the nineteenth of December, 1625, "I have only been
able to do a small quantity. I feared the citrons were too
shriveled for preserving, and so they proved. I send two
baked pears for these days of vigil. But the greatest treat
of all I send you is a rose, which ought to please you ex-
tremely, seeing what a rarity it is at this season. And
with the rose you must accept its thorns, which represent
the bitter passion of Our Lord, while the green leaves rep-
resent the nope we may entertain that, through the same
sacred passion, we, having passed through the darkness of
this short winter of our mortal life, may attain to the
brightness and felicity of an eternal spring in heaven,
which may our gracious God grant us through His
mercy. ' n

1 Galileo Galilei e Suor Celeste, by Antonio Favaro, p. 256 et seq.,
Florence, 1891.

366 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

She always insists upon his keeping her fully informed
about his studies and discoveries. She is particular, also,
about receiving without delay copies of his latest publica-
tions. "I beg you/7 she writes in one of her letters, "to
be so kind as to send me that book of yours which has
just been published, II Saggiatore, so that I may read it;
for I have a great desire to see it."

On another occasion, after his difficulties with the Holy
Office, when she fancies her father is not keeping her fully
informed about the subject matter of his writings, she
implores him to tell her on what topic he is engaged, ' ' if / '
she archly adds, "it be something I can understand and
you are not afraid that I will blab. ' '

And on still another occasion Sister Celeste reminds her
father of a promise of his to send her a small telescope.
From this we should infer that she desired to repeat the
observations on the heavenly bodies that had created such
a sensation in the learned world, and which had given
occasion for such acrimonious controversy.

In one of her earlier letters Sister Celeste calls her
father's attention to a promise of his to spend an after-
noon with her and her sister Arcangela, also a nun in the
same convent. And, referring to one of the regulations
of the Franciscan cloister, she playfully observes: "You
will be able to sup in the parlor, since the excommunication
is for the table cloth" — 0 Sister Celeste! — "and not for
the meats thereon."

What would one not give for a stenographic report of
the conversations held that afternoon in the convent garden
of Arcetri, as father and daughters leisurely strolled
through the peaceful enclosure, all quite oblivious of the
fleeting hours? How interesting would be a faithful rec-
ord of the confidences exchanged at the frugal meal in
the evening in the humble parlor of S. Matteo ! "We would
willingly exchange many of the famous Dialoghi di Galileo

WOMEN AS INSPIRERS 367

Galilei for a verbatim report of what passed between Sister
Celeste and the father whom she so idolized.1

Judging from her letters, she had many questions to ask
him about his studies, his experiments, his discoveries, his
books, as well as about more personal and domestic matters.

Although there is no documentary proof of the fact, yet
there is every reason to believe that Galileo had taken
personal charge of the education of this, his favorite daugh-
ter. She shared his taste for science and inherited not a
little of his genius. Such being the case, we may well
believe that a faithful account of their conversations of
that day would be not only of surpassing interest, but
would also throw a flood of light on many questions now
ill understood. They would certainly tend to fill up the
numerous lacunae caused by the disappearance of the letters
of Galileo, which he wrote in answer to those of his ever-
cherished daughter.2

*An English writer, discussing this subject, pertinently observes:
"For, after all, is it not the personal incidents and commonplaces
of life that gather interest as the centuries roll on, while its more
pretentious events often drop into mere literary lumber? How much
more interesting Dr. Johnson's incidental admission, 'I have a
strong inclination, Sir, to do nothing today,' is to us now than
many of his more formal utterances. And, in reality, is it the
personal element alone that is in the long run perennial? The wise
may prate as they will about the importance of maintaining the con-
tinuity of history and of handing on the torch of science. The
world cares for none of these things; they interest only some few
political economists and laborious men. What does the crowd and
poor little Tom Jones and his nestful, for instance, care about the
fact that Cheops was — at any rate by courteous tradition — a mighty
man of valor of such an era and land? But little Tom Jones and
the rest of us would become mightily interested in this misty monster
of many traditions, could we learn in some magical way all he
thought, hated and loved in his inmost heart of hearts." The Na-
tional Eeview, p. 461, June, 1889.

2 The Duke of Peiresc, in a letter to Gassendi, regarding Galileo,
refers to certain letters — tres belles epistres — of the great philosopher,
tf& une sienne fille religieuse sur le sujet mesme des mati£res

368 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

They would also show more clearly than any facts now
available what an unbounded influence the gentle nun had
over the greatest intellect of his time, and would, more
clearly than anything in her correspondence, exhibit Sister
Celeste as the efficient co-worker and the abiding inspirer
of the father of modern physics and astronomy.

But, although we have no record of this soul-communion
between father and daughter on the occasion in question;
although we are deprived of the invaluable letters which
he wrote in reply to hers, we are, nevertheless, from the
evidence at hand, justified in regarding this unique pair
as being ever one in heart, aspirations and ideals, and
comparable in their mutual influence on each other with
any of those famous men and women who, through achieve-
ment on the one side and inspiration and collaboration on
the other, have ever been recognized as the greatest bene-
factors of their race.

One of Galileo's countrymen, G. B. Clemente de Nelli,
was right when he declared that, had it not been for the
assistance and consolation which he received from Sister
Celeste, Galileo would have succumbed to the blows that
were showered upon him during the most trying part of
his career. An indication of this is given in one of the
letters written by Sister Celeste in the last year of her
life.

traict&es en son dernier livre." This shows that Sister Celeste waa
kept fully informed by her father respecting the nature and con-
tents of his various works while he was preparing them for the
press. It implies, likewise, that she was not only interested in them
in a general way, but that she was able to read them intelligently
and appreciate them as well.

How fondly Galileo treasured the letters written him by this
daughter of predilection is made known to us by Sister Celeste her-
self, when she tells him in one of her letters ' ' Kesto conf usa sentendo
ch'ella conservi le mie lettere, e dubito ehe il grande affeto que mi
porta gliele dimonstri piu compita di quello che sono." Op. cit.,
p. 317.

WOMEN AS INSPIRERS 369

While in a fit of despondency and imagining his friends
had forgotten him, Galileo, in a moment of bitterness,
wrote in a letter to his daughter: "My name is erased
from the book of the living. " "Nay," came at once Sister
Celeste 's cheering reply, ' ' say not that your name is struck
de libro viventium, for it is not so ; neither in the greater
part of the world nor in your own country. Indeed, it
seems to me that, if for a brief moment your name and
fame were clouded, they are now restored to greater bright-
ness, at which I am much astonished, for I know that gen-
erally Nemo propheta acceptus est in patria sua. I am
afraid, however, if I begin quoting Latin, I shall fall into
some barbarism. But, of a truth, you are loved and
esteemed here more than ever."1

How much Sister Celeste was to her father in every way
was not known until after her premature death in her
thirty-fourth year. He was never the same man after-
ward. Disconsolate and broken, he fancied he heard the
voice of the daughter he so fondly loved resounding
through the house. Brooding over his great loss, the heart-
broken old man writes to a friend in words of infinite
pathos, "Mi sento continuamente chiamare della mia diletta
figlioula — I continually hear myself called by my dearly
beloved daughter." The eighth of January, 1642, he an-
swered her call and went to join her in a better world.

Two other noted investigators, one of them a contempo-
rary of Galileo, owed much to the inspiration and encour-
agement which they received from women. These were
Descartes and Leibnitz. And the women that had the
most influence on them were representatives of royal fami-
lies, who were famous in their day for their love and
knowledge and the extent of their intellectual attainments.

One of the most noted of these was Elizabeth of Bohemia,
Princess Palatine. She was the favorite pupil of Descartes,
and it was to her that he dedicated his great work, Prin-
i Op. cit.; p. 404.

370 .WOMAN IN SCIENCE

cipia Philosophic^. She, lie declared, understood him better
than any one else he had ever met, for "in her alone were
united those generally separated talents for metaphysics
and for mathematics which are so characteristically oper-
ative in the Cartesian system/'1

To this earnest student who was always absorbed in the
mysteries of metaphysics and the problems of geometry,
Descartes could refuse nothing. When distance separated
them he continued his instructions by correspondence. One
of the results of this correspondence was his treatise on
Passions de I'Ame, in which he develops certain ethical
views suggested by the Vita Beat a of Seneca.

Another distinguished pupil of Descartes who exercised
a marked influence over him was the celebrated daughter
of Gustavus Adolphus, Queen Christine of Sweden. A mis-
tress of many languages and an ardent votary of science,
she was a munificent patron of scientific men, a great num-
ber of whom she had attracted to her court. The most dis-
tinguished of these was Descartes, to whom she was deeply
attached, and with whom she had planned great things for
science in Sweden, when his career was cut short by a pre-
mature death.

Not the least influence on the intellectual life of Leibnitz
was Sophia Charlotte, Queen of Prussia and mother of
Frederick the Great. She was the niece of Descartes' illus-
trious friend, Elizabeth of Bohemia, and, as the pupil of
Leibnitz, quite as gloriously associated as had been her
aunt with the father of Cartesianism.

Leibnitz was as distinguished by genius as his royal pupil
was by birth. Besides being eminent as a philosopher and

i In the dedication of his Principles of Philosophy he addresses
his young friend and pupil in the following words: "Je puis dire
avec verite que je ne jamais rencontre que le seul esprit de votre
altesse auquel 1 'un et 1 'autre ' ' — metaphysics and mathematics — ' ' f (it
Sgalement facile; ce qui fait que j 'ai une tres juste raison der
1 'estimer incomparable. ' '

WOMEN AS INSPIRERS 371

a statesman, lie shared with Newton the honor of discover-
ing the calculus. Huxley pronounced him "a man of sci-
ence, in the modern sense, of the first rank/' while the
King of Prussia declared of him, "He represents in him-
self a whole academy. " Through the cooperation of
Sophia Charlotte he founded the Berlin Academy of Sci-
ences. For her he wrote one of the most notable of his
productions — his famed Theodicy.

It would be difficult to estimate the influence of this
learned queen on Leibnitz, but it was undoubtedly greater
than any other single influence whatever. Her death was
the greatest loss he ever suffered, and when she was no
more, the beautiful Berlin suburb, Charlottenburg — named
after her — where he had been so happy in reading and
philosophizing with his illustrious pupil, lost all attraction
for him.

A more striking illustration of woman's helpfulness is
afforded in the case of Frangois Huber, the celebrated Swiss
naturalist. Although blind from his seventeenth year, he
was able to carry on researches requiring the keenest eye-
sight and the closest observation. This he was able to do
through the affectionate cooperation of his devoted wife,
Marie Aimee.

"When her friends tried to dissuade her from marrying
Huber, to whom she had been engaged for some time,
saying he had become blind, her reply was worthy of her
generous and noble nature : ' ' He then needs me more than
ever. ' '

During the forty years of their married life her tender-
ness and devotion to her husband were as unfailing as they
were inspiring. He worked through the eyes and hands
of his wife as if they were his own. She was his reader,
his observer, his secretary, his enthusiastic collaborator in
all those investigations that have rendered him so famous.
The blind man devised the experiments to be made, and
the quick-witted wife executed them and recorded the

372 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

observations which, supplied the material for his epocli-
making work on bees, entitled Nouvelles Observations sur
les Abeilles. So accurate are his descriptions of the habits
of the winged creatures, to the study of which he devoted
the best years of his life, that one would think his great
work was the production, not of a man who had been blind
for a quarter of a century, when he wrote it, but of one
who was gifted with exceptional keenness of vision and
powers of observation.

"As long as she lived," exclaimed the great naturalist
after his trusty Aimee's death, "I was not sensible of the
misfortune of being blind. ' ' Nay, more. During her life-
time, when, though sightless, he was always so happy in
his work, he went so far as to aver that he would be miser-
able were he to recover his eyesight. ' ' I should not know, ' '
he declared, "to what an extent a person in my condition
couid be beloved. Besides, to me, my wife is always young,
fresh and pretty, which is no light matter. " He could
truly say of her, as Wordsworth said of his sister Dorothy,

"She gave me eyes, she gave me ears,

###***

And love and thought and joy."

We hear much of the achievements of Galvani and Fara-
day in the domain of electricity and electromagnetism, but
little is said of the women to whom they were so greatly
indebted for their success and fame.

It was Galvani 's wife who first directed his attention to
the convulsions of a frog's leg when placed near an elec-
trical machine. This induced him to make those celebrated
investigations which led to the foundation of a new science
which has ever since been identified with his name.

It was Mrs. Marcet's works on science — especially her
Conversations on Chemistry — that inspired Faraday with a
love of science and blazed for him that road in chemical

WOMEN AS INSPIRERS 373

and physical experimentation which led to such marvelous
results. He was always proud to call her his first teacher,
and never hesitated to attribute to her that taste for scien-
tific research for which he became so preeminent. And it
was his devoted wife who was not only a helpmate but a
soulmate as well for nearly half a century, that had very
much to do with the splendid development of the germ
which had been placed in his youthful mind by Mrs.
Marcet.

The same may likewise be asserted of the wives of two
distinguished geologists — Charles Lyell and Xavier Hom-
maire de Hell. Mrs. Lyell was intimately associated with
her husband in all his scientific undertakings, and her
ready intellect contributed immensely toward securing for
him that enviable position which he attained of being the
premier geologist of his century. Mme. Hommaire de Hell
deserves special mention in the history of geology for the
invaluable assistance which she gave her husband in the
scientific exploration of the basin of the Caspian Sea. Not
only did she share his labors and perils in this then wild
part of the world, and collaborate with him in the prepara-
tion of the report for which the French government con-
ferred on him the Cross of the Legion of Honor, but she
also wrote unaided the two descriptive volumes of their
great work, Steppes de la Mer Caspienne. Her part of
this great undertaking received the special commendation
of M. Villemain, who was the minister of public instruc-
tion, and had she not belonged to the disenfranchized sex,
she, too, would have been decorated with the Cross of the
Legion of Honor.

All the world has heard of the daring explorations of
Baker and Livingstone in the Dark Continent, but how
few are aware of the important part taken in their great
enterprises by their devoted and heroic wives? Sir Samuel
Baker immortalized himself by discovering Lake Albert
Nyanza, one of the main sources of the Nile, but in attain-

374. WOMAN IN SCIENCE

ing this goal, which other explorers had in vain essayed to
reach, he was not alone. The companion of his triumph,
as of his trials and hardships, was Lady Baker, a woman
who, although delicately reared, was as brave in presence
of danger as she was resourceful in trials and difficulties.
More than once her husband owed his life to her intrepidity
and presence of mind, when confronted by the treacherous
savages of equatorial Africa; and, if he achieved success
where others failed, it was in no slight measure due to
her tact, her energy and perseverance in what seemed at
times a forlorn hope. "She had learned Arabic with him
in a year of necessary but wearisome delay; her mind
traveled with his mind as her feet had followed his foot-
steps." And, when after preliminary toils without num-
ber, after braving dangers from climate, disease and ruth-
less savages, they finally stood on the shore of that un-
known sea which was then first beheld by English eyes, she
could, in contemplating their achievements of which Albert
Nyanza was the crowning glory, exclaim with exaltation
and truth, "Quorum pars magna fui."

When Livingstone lost, in the unexplored valley of the
Zambesi, the faithful wife who had been his inspiring com-
panion in his wanderings in darkest Africa, he lost com-
pletely that enthusiasm for deeds of high emprise that
before had been one of his leading characteristics. Writing
to his distinguished friend, Sir Roderick Murchison, he
mournfully declares: "I must confess this heavy stroke
quite takes the heart out of me. Everything that has hap-
pened only made me more determined to overcome all diffi-
culties; but after this sad stroke I feel crushed and void
of strength. ... I shall do my duty still, but it is with
a darkened horizon that I again set about it."

The noted English naturalist, Frank Buckland, in speak-
ing of the aid afforded by his gifted mother to her dis-
tinguished husband, Dr. Buckland, writes as follows:
''During the long period that Dr. Buckland was engaged

WOMEN AS INSPIRERS

375

in writing the book which I now have the honor of editing,
my mother sat up night after night, for weeks and months
consecutively, writing to my father's dictation; and this
often until the sun's rays, shining through the shutters at
early morn, warned the husband to cease from thinking
and the wife to rest her weary hand.

"Not only with the pen did she render material assist-
ance, but her natural talent in the use of her pencil en-
abled her to give accurate illustrations and finished draw-
ings, many of which are perpetuated in Dr. Buckland's
works. She was also particularly clever and neat in mend-
ing broken fossils. There are many specimens in the Ox-
ford Museum, now exhibiting their natural forms and
beauty, which were restored by her perseverance to shape
from a mass of broken and almost comminuted fragments.
It was her occupation also to label the specimens, which
she did in a particularly neat way; and there is hardly a
fossil or a bone in the Oxford Museum which has not her
handwriting upon it.

"Notwithstanding her devotion to her husband's pur-
suits, she did not neglect the education of her children, but
occupied her mornings in superintending their instruction
in sound and useful knowledge. The sterling value of her
labors they now, in after life, fully appreciate, and feel
most thankful that they were blessed with so good a
mother."1

What has been said of the influence and cooperation of
the women already named may, with equal truth, be af-
firmed of numberless others of recent as well as of earlier
date. It is particularly true of the wife of the naturalist
Heller and of the great astronomer, Kepler. It is true of
the wife of the illustrious mathematician, the Marquis de
1'Hopital. She not only shared her husband's talent for
mathematics, but was of special assistance to him in pre-

1 Geology and Mineralogy Considered with Reference to Natural
Theology, by William Buckland, p. xxxvi, London, 1858.

376 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

paring for the press his important Analyse des Infiniment
Petits. It is true of the wife of Asaph Hall, the illustri-
ous discoverer of the satellites of Mars. Often he was on
the point of abandoning the quest of these diminutive
moons — which no one had ever seen but which his calcula-
tions led him to believe really existed — but he was encour-
aged by Mrs. Hall to continue his observations, with the
result that his labors and vigils were at last rewarded by
the startling discovery of Deimos and Phobos.

And there is Mme. Pasteur, who, in her way, was quite
as important a factor in the scientific career of her im-
mortal husband as were the women just mentioned in the
lives of their husbands, to whose triumphs they so materi-
ally contributed.

One of the great Frenchman's biographers has truly de-
clared that ' ' it is impossible rightly to appreciate Pasteur 's
life without some understanding of the immense assistance
which he received in his home. Whether in discussing
forms of crystals, watching over experiments, shielding
her husband from all the daily fret of life, or busy at the
customary evening task of writing to his dictation, Madame
Pasteur was at once his most devoted assistant and incom-
parable companion. His surroundings at home were en-
tirely subordinated to his scientific life, and his family
shared with him both his trials and his triumphs. At the
time when Pasteur was engrossed with the study of an-
thrax, and, after many difficulties and disappointments,
had at length succeeded in preparing a vaccine against it,
he at once hurried from the laboratory to communicate his
great discovery first to his wife and daughter. ' J1

i Pasteur, by Mr. and Mrs. Percy Frankland, p. 26 et seq., Lon-
don, 1898. A French writer referring to this happy discovery ex-
presses himself as follows: "Quand Pasteur trouva le vaccin de
charbon, il remonta triomphant de son laboratoire et les larmes lui
vinrent aux yeux en embrassant sa femrne et sa fille auxquelles il
annoncait sa victoire." Revue Encyclopedique, p. 20, Jan. 15, 1895.

WOMEN AS INSPIRERS 377

It was particularly during his long and arduous re-
searches on the disease of silkworms that Pasteur found his
wife's aid of incalculable value. For Mme. Pasteur and
her daughter then constituted themselves veritable silk-
worm rearers. They collected mulberry leaves, sorted
larvae, and were unremitting in their labors during the
continuance of this memorable investigation. And not
only in the silk-producing districts of Southern France
were they thus occupied, but also in a special laboratory in
Ecole Normale, after their return to Paris.

And, when in the midst of these researches, on the suc-
cessful outcome of which hinged one of the greatest sources
of national wealth, the indefatigable savant was stricken
with paralysis and his life was for a while despaired of, it
was again his devoted helpmate that afforded him solace in
suffering and exercised a supervision over those experi-
ments which the great man was still conducting almost in
the presence of death.

That Pasteur's life was prolonged for a quarter of a
century after the terrible attack of hemiplegia in 1868,
that he was able to unravel the deep mysteries of microbian
life, that he was able to make discoveries whose economical
value to France was, in the estimation of Professor Hux-
ley, more than sufficient to liquidate the immense indem-
nity of five billion francs exacted from his country by
Germany at the termination of the Franco-Prussian war,
that he was able, especially during these fruitful twenty-
five years, to render his "scientific life like a luminous
trail in the great night of the infinitely little in those
ultimate abysses of being where life is born, ' ' was, in great
measure, due to the unceasing care, the untiring vigilance
and the sympathetic collaboration of one of the most de-
voted of wives and most noble and whole-souled of women.

What has been said of the influence and helpfulness of
Mme. Pasteur can be asserted with even greater truth of
Elizabeth Agassiz and of Caroline Herschel. For these

378 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

two women, apart from the assistance they gave to a loved
husband and an idolized brother, in the labors that made
them so famous, both achieved distinction for their con-
tributions to the sciences which they individually culti-
vated with such splendid results. And had they elected
to devote all their time to scientific research, instead of
giving the greater part of it to those to whom they were
so devotedly attached, who can tell how much more bril-
liant would have been their achievements and how much
greater would have been the fame they would have won for
themselves. Both of them were dowered in an eminent
degree with taste and talent for science, and had they
chosen to make it the sole object of their life work, there
can be no doubt that their personal contributions to natural
history and astronomy would have been far greater than
they were. As it was, they were so overshadowed by those
for whom they labored with such unselfishness and loyalty
that the real value of their work is too often forgotten
when there is question of the scientific triumphs of Louis
Agassiz and Sir William Herschel.

But they willed it so. They gladly effaced themselves
that those whom they loved with such a deep and abiding
love might shine the more brightly in the firmament of
science. They preferred to spend and be spent in strength-
ening the great workers and leaders with whose lives their
own were so thoroughly identified — "Inspiring them with
courage, keeping faith in their own ideas alive, in days of
darkness

'When all the world seems adverse to desert.' "

Both of these noble women had the same quality in com-
mon— absolute devotion and unswerving faith in those to
whose success and happiness they had dedicated their lives.
They sought nothing for themselves, they thought nothing
of themselves. They both had, to borrow the idea of an-

WOMEN AS INSPIRERS 379

other, an intense power of sympathy, a generous love .of
giving themselves to the service of others, which enabled
them to transfuse the force of their own personality into
the objects to which they dedicated their powers.

In the preface of the joint work of Mr. and Mrs. Agassiz
entitled A Journey in Brazil, that delightful volume which
throws such a flood of light on the fauna and flora of the
Amazon valley, occur the following significant words re-
garding the share each had in producing the book : ' ' Our
separate contributions have become so closely interwoven
that we should hardly know how to disconnect them. ' ' So
was it with all their undertakings. There was the same
common interest, the same unity of purpose, the same
unselfish devotion to the cause of science during those long
years of toil which were so prolific in results of supreme
importance. Eeading between the lines in A Journey in
Brazil, and in Louis Agassiz, His Life and Correspondence,
written by Mrs. Agassiz, we can easily fancy that the great
naturalist owed as much, if not more, to his wife's never-
failing sympathy and inspiration as to her active coopera-
tion in his work, and we are ready to apply to her the
words of Longfellow when he sings:

"And whenever the way seemed long,

Or his heart began to fail,
She would sing a more wonderful song
Or tell a more wonderful tale."

As to Caroline Herschel as a helper and sustainer of her
illustrious brother, too much cannot be said. "In the days
when he gave up a lucrative career that he might devote
himself to astronomy, it was owing to her thrift and care
that he was not harassed by the rankling vexations of
money matters. She had been his helper and assistant
when he was a leading musician; she became his helper
and assistant when he gave himself up to astronomy. By
sheer force of will and devoted affection she learned enough

380 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

of mathematics and of methods of calculation, which to
those unlearned seem mysteries, to be able to commit to
writing his researches. She became his assistant in the
workshop ; she helped him to grind and polish his mirrors ;
she stood beside his telescope in the nights of midwinter,
to write down his observations when the very ink was
frozen in the bottle. She kept him alive by her care;
thinking nothing of herself, she lived for him. She loved
him and believed in him, and helped him with all her heart
and with all her strength. She might have become a dis-
tinguished woman on her own account, for with the seven-
foot Newtonian sweeper given her by her brother she dis-
covered eight comets first and last. But the pleasure of
seeking and finding for herself was scarcely tested. She
1 minded the heavens ' for her brother ; she worked for him,
not for herself, and the unconscious self-denial with which
she gave up 'her own pleasure in the use of her sweeper'
is not the least beautiful picture in her life."1

While recounting the achievements of women who di-
rectly or indirectly contributed to our knowledge of the
earth and what it contains we cannot forget what the
world owes to the gracious and glorious Isabella of Castile.
For it is to her probably as much as to Columbus that a
new continent was discovered at the close of the fifteenth
century. For, while the doctors of Salamanca — most of
whom were what Galileo called ' ' paper philosophers, ' ' men
who fancied that a correct knowledge of the physical uni-
verse was to be obtained by a collation of ancient texts —
were denouncing the great navigator as an idle dreamer,
and quoting the ill-founded notions of Pliny and Aristotle
to prove the impossibility of his carrying out his project,
Isabella was quietly revolving in her own mind the reasons
which Columbus had adduced in favor of his great enter-
prise. Having satisfied herself that his views were suffi-

i Memoir and Correspondence of Caroline Herschel, London, 1879,
pp. vi and vii, by Mrs. John Herschel. Cf. Chap. IV of this Vol.

WOMEN AS INSPIRERS

381

ciently probable to justify action, she was prepared to
make any sacrifices to have his plans executed. The re-
sult of her decision is but another illustration of the value
of woman's quick intuition, as against the slow reasoning
processes of philosophers and men of science.

Again, while considering what women have accomplished
for the advancement of science by inspiration and collabo-
ration, we must not lose sight of what they have done by
suggestion. For, as John Stuart Mill well observes: "It
no doubt often happens that a person who has not widely
and accurately studied the thoughts of others on a subject
has by natural sagacity a happy intuition which he can
suggest but cannot prove, which yet, when matured, may
be an important addition to knowledge : but, even then, no
justice can be done to it until some other person, who does
possess the previous acquirements, takes it in hand, tests it,
gives it a scientific or practical form, and fits it into its
place among the existing truths of philosophy or science.
Is it supposed that such felicitous thoughts do not occur to
women? They occur by hundreds to every woman of
intellect; but they are mostly lost for want of a husband
or friend who has the other knowledge which can enable
him to estimate them properly and bring them before the
world; and, even when they are brought before it, they
usually appear as his ideas, not their real author's. Who
can tell how many of the original thoughts put forth by
male writers belong to a woman by suggestion, to them-
selves only by verifying and working out ? If I may judge
by my own case, a very large proportion indeed. ' n

i The Subjection of Women, pp. 98, 99, London, 1909.

The idea herein expressed is beautifully accentuated in the touch-
ing dedication to the author's work On Liberty, which reads as
follows:

1 ' To the beloved and deplored memory of her who was the in-
spirer, and in part the author, of all that is best in my writings —
the friend and wife whose exalted sense of truth and right was my
strongest incitement, and whose approbation was my chief reward —

382 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

Nor should we forget those active and energetic women —
and their number is much greater than is ordinarily sup-
posed— whose husbands, although often endowed with
genius of the highest order, were indolent by temperament
and disorderly and unmethodical by nature. Such men
would, in the majority of cases, have run to seed had not
their genius been given special force and impulse by their
vigorous and methodical helpmates. Sir William Hamil-
ton, the most learned philosopher of the Scottish school, is
a striking instance in point ; for it was due almost entirely
to the stimulation he received from his ever active wife
that he was always kept keyed up to his fullest working
capacity as a philosopher and became recognized the world
over as one of the commanding intellects of his age.

"Lady Hamilton," writes Professor Veitch in his Mem-
oir of Sir William Hamilton, ' i had a power of keeping her
husband up to what he had to do. She contended wisely
against a sort of energetic indolence which characterized
him, and which, while he was always laboring, made him
apt to put aside the task actually before him, sometimes
diverted by subjects of inquiry suggested in the course of
study on the matter in hand, sometimes discouraged by the
difficulty of reducing to order the immense mass of ma-

I dedicate this volume. Like all that I have written for many
years, it belongs as much to her as to me; but the work as it stands
has had, in a very insufficient degree, the inestimable advantage
of her revision, some of the most important portions having been
reserved for a more careful re-examination, which they are now never
destined to receive. Were I but capable of interpreting to the world
one-half the great thoughts and noble feelings which are buried in
her grave, I should be the medium of a greater benefit to it than
is ever likely to arise from anything I can write, unprompted and
unassisted by her all but unrivalled wisdom. * '

The chivalrous sentiments expressed in this generous tribute by
one of the deepest thinkers of his time, to the memory of his noble
and gifted life-companion, extravagant as they may seem, are but
echoes of similar sentiments often voiced before by the world's great-
est leaders of thought and science.

WOMEN AS INSPIRERS 383

terials he had accumulated in connection with it. Then
her resolution and cheerful disposition sustained and re-
freshed him, and never more so than when, during the
last twelve years of his life, his bodily strength was broken
and his spirit, though languid, yet ceased not from mental
toil. The truth is that Sir "William's marriage, his com-
paratively limited circumstances, and the character of his
wife supplied to a nature that would have been contented
to spend its mighty energies in work that brought no re-
ward but in the doing of it, and that might never have
been made publicly known or available, the practical force
and impulse which enabled him to accomplish what he
actually did in literature and philosophy. It was this in-
fluence, without doubt, which saved him from utter absorp-
tion in his world of rare, noble and elevated but ever-
increasingly unattainable ideas. But for it the serene sea
of abstract thought might have held him becalmed for life ;
and, in the absence of all utterance of definite knowledge
of his conclusions, the world might have been left to an
ignorant and mysterious wonder about the unprofitable
scholar. ' n

i Memoir of Sir WflUam Hamilton, by John Veitch, p. 136 et seq.,
Edinburgh, 1869.

It is frequently said that women, unlike men, are indifferent to
fame. This may be true so far as they are personally concerned;
but it is certainly not true of them in regard to their husbands, or
the men for whom they have a genuine affection. This is abundantly
proved by the lives of Mme. Huber, Mme. Pasteur, Caroline Herschel
and Lady Hamilton, not to name others who have been mentioned
in the foregoing pages. After Sir William Hamilton, at the age
of fifty-six, had been stricken by hemiplegia on the right side, as
the result of over-work, his faithful wife became for twelve years
eyes, hands and even mind for him. She read and consulted books
for him, and helped him to prepare his lectures and the works which
have given him such celebrity. "Everything that was sent to the
press and all the courses of lectures were written by her, either to
dictation or from copy." And when we remember that the lec-
tures and books were of the most abstruse character and that Lady

384 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

"What has been so far said, important as it is, does not
tell the whole story of woman's influence on men of sci-
ence, and consequently on the progress of science. We
should not have an adequate conception of women as in-
spirers and collaborators if we did not advert to certain
faculties which they usually possess in a more eminent de-
gree than the most of men. It is a well-known fact that
in many of the affairs of life women are more practical,
have more tact, and possess keener and quicker perceptions
than men. They are, too, more ideal, more romantic and
more enthusiastic.

Men of science in their investigations usually proceed by
the slow and laborious process of collecting facts and col-
lating phenomena, either by observation or experiment, or
both, and, from the observed facts and phenomena, they
formulate a law which explains and correlates them. This
is known as induction, a method which proceeds from facts
to ideas.

Women, on the contrary, are rather disposed to proceed
from ideas to facts ; to explain phenomena from ideas which
already exist in the mind, without having recourse to the
slow process of induction. This is the deductive method,
and is the very reverse of that employed by the average
man of science. It would, however, be a mistake to main-
tain that the inductive method is always employed, for
such is not the case. More than a half a century ago the
historian, Buckle, in a notable lecture delivered in the
Koyal Institution of Great Britain, directed attention to
the fact that some of the greatest scientific discoveries had
been made by the deductive method.

One of these was Newton's epoch-making discovery of
universal gravitation. While sitting in a garden he saw

Hamilton was associated with her husband in his recondite work
throughout his long and brilliant career, we must confess that her
conduct was not only heroic to a degree, but also that the fame of
the one she loved was to her a matter of the deepest concern.

WOMEN AS INSPIRERS

385

an apple fall, and this simple fact caused him to advance
from idea to idea, and to be carried, by what Tyndall loved
to call "the scientific use of the imagination, " into the
distant realms of space. And, heedless of the operations
of nature, neither observing nor experimenting, the great
philosopher, by pure a priori reasoning, "completed the
most sublime and majestic speculation that it ever entered
into the heart of man to conceive." "It was," as Buckle
well observes, "the triumph of an idea. It was the au-
dacity of genius." It was also the triumph of the deduc-
tive method in the solution of a problem that one not a
genius could have worked out only by the long and toil-
some process of induction.

Similarly, the great law of metamorphosis in plants, * ' ac-
cording to which the stamens, pistils, corollas, bracts, petals
and so forth, of every plant, are simply modified leaves,"
was discovered not by an inductive investigator, but by a
poet. "Guided by his brilliant imagination, his passion
for beauty and his exquisite conception of form which sup-
plied him with ideas, ' ' Germany '& greatest poet, Goethe, by
reasoning deductively, was able to generalize a law which
lesser minds could never have arrived at except through
the application of the inductive method.

So also was it in the science of crystallography. Its
foundations were laid, not by a mineralogist nor a mathe-
matician, as one would suppose, but by one of strong imagi-
nation and marked poetic temperament. Like Goethe,
Haiiy was led by his ideas of beauty and symmetry to
work deductively on the problem before him. Descending
from ideas to facts, he finally succeeded, after a long series
of subsequent labors, in reading "the riddle which had
baffled his able but unimaginative predecessors."

It is the possession of this deductive faculty, so charac-
teristic of men of genius — their ability to reach conclusions
directly, as great mathematicians perceive inferences which
those less gifted reach only after pages of elaborate calcu-

386 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

lations — which enable women, "not indeed to make scien-
tific discoveries, but to exercise the most momentous and
salutary influence over the method by which scientific dis-
coveries are made." For, as Buckle points out, men of
science are too inclined to employ the inductive method to
the exclusion of the deductive.1 They have become slaves
to the tyranny of facts, and, as such, are incompetent to
further the progress of science as they would by using
both methods instead of one. And their slavery would be
still more complete and ignominious were it not for the
great though unconcious service to science rendered by
women who have kept alive the deductive habit of thought.
' ' Their turn of thought, their habits of mind, their conver-
sation, their influence, insensibly extending over the whole
surface of society and frequently penetrating its intimate
structure, have, more than all other things put together,
tended to raise us up into an ideal world, lift us from the
dust in which we are too prone to grovel, and develop
in us those germs of imagination which even the most
sluggish and apathetic understandings in some degree
possess. ' '

From the foregoing observations it is manifest that the
best results to science are secured when men and women
work together — men supplying the slow, logical reasoning

i ' ' Induction is, indeed, a mighty weapon laid up in the armory
of the human mind, and by its aid great deeds have been accom-
plished and noble conquests have been won. But in that armory there
is another weapon, I will not say of stronger make, but certainly
of keener edge; and, if that weapon had been oftener used during
the present and preceding century, our knowledge would be far more
advanced than it actually is. If the imagination had been more
cultivated, if there had been a closer union between the spirit of
poetry and the spirit of science, natural philosophy would have made
greater progress, because natural philosophers would have taken a
higher and more successful aim, and would have enlisted on their
side a wider range of human sympathies. ' ; Buckle : The Influence
of Women on the Progress of Knowledge.

WOMEN AS INSPIRERS 387

power, women the vivid, far-reaching imagination; men
generalizing from facts, women from ideas; men working
chiefly by induction, women principally by deduction. For
thus collaborating, each with his or her predominant facul-
ties, the two combined possess in a measure the elements
which go to make up a man or woman of genius and which
enable them to achieve far more for the advancement of
science than would otherwise be possible.

No one has ever given more eloquent expression to this
truth than* John Stuart Mill, who was as keen as an ob-
server as he was profound as a thinker. Writing on the
subject under discussion, he does not hesitate to say:
"Hardly anything can be of greater value to a man of
theory and speculation who employs himself, not in collect-
ing materials of knowledge by observation, but in working
them up by processes of thought into comprehensive truths
of science and laws of conduct, than to carry on his specu-
lations in the companionship and under the criticism of a
really superior woman. There is nothing comparable to
it for keeping his thoughts within the limits of real things
and the actual facts of nature. A woman seldom runs
wild after an abstraction. . . . Women 's thoughts are
thus as useful in giving reality to those of thinking men as
men's thoughts in giving width and largeness to those of
women. In depth, as distinguished from breadth, I greatly
doubt if even now women, compared with men, are at any
disadvantage. ' n

We have already learned, from his own avowal, how
much Mill was beholden to his wife for her active coopera-
tion in the production of those works of his which have
exerted so profound an influence on many phases of mod-
ern thought. A more striking illustration of the value of
woman's assistance, but in the domain of biology, is found
in the biography of the late Professor Huxley. By those

i The Subjection of Women, ut sup., p. 87.

388 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

who know this distinguished man of science — so remarkable
for his intellectual vigor — only from his writings, the im-
pression would be gleaned that he was one of the most inde-
pendent of thinkers, and that his utterances on all sub-
jects were absolutely personal and entirely unmodified by
suggestion or criticism from any quarter.

How far this view is from being correct is found in the
statement by his son that his father "invariably submitted
his writings to the criticism of his wife before they were
seen by any other eye. To her judgment was due the
toning down of many a passage which erred by excess of
vigor, and the clearing up of phrases which would be ob-
scure to the public. In fact, if any essay met with her
approval, he felt sure it would not fail of its effect when
published."1 She was not only his "help and stay for
forty years ; in his struggles ready to counsel, in adversity
to comfort/ ' but, over and above this, she was "the critic
whose judgment he valued above almost any, and whose
praise he cared most to win" — the other self who made
his life work possible.2

An intelligent, sympathetic pair of this kind — and this,
as we have seen, is but one of a multitude which illumi-
nates and beautifies the history of science — are competent
to achieve wonders. They are like "the two-celled heart
beating with one full stroke" —

"Two plummets dropt for one to sound the abyss
Of science, and the secrets of the mind."

The woman is then truly, as De Lamennais in Scriptural
phrases has it, * * Man 's companion, man 's assistant, bone of
his bone and flesh of his flesh," and, in her sublime and
endearing character so complete in every relation of life,

iLife and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, by his son Leonard
Huxley, Vol. I, p. 324, New York, 1900.
2 Ibid., p. 39, Vol. II, p. 458.

WOMEN AS INSPIRERS

389

she fully answers to the beautiful characterization which
Adam, in Paradise Lost, gives of his beloved Eve:

"So absolute she seems,
And in herself complete, so well to know
Her own, that what she wills to do or say
Seems wisest, virtuosest, discreetest, best.

*******
Authority and reason on her wait,

* * * and, to consummate all,
Greatness of mind and nobleness their seat
Build in her loveliest, and create an awe
About her, as a guard angelic plac'd."

CHAPTER XII

THE FUTURE OF WOMEN IN SCIENCE:
SUMMARY AND EPILOGUE

Saint-Evremond, the first great master of the genteel
style in French literature, who was equally noted as a
brilliant courtier, a graceful wit, a professed Epicurean,
and who exerted so marked an influence on the writings
of Voltaire and the essayists of Queen Anne 's time, gives us
in one of his desultory productions an entertaining dis-
quisition on La femme qui ne se trouve point et ne se
trouvera jamais — the woman who is not and never will be
found. The caption of this singular essay admirably ex-
presses the idea that the majority of mankind has, even
until the present day, held respecting woman in science.
For them she was non-existent. Nature, in their view, had
disqualified her for serious and, above all, for abstract
science. Never, therefore, in the opinion of these solemn
wiseacres, had been found or could be found a woman who
had achieved distinction in science.

The foregoing chapters show how ill-founded is such a
view regarding woman in times past. For that half of
humanity which has produced such scientific luminaries as
Aspasia, Laura Bassi, Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Sophie Ger-
main, Mary Somerville, Caroline Herschel, Sonya Kova-
levsky, Agnes S. Lewis, Margaret Dunlop Gibson, Eleanor
Ormerod and Mme. Curie — to mention no others — is far
from exhibiting any evidence of intellectual disqualifica-
tion and still farther from warranting any one from de-

FUTURE OF WOMEN IN SCIENCE 391

claring that the successful pursuit of science is entirely
beyond the mental powers of womankind.

The preceding pages, likewise, afford an answer to those
who insist on woman's incapacity for scientific pursuits,
and point to the small number of those that have attained
eminence in any of the branches of science ; who continue
to assert that the women named are but exceptions to the
rule of the hopeless inferiority of their sex, and that no
conclusions can be deduced from the paucity of women
who have risen above the intellectual level of their less
fortunate or less highly dowered sisters. They further
show that, until the last few decades, woman 's environment
was rarely if ever favorable to her pursuit of science.
From the days of Aspasia until the latter half of the nine-
teenth century she was discriminated against by law, cus-
tom and public opinion. Save only in Italy, she was ex-
cluded from the universities and from learned societies in
which she might have had an opportunity of developing
her intellect. In other countries her social ostracism in
all that pertained to mental development was so complete
and universal that she rarely had an opportunity of mak-
ing a trial of her powers or exhibiting her innate capacity.
The consequence was that her mind remained in a con-
dition of comparative atrophy — a condition that gave rise
to that long prevalent belief in woman's intellectual in-
feriority to man and her natural incapacity for everything
that is not light or frivolous.

Practically all that women have achieved in science, until
very recent years, has been accomplished in defiance of
that conventional code which compelled them to confine
their activities to the ordinary duties of the household.
The lives and achievements of the eminent mathematicians,
Sophie Germain and Mary Somerville, are good illustra-
tions of the truth of this assertion. It was only their per-
sistence in the study of their favorite branch of science, in
spite of the opposition of their family and friends, and in

392 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

spite of what was considered taboo for their sex by the
usages and ordinances of society, that they were able to
attain that eminence in the most abstruse of the sciences
which won for them the plaudits of the world. Both were
virtually self-made women. Deprived of the advantages
of a college or university education, and denied the stimu-
lus afforded by membership in learned scientific associa-
tions, they nevertheless succeeded by their own unaided
efforts in winning a place of highest honor in the Walhalla
of men of science.

M. Alphonse de Candolle, in his great work, Histoire des
Sciences et des Savants depuis Deux Siecles, devotes only
two pages to the consideration of woman in science. She
is, to him, a negligible quantity. And, although a pro-
fessed man of science, he repeats, without any scientific
warrant whatever, all the gratuitous statements of his pre-
decessors regarding the superficial character of the female
mind, "a mind," he will have it, which " takes pleasure
in ideas that are readily seized by a kind of intuition ; ' ' a
mind "to which the slow methods of observation and cal-
culation by which truth is surely arrived at are not pleas-
ing. Truths themselves, " the Swiss savant continues, "in-
dependent of their nature and possible consequences —
especially general truths which have no relation to a par-
ticular person — are of small moment to most women. Add
to this a feeble independence of opinion, a reasoning fac-
ulty less intense than in man, and, finally, the horror of
doubt, that is, a state of mind in which all research in the
sciences of observation must begin and often end. These
reasons are/7 according to de Candolle, "more than suffi-
cient to explain the position of women in scientific pur-
suits. >fl

They certainly are more than sufficient to explain their
position if we choose to accept the author's method of de-
termining one's attainments in the realm of science. His

i Histoire des Sciences et des Savants, p. 271, Gen&ve-Bale, 1885.

FUTURE OF WOMEN IN SCIENCE 393

chief test of one's eminence in science is the number of
learned societies to which one belongs. For De Candoile,
membership in one or more such bodies is prima facie evi-
dence of special distinction in some branch of science. But
"We," he declares, "do not see the name of any woman
on the lists of learned men connected with the principal
academies. This is not due entirely to the fact that the
customs and regulations have made no provision for
their admission, for it is easy to assure one's self that no
person of the feminine sex has ever produced an original
scientific work which has made its mark in any science
and commanded the attention of specialists in science. I
do not think it has ever been considered desirable to elect
a woman a member of any of the great scientific academies
with restricted membership. J ' 1

When De Candoile insisted on membership in learned
societies as a necessary indication of scientific eminence,
he must have known, what everybody knew, that such
exclusive societies as the French Academy of Sciences and
the Royal Society of Great Britain have always been dead
set against the admission of women members. It is diffi-
cult to imagine that the learned author of the History of
Science and Scientists was entirely ignorant of the exclu-
sion from the French Academy of Maria Gaetana Agnesi
solely because she was a woman. And he must have been
aware that, had it not been for her sex, Sophie Germain
would have been accorded a fauteuil in the same society
for her remarkable investigations in one of the difficult
departments of mathematical physics. He must likewise
have been cognizant of the attitude of such organizations
as the Royal Society toward women, no matter how meri-
torious their achievements in science.

According to De Candoile 's criterion, such women as
Mme. Curie, Sonya Kovalevsky, Eleanor Ormerod, Agnes
S. Lewis, Margaret Dunlop Gibson have accomplished noth-
i Ibid., p. 270.

394 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

ing worthy of note because, forsooth, their names are not
found on the rolls of membership of the Koyal Society or
the French Academy of Sciences — associations whose con-
stitutions have been purposely so framed as to exclude
women from membership. It would, indeed, be difficult to
instance a more unfair or a more unscientific test of
woman's eminence in science, and that, too, proposed by
one who is supposed to be actuated in his judgments by
rigorously scientific methods. Had any of the women
named belonged to the male sex, there never would have
been any question of their fitness to become members of
the societies in question. This is particularly true of Mme.
Curie, who, in the estimation of the world, has done more
to enhance the prestige of French science than any man
of the present generation — a statement that is sufficiently
justified by the fact that she is the only one so far who has
twice, in competition with the greatest of the world's men
of science, succeeded in carrying away the great Nobel
prize.1

iA writer in the English magazine, Nature, under date of Janu-
ary 12, 1911, when the European press was discussing Mme. Curie's
claims to membership in the French Academy of Sciences, makes the
following sane observations on the admission of women to the various
academies of the French Institute:

" There may be room for difference of opinion as to the wisdom
or expediency of permitting women to embark on the troubled sea
of politics, or of allowing them a determinate voice in the settle-
ment of questions which may affect the existence or the destiny of
a nation; but surely there ought to be no question that in the peace-
ful walks of art, literature and science, there should be the freest
possible scope extended to them, and that, as human beings, every
avenue to distinction and success should unreservedly be open to them.

"All academies tend to be conservative and to move slowly;
they are the homes of privilege and of vested interest. Some of them
incline to be reactionary. They were created by men for men and
for the most part at a time when women played little or no part
in those occupations which such societies were intended to foster and
develop. But the times have changed. Women have gradually won
for themselves their rightful position as human beings. We have

FUTURE OF WOMEN IN SCIENCE 395

Not only have men, from time immemorial, been wont to
point to woman's incapacity for science as evidenced by
the small number of those who have achieved distinction
in any of its branches, but they have also taken a special
pleasure in directing attention to the fact that no woman
has ever given to the world any of the great creations of
genius, or been the prime-mover in any of the far-reaching
discoveries which have so greatly contributed to the weal,
the advancement and the happiness of our race.

No one, probably, has expressed himself on this subject in
a more positive or characteristic fashion than the noted
litterateur and philosopher, Count Joseph de Maistre.
Writing from St. Petersburg to his daughter, Constance,
he says: "Voltaire, according to what you affirm — for as
to me, I know nothing, as I have not read all his works,
and have not read a line of them during the last thirty
years — says that women are capable of doing all that men
do, etc. This is merely a compliment paid to some pretty
woman, or, rather, it is one of the hundred thousand and

now to recognize that academies as seats of learning were made for
humanity and that, as members of the human race, women have the
right to look upon their heritage and property no less than men.
This consummation may not at once be reached, but, as it is based
upon reason and justice, it is certain to be attained eventually. ; '

A fortnight later the same magazine contained a second article,
in which the matter is treated in an equally manly fashion.

"As scientific work," the writer pertinently observes, "must
ultimately be judged by its merits, and not by the nationality or sex
of its author, we believe that the opposition to the election of women
into scientific societies will soon be seen to be unjust and detri-
mental to the progress of natural knowledge. By no pedantic reason-
ing can the rejection of a candidate for membership of a scientific
society be justified, if the work done places the candidate in the
leading position among other competitors. Science knows no nation-
ality and should recognize no distinction of sex, color or creed among
those who are contributing to its advancement. Believing that this
is the conclusion to which consideration of the question must inevita-
bly lead, we have confidence that the doors of all scientific societies
will eventually be open to women on equal terms with men."

396 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

thousand silly things which he said during his lifetime.
The very contrary is the truth. Women have produced no
chef d'ceuvre of any kind whatsoever. They have been the
authors neither of the Iliad, nor the &neid, nor the
Jerusalem Delivered, nor Phedre, nor Athalie nor Rodo-
gune, nor The Misanthrope, nor Tartufe, nor The Joueur,
nor The Pantheon, nor The Church of St. Peter's, nor the
Venus de' Medici, nor the Apollo Belvidere, nor the Prin-
cipia, nor the Discourse on Universal History, nor Tele-
machus. They have invented neither algebra nor the tele-
scope, nor achromatic glasses nor the fire engine, nor hose-
machines, etc. ' ' 1

All this is true, but what does it prove? It does not
prove, as is so frequently assumed, woman's lesser brain

iLettres et Opuscules Inedits du Comte Joseph de Maistre, Tom.
I, p. 194, Paris, 1851.

It was this same brusque and original writer who asserted that
"science was a most dangerous thing for women; that no woman
should study science under penalty of becoming ridiculous and un-
happy; that a coquette can more readily get married than a sa-
vante." And he it was who declared that women who attempted
to emulate men in the pursuit of science are monkeys and donne
barbute — bearded women — and who designated Mme. de Stael as
* ' la science en jupons, une impertinente femelette ' ' — science in petti-
coats, a silly, impertinent female.

He, however, met an opponent worthy of his steel in the person
of the eloquent bishop of Orleans, Mgr. Dupanloup. In a lengthy
and brilliant critique of De Maistre 's views he shows them to be
untenable, if not ridiculous. "I by no means/ ' he writes, "agree
with M. de Maistre that 'la science en jupons,' as he calls it, or tal-
ents of any kind whatsoever, militates in the slightest against a
woman being a good wife or a good mother. Quite the contrary."
And considering woman as the companion and aid of man — soda et
adjutorium — he expresses a view which is quite the opposite of that
championed by his distinguished adversary for, in words precise and
pregnant, he asserts that the education of women cannot be too con-
sistent, too serious, and too solid — ' ' L 'education des femmes ne
saurait etre trop suivie, trop serieuse et trop forte." La Femme
Studieuse, p. 160, Paris, 1895.

FUTURE OF WOMEN IN SCIENCE 397

power or inferior intelligence. It does not prove — as the
learned Frenchman and those who are similarly minded
would have us believe — her incapacity for the highest
flights of genius in every sphere of intellectual effort. Such
assumptions are entirely negatived by woman's past
achievements in all departments of art, literature and
science.

Far from making the inference that De Maistre wished
his daughter to draw from his letter, we should, from
what we know of woman's ability as disclosed in the fore-
going chapters, hesitate to set a limit to her powers, or
to declare apodictically that she could not have been the
author of works of as great merit as most of those — if not
all of them — mentioned as among men's supreme achieve-
ments. The simple fact that Mme. Curie and Sonya Kova-
levsky were able, in sciences usually considered beyond
female intelligence, to wrest from their male competitors
the most coveted prizes within the gift of the Nobel
Prize Commission and the French Academy of Sciences,
demonstrates completely that woman's assumed incapacity
for even the most recondite scientific pursuits is a mere
figment of the masculine imagination.

What women have done "that at least, if nothing else,"
as John Stuart Mill aptly observes, "it is proved they can
do. When we consider how sedulously they are all trained
away from, instead of being trained toward, any of the
occupations or objects reserved for men, it is evident that
I am taking very humble ground for them, when I rest
their case on what they have actually achieved. For, in
this case, negative evidence is worth little, while any posi-
tive evidence is conclusive. It cannot be inferred to be
impossible that a woman should be a Homer, or an Aris-
totle, or a Michaelangelo, or a Beethoven, because no
woman has yet actually produced works comparable to
theirs in any of those lines of excellence. This negative fact
at most leaves the question uncertain and open to psycho-

398 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

logical discussion. But it is quite certain that a woman
can be a Queen Elizabeth or a Deborah or a Joan of Arc,
since this is not inference but a fact. ' ' *

In like manner it is quite certain that, in spite of all
kinds of disabilities and prejudices and adverse legisla-
tion, there have been a large number of women who, in
every department of intellectual activity, have achieved
marked distinction and won imperishable renown for their
proscribed sex. It is a fact, which admits of no question,
that, notwithstanding their being debarred from all the
educational advantages so generously lavished upon the
dominant sex, women have since the days of Sappho and
Hypatia shown themselves the equals and often the su-
periors of men in the highest and noblest spheres of mental
achievement.

Such being the case, what, we may ask, would have been
the result had women, from that splendid Heroic Period
of which Homer sings until the present, enjoyed all the
opportunities of mental development of which men have
systematically claimed the exclusive privilege ? 2 What
would now be their condition if, from the days of the
Muses — who were but learned women apotheosized —
women had never been deprived of their intellectual birth-
right and had been permitted to continue in the path so
auspiciously blazed by Corinna — the victor over Pindar —
and Arete, the splendor of Greece and the possessor of the
mind of Socrates and the tongue of Homer ? What would

1 The Subjection of Women, p. 81, London, 1909.

2 The late Mr. Gladstone asserts that ' ' It would be hard to dis-
cover any period of history or country of the world, not being Chris-
tian, in which they" — women — " stood so high as with the Greeks
of the Heroic Age" — when the position of the Greek woman was so
remarkable and "*o elevated, both absolutely and in comparison with
what it became in the Historic Ages of Greece and Eome amidst
their elaborate civilization." Studies on Homer and the Homeric
Age, Vol. II, p. 479 et seq., Oxford, 1858. Cf. also the same au-
thor's Juventus Mundi, p. 405 et seq., London, 1869.

FUTURE OF WOMEN IN SCIENCE 399

not now be their intellectual efflorescence, if Plato's dream
of twenty-three centuries ago of giving women equal rights
with men in all things of the mind could have been realized ;
if those ardent female disciples of his, who so lovingly
followed him through the streets of Athens — "the home
of the intellectual and the beautiful' ' — and hung on his
lips during his matchless discourses in the groves of the
Academy and on the banks of the Ilyssus, could have con-
tinued that race of intellect and genius which was the ad-
miration and the inspiration of all Hellas during the most
brilliant period of its marvelous history?

Speculating only on what the gifted daughters of Greece
might have achieved, we may easily believe that they
would have kept pace with their most highly gifted coun-
trymen, and that, following in the footsteps of Sappho
and the other Muses of the ' ' Terrestrial Nine, ' ' they would
have been worthy rivals of Homer, Pindar and ^Eschylus,
and would have occupied a prominent place in that bril-
liant galaxy of genius composed of such luminaries as
Anaxagoras, Sophocles, Euclid, Archimedes, Theophrastus,
Polygnotus, Diophantus, Pausanias and Thucydides.

To those who base their opinions on what so long has
been the absurdly anomalous condition of women and who,
in formulating their theories of human progress, com-
pletely ignore the fundamental laws of heredity, such con-
jectures will seem extravagant, if not chimerical. But,
when one bears in mind the universal fact that offspring,
whatever the sex, inherits its characteristics and its powers
from both parents alike; that the soul, unlike the body,
has no sex, and that, so far as legitimate indications from
the teachings of biology and psychology can serve as a
guide, there is no valid reason for asserting the mental
superiority of man over woman, one will be obliged to
confess that these surmises are far from being either fanci-
ful or preposterous.

It is then the veriest sophism to predicate woman's

400 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

incapacity for science and for intellectual achievements
of the highest order on what she has not accomplished in
the past, or on the comparatively limited number of her
contributions to the advancement of knowledge ; for up till
the present she has, for the most part, been but a dwarf
of the gynaeceum,

"Cramp'd under worse than South-sea isle taboo."

Had men been compelled to labor under similar condi-
tions, it is doubtful if they would have accomplished any
more than women have now to their credit.

Considering woman's past achievements in science, as
well as in other departments of knowledge ; considering her
present opportunities for developing her long-hampered
faculties, and considering, especially, the many new social
and economic adjustments which have been made within
the last half century, in consequence of the greatly changed
conditions of modern life, it requires no prophetic vision
to forecast what share the gentler sex will have in the
future advancement of science. That it will be far greater
than it has been hitherto there can be no reasonable doubt.
That the number of savantes of the type of Maria Gaetana
Agnesi, Sonya Kovalevsky and Mme. Curie will be greatly
enlarged there is every reason to believe. That among
these coming votaries of science there will be more than
one woman who, even in the most abstruse sciences, will
stand

"Upon an even pedestal with man,"

seems to be assured by the achievements of many who are
now so materially adding to the sum of human knowledge.
Is it probable that the future will bring forth women
whose achievements in science will rank with those of
Euler, Faraday, Liebig, Leverrier, Champollion and Geof-
fry Saint-Hillaire ? It would be a rash man who would
answer in the negative. We cannot, as De Maistre seems

FUTURE OF WOMEN IN SCIENCE v 401

to do, reason from what they have not done — when every-
thing was against them — to what they may do when con-
ditions shall, in every way, be as favorable to them as
they always have been to the dominant sex.

Still rasher would be the man who would attempt to
prove the negative of this question. Mere a priori argu-
ments, based on preconceived bias or on the vague and
groundless impression that woman is essentially and hope-
lessly the intellectual inferior of man, have no more value
than gratuitous opinions. The unprejudiced seeker after
truth will insist on a demonstration based on incontro-
vertible facts. He will appeal to history to learn what the
sex has already accomplished, and to science to inquire if
there be anything in the female brain to differentiate it
from that of the male, or to preclude woman from attain-
ing the highest rank in the activities of the intellect.

The result of such an investigation will, I think, cause
even the most biased person to suspend judgment, if it
does not induce him to align himself with those who, find-
ing no differences in the mental endowments of the sexes,
have reached the conclusion that the day will come, and,
mayhap, in the near future, when the achievements of
women will be on a par with those of man. The facts
stated in the preceding chapters seem, not unreasonably,
to point to such a conclusion, if, indeed, they do not war-
rant it as a necessary inference.

A few considerations germane to this discussion will
illustrate the danger of forming hasty judgments regard-
ing questions like the one under discussion.

During the last hundred years no country in the world
has done more for the education of the masses than the
United States. Everything that money could purchase and
ingenuity suggest has been adopted to develop the minds
and stimulate the latent talents and genius of our youth.
From the primary schools to the highest and best equipped
universities, a special premium has been put on success in.

402 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

study, and the highest rewards have awaited those who
should make any notable contribution towards the ad-
vancement of knowledge. But, notwithstanding all the
educational advantages our people have enjoyed and all
the encouragement they have received to achieve some-
thing of supreme excellence, our great country with its
teeming millions attracted from the most gifted nations of
the Old World has not yet produced a single man who
has attained the highest rank in either literature or art or
science. Far from having a preeminent master of song
like Homer or Dante, we have not even a poet approaching
Goethe or Tasso or Camoens. We have no Cervantes, no
Milton, no Racine, no Moliere. America has produced no
Raphael or Michaelangelo ; no Mozart or Wagner or
Tschaikovsky. Nor has it given us a Descartes, a Leibnitz,
a Newton or a Darwin. Would any one, from this com-
plete absence in America of representatives of the highest
order in literature, art and science, ever dream of con-
cluding that we shall never have such favorite sons of
genius and such giants of intellect? Does our compara-
tive intellectual sterility in the past, and in a country
which seemed specially adapted to foster genius and attain-
ments of the highest order, justify any one in inferring that
the days of great geniuses, like the days of demigods,
are gone never to return ?

And yet the number of men in our broad common-
wealth who, during the past hundred years, have enjoyed
such signal opportunities for attaining distinction in every
domain of intellectual effort is incomparably greater than
that of all the women so favored since the earliest days of
human history. If, from the first flowering of Greek
culture to the present day, as many millions of women
had enjoyed all the transcendent advantages of education
as have been in the United States so lavishly accorded to
the same number of millions of men, who will say that
very many of them would not have attained a much higher

FUTURE OF WOMEN IN SCIENCE 403

rank in science, as well as in art and literature, than has
yet been reached by any man that America has yet pro-
duced? Who even, on the evidence now available, would
be warranted in denying that at least some of these mil-
lions of women might have attained the very highest rank
in every department of intellectual achievement?

Gray, in his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,
muses on the potential statesmen and the "mute, inglori-
ous Miltons" of those countless multitudes who, for lack
of opportunity to develop their inborn gifts, were con-
demned to pass their lives in obscurity and die, "to For-
tune and to Fame unknown." But how much more truth-
fully could his words have been applied to that much
larger number of women of rare mental powers to whose
eyes knowledge

"Her ample page
Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll,"

and whose God-given genius was ruthlessly suppressed
from the cradle to the grave?

We are still in ignorance as to many of the conditions
which are essential to the development of genius and
which contribute to its loftiest flights. We have yet to
learn how far the efflorescence of the human mind is aided
and modified by heredity, environment, atmosphere, as
well as by education, encouragement and other stimuli
equally potent.

But we do know that Germany, in spite of its famed
universities and its feverish intellectual activity in many
departments of knowledge, had to wait many long dreary
centuries before it could point to a Goethe, a Schiller, a
Humboldt, a Bach, or a Beethoven. We know that France
— so long the reputed center of culture — has so far pro-
duced no great epic poet, no Cervantes, no Murillo. But
shall we affirm that she will never give to the world im-
perishable works like Paradise Lost, Don Quixote or the

404 JVOMAN IN SCIENCE

Immaculate Conception* We know that Athens, which
during the most brilliant period of its history counted only
fifty-four hundred free-born citizens — less than the popula-
tion of a small modern town — was able to produce within
a very brief epoch more men of supreme distinction than
all the rest of Europe from the Age of Pericles until the
dawn of the Renaissance. Hers is still the art of the world,
the literature of the world, the philosophy of the world,
the culture of the world. For twenty-five centuries her
canons of taste and beauty have guided poets, orators,
artists; and her matchless productions have been the in-
spiration, as they have been the despair, of the greatest
geniuses of our modern world.

Had the women of Greece not been put under constraint
just as they were beginning to exhibit the splendid results
of their intellectual activities ; had they been encouraged to
develop to the utmost their richly-dowered minds, as were
the men, a far larger number of them, no doubt, would
have been as successful in carrying off coveted prizes in
the intellectual arena as was Corinna in her contests with
Pindar. And they would, likewise, as we may easily con-
ceive, have greatly added to the number of masterpieces
of Greek intellect in science as well as in art and letters.

But the opportunity for women to test their powers,
which was so wantonly snatched from their sisters in the
Hellenic world, seems again to be offered to their sex. This
opportunity, as has been stated, is due chiefly to their
persistence in claiming the same right as men to intel-
lectual development as well as to the countless proofs
they have given that their demands are founded on reason
and justice. What shall be the outcome of the new oppor-
tunity for woman to prove her capacity as compared with
man's in things of the intellect remains to be seen, but,
from indications she has during recent years given of her
powers in every branch of scientific inquiry, there can be
little doubt that it will be of such character as to place

FUTURE OF WOMEN IN SCIENCE 405

woman on a higher intellectual plane than she has yet
occupied. In physical strength and in the rougher con-
flicts with the world she will doubtless always remain ' * the
lesser man," but, once she feels in full possession of
liberty

"To burgeon out of all
Within her,"

she will duly justify her advocates who throughout the
centuries have been

"Maintaining that with equal husbandry
The woman were an equal to the man."

Not the least of the contributing factors to woman's in-
tellectual growth, and especially to her future achieve-
ments in science, are the recent adjustments for women in
social and economical conditions brought about chiefly by
far-reaching changes in the industrial world. Even so late
as the last half of the nineteenth century the energies of
women, when they were not engaged in the kitchen or the
nursery, were spent on the domestic loom, spinning wheel
and the knitting needle. All the various processes from
carding the wool to making it into clothing for all the
members of the family were in the hands of the house-
wife. Eeady-made clothing was far from being as common
and inexpensive as it is now. Canned foods and cereals,
which do away with so much of the drudgery of the
kitchen, were unknown. Electricity, which has proved to
be such a remarkable aid in every modern home, was
little more than a mysterious force that was utilized in
the electric telegraph. Most of the domestic labor-saving
machines were still in their infancy and possessed by but
few people. Large fortunes were confined to only a fa-
vored few in our great metropolises. The mass of the
people was preoccupied with the struggle for existence.

But science, the spirit of invention and the advent of the

406 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

age of machinery have completely changed the conditions
of life which obtained but a generation ago. They have
not only opened up for women countless occupations that
were undreamed of in their mother's time, but have also
given to tens of thousands of them the necessary means and
leisure to indulge their tastes for study and research and
enabled an ever increasing number of them to realize their
aspirations for achieving distinction in the divers depart-
ments of scientific research.

As an instance of this marked change in the intellectual
activity of women, we need only consider what an impor-
tant part they now take in our present prodigious literary
output, as compared with their share in similar work but
a few decades ago. As authors, as writers and readers in
the editorial rooms of our leading periodicals, as contrib-
utors to learned journals and reviews dealing with every
branch of science, even the most abstruse, they now occupy
a conspicuous place and are doing work that is quite as
creditable as that of men.

And it is no longer necessary, in deference to public
sentiment, for them to write under a pseudonym, for it is
no longer considered unfeminine, as it was in the time of
the Bronte sisters, for women to acknowledge themselves
the authors of books or of articles in magazines. If they
elect to devote their lives to literary or scientific work,
they will not be deterred from so doing by what Mrs.
Grundy may say, or by the fear that some feeble imitator
of Moliere may dub them as Precieuses Ridicules. The
value of their productions, like those of men, is gauged
solely by merit and not by any narrow-minded considera-
tions of the author's sex.

So also will it be in all other occupations where women
choose to gain their livelihood by devoting themselves to
scientific pursuits rather than to manual labor or to sec-
retarial work in the counting-room. There are positions
open for them in colleges, universities and the government

FUTURE OF WOMEN IN SCIENCE 4ot

service where, as professors or experts in every branch
of science, their talents have full liberty of action and
where they have the same opportunity of achieving dis-
tinction in their chosen life-work as have their male col-
leagues.

In Germany there are to-day a million more women
than men. It is the same in England. In France the
number of women who are widows or unmarried or di-
vorcees or mothers with full-grown children aggregates no
less than four and a half millions. A similar condition
obtains in other parts of Europe. A large percentage of
this number is without home ties and, as the old fields of
labor are no longer open to women, they are forced to
find new ones. They naturally demand the privilege of
exercising their talents in occupations which are most
congenial to them. Many have no inclination for any of
the avocations in the industrial or commercial world, but
have a very decided inclination as well as talent for scien-
tific pursuits. Hence the ever-increasing number of women
who seek employment in chemical and biological labora-
tories, in museums and astronomical observatories, as well
as aspire to professorships of science in schools and col-
leges. From this large number of votaries of science some
are sure to achieve distinction in their calling and to con-
tribute materially to the advancement of knowledge. In
the course of time the number of those, like Mme. Curie,
Mme. Coudreau, Mary Kingsley, Sonya Kovalevsky, Elea-
nor Ormerod, Caroline Herschel, Zelia Nuttall, Harriet
Boyd Hawes, Donna Eersilia Bovatillo, Sophie Pereyas-
lawewa — to name only a few — who will become prominent
as chemists, explorers, naturalists, mathematicians, ento-
mologists, astronomers, archaeologists, biologists will be
vastly increased, for women will find a greater stimulus
for such work and more numerous demands for their
service in the constantly expanding sphere of scientific
research.

\

408 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

Many women will, doubtless, become specialists in some
specific branch of science, particularly if they have a gen-
uine love for it, or be fired by an ambition to achieve
fame as discoverers. But it is not probable that they will
ever specialize to the same extent as men do. For men
scientific work has to a large extent become a metier, and
success, as in industry, depends on a division of labor.
Hence it is that their field of investigation is daily becom-
ing more and more circumscribed. This is observable in
all the sciences, but especially in such all-embracing sci-
ences as chemistry, biology, and archaeology. A man now
does well if he master a single branch of any of these
sciences, and is hailed as exceptionally fortunate if he
succeed in making some notable discovery in his limited
field of research. So great, indeed, has been the activity
of scientific men in every department of science during
the last half century, and so thoroughly have they explored
the most hidden recesses of nature, that it, at times, seems
as if there were but little left to discover. A prominent
scientist recently well expressed the difficulty of making
any striking additions to our knowledge of nature by
asserting that all great discoveries would hereafter be made
in the sixth place of decimals. This statement is well illus-
trated by the delicate experiments that were required to
isolate such rare elements as radium, polonium, helium
and neon, which occur only in infinitesimal quantities.

While men of science will be forced to continue as spe-
cialists as long as the love of fame, to consider no other
motives of research, continues to be a potent influence in
their investigations, it is probable that women will have
less love for the long and tedious processes involved in the
more difficult kinds of specialization. They will, it seems
likely, be more inclined to acquire a general knowledge
of the whole circle of the sciences — a knowledge that will
enable them to take a comprehensive survey of nature.
And it will be fortunate for themselves, as well as for

FUTURE OF WOMEN IN SCIENCE 409

the men who must perforce remain specialists, if they elect
to do so. For nothing gives falser views of nature as a
whole, nothing more unfits the mind for a proper appre-
hension of higher and more important truths, nothing
more incapacitates one for the enjoyment of the master-
pieces of literature or the sweeter amenities of life, than
the narrow occupation of a specialist who sees nothing
in the universe but electrons, microbes and protozoa.

But just at the critical moment, when men of science
would rather discover a process than a law, when they are
so preoccupied with the infinitely little that they lose sight
of the cosmos as a whole ; when their attention is so riveted
on particular phenomena that they will no longer have
aptitude for rising from effects to causes ; when they cease
to have any interest in general ideas and stray away from
the guidance of the true philosophic spirit; when, like
Plato's cave men, they have so long groped in darkness
that their powers of vision are impaired, then it is that
woman, "The herald of a brighter race/' comes to the
rescue and holds up to their astonished gaze the picture of
an ideal world whose existence they had almost forgotten.
For women, as a rule, love science for its own sake, and,
unlike the specialists in question, they are, in its pursuit,
rarely actuated by any selfish or mercenary interests, or
by the hope of financial reward. Precise and never-ending
observations with the microscope and spectroscope, which
at best give them but a superficial knowledge of certain
details of science, while it leaves them in ignorance of the
greater and better part of it, do not appeal to them. They
prefer general ideas to particular facts, and love to roam
over the whole realm of science rather than confine them-
selves to one of its isolated corners.

"Women," writes M. Etienne Lamy, the distinguished
French Academician, "group themselves at the center
of human knowledge, whereas men disperse themselves

410

WOMAN IN SCIENCE

towards its outer boundaries. While men are always push-
ing analysis to its utmost limits, women are seeking a
synthesis. While men are becoming more technical,
women are becoming more intellectual. They are better
placed to observe the correlations of the different sciences,
and to subordinate them to the common and unique source
of truth from which they all descend. We seem, indeed,
to be approaching a time when women will become the con-
servers of general ideas. ' ' 1

In the preceding chapter reference was made to the fact
that women are naturally inclined to adopt the deductive
method in their search for truth when men would employ
only the inductive method. This disposition of theirs to
arrive at conclusions by a kind of intuition, coupled with
their more pronounced idealism, is sure to react favor-
ably on men, and prevent them from becoming so involved
in mere facts and phenomena as to cause them to forget
that it is as important to reason well as to observe well —
that the fundamental principles of a true philosophy are
quite as necessary for the eminent man of science as they
are to the trustworthy historian or commanding states-
man.

From what has been said, it is clear that man's ideal
of the woman of the future will be quite different from
what it was but a little more than a century ago, when
Dr. Johnson could say that "any acquaintance with
books/' among women, "was distinguished only to be cen-
sured." It will be quite different from the ideal woman,
as portrayed by poets and novelists, for centuries past.
For among the thousands of women painted by our lead-
ing writers of fiction, poets and dramatists there are few,
if any, outside of those sketched by Tennyson in The
Princess, who are distinguished for their learning or for
their love of intellectual pursuits. Even Portia, Shake-

Femme de Demain, pp. 45, 46, Paris, 1912.

FUTURE OF WOMEN IN SCIENCE

speare's most learned woman, was, according to her own
confession, but

"An unlessoned girl, unschooled, unpracticed."

And the heroines of the novelist, far from being women
who had a thirst for knowledge, or were eager

"To sound the abyss
Of science and the secrets of the mind,"

were those only whose chief attractions were physical
graces and charms, affectionate natures, brilliant wit to-
gether with ' ' sweet laughs for bird-notes and blue eyes for
a heaven."

Now, however, that women after ages of struggle are
beginning to experience a sense of intellectual freedom,
before unknown, and to exult in the fact that

"Knowledge is now no more a fountain sealed";

now that they are, for the first time, beginning, in every
civilized nation, to realize their age-long aspirations for
unimpeded opportunity in all the activities of the intel-
lect; now that they are no longer

"Dismissed in shame to live
No wiser than their mothers, household stuff,
Live chattels, * * *
* * * laughing-stocks of Time,"

we may expect soon to see a marked change in the char-
acter of the ideal woman as depicted in literature and as
desired by the intelligent portion of mankind.

What woman's liberation from intellectual bondage and
her freedom to devote herself to scientific pursuits mean
for the future of humanity it is difficult at present ade-
quately to forecast. That it will contribute immensely to
the betterment of social conditions and to the elevation of
the masses of humanity, there can be no doubt. Setting
free the imprisoned energies of one half of our race,

WOMAN IN SCIENCE

means more than doubling mankind's capacity for ad-
vancement. For the failure to utilize woman's vast ener-
gies, pining for an outlet, acted as a drag on man's own
potentialities, and thus retarded to an untold extent the
world's advancement. In times past, as has aptly been
said, "an enormous part of the brain power of mankind
has been spent or wasted in smiting the Philistines hip and
thigh, and an enormous part of the brain power of woman-
kind has been spent in cajoling Sampson. "

It will mean that the women of the future will be more
suitable companions for the rapidly increasing number of
highly educated men of science; that having their intel-
lects developed pari passu with those of men, they will be
able to sympathize with the noblest aims of their husbands
and assist them in their most important undertakings, as
did the wives of Huber, Lavoisier, Pasteur, Huxley, Louis
Agassiz and others scarcely less renowned in the annals
of science. It will mean that they will not only share
in the joys and the sorrows of their life-companions, but
that they will also have a part in their thoughts, their
studies, their labors, their achievements. For one should
bear in mind that the first essential to a perfect union of
hearts is a perfect harmony of minds. Where neither hus-
band nor wife is educated, the virtues may suffice for com-
panionship, but where the man is educated and the woman
ignorant, there are sooner or later estrangements and the
wife becomes little better than an old Japanese conception
of her, ' ' a cook without pay, " or a pasha 's toy for an idle
hour. Chrysalde in Moliere's L'ficole des Femmes, de-
clares :

"Qu'il est assez ennuyeux, que je crois,
D'avoir toute sa vie une bete avec soi."

A briefer and truer statement of the evils of unequal in-
tellectual mating was never penned.1 Men of intelligence
i Dr. Johnson expressed the same sentiment when he declared that
a man of sense should meet a suitable companion in a wife. "It

FUTURE OF WOMEN IN SCIENCE 415

are no longer, like Rousseau, satisfied with an ignorant do-
mestic for a wife, and still less are they disposed with

was a miserable thing," he asserted in characteristic fashion, "when
the conversation could only be such as whether the mutton should
be boiled or roasted, and a probable dispute about that."

Sidney Smith, in a forceful and trenchant essay On the Education
of Women, written for the Edinburgh Review a century ago, gives it
as his deliberate opinion that * ' The instruction of women improves
the stock of natural talents, and employs more minds for the in-
struction and amusement of the world; it increases the pleasures of
Bociety by multiplying the topics upon which the two sexes take a
common interest; and makes marriage an intercourse of understand-
ing as well as of affection by giving dignity and importance to the
female character. The education of women favors public morals; it
provides for every season of life as well as for the brightest and
the best; and leaves a woman when she is stricken by the hand of
time, not as she now is, destitute of everything and neglected by all,
but with the full power and the splendid attractions of knowledge, —
diffusing the elegant pleasures of polite literature, and receiving the
just homage of learned and accomplished men."

As to the oft repeated commonplace of noodledom that higher
education puts an end to domestic economy and deteriorates the
noblest qualities of womanhood, the same clear-headed writer asks:
"Can anything ... be more perfectly absurd than to suppose
that the care and perpetual solicitude which a mother feels for her
children, depends upon her ignorance of Greek or mathematics; and
that she would desert an infant for a quadratic equation — that Cim-
merian ignorance can aid parental affection, or the circle of the arts
and sciences produce its destruction — that the moment you suffer
women to eat of the tree of knowledge the rest of the family will
very soon be reduced to the same kind of aerial and unsatisfactory
diet!"

Still more insistent on the necessity of the broadest and deepest
education for woman — education in science as well as in art and lit-
erature— is the Most Eev. Archbishop, J. L. Spalding, who by his
writing and lectures has done so much for the cause of the higher
education of both men and women. In an eloquent and pregnant dis-
course, pronounced in the Church of the Gesu in Rome, in March,
1900, he told his vast audience — composed of the elite of the Eternal
City— that:

"If we are to have a race of enlightened, noble, and brave men,
we must give to woman the best education it is possible for her to

414 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

Schopenhauer to regard woman as an incurable Philistine,
and as a mere intermediary between a child and a man.
They have learned by sad experience that it is contrary
both to justice and public policy to impose artificial restric-
tions on the acquisition of knowledge by women, or to close
to the vigorous and capable representatives of their sex
careers which are open to the weakest and most incom-
petent men. History has taught them that the fall of
Greece and Rome was owing to the failure of these nations
to make due provision for the mental development of
women.

And women know that it was because of the inability
of the wives of the Athenians to enter into the thoughts
of their highly educated husbands and to sympathize with
their aims and appreciate their achievements that caused
the men to leave them in their solitude and seek in the
companionship of the hetaerae the intellectual atmosphere
which was wanting in their own homes. They know, too,
that the lack of knowledge in the wife and the absence
of virtue in the hetaerae, which brought such disasters on

receive. She has the same right as man to become all that she may
be, to know whatever may be known, to do whatever is fair and just
and good. In souls there is no sex. If we leave half the race in ig-
norance, how shall we hope to lift the other half into the light of
truth and love? Let woman's mental power increase, let her influ-
ence grow, and more and more she will stand by the side of man
as a helper in all his struggles to make the will of God prevail. From
the time the Virgin Mother held the Infant Saviour in her arms, to
this hour, woman has been the great lover of Christ and the un-
weary helper of His little ones; and the more we strengthen and
illumine her, the more we add to her sublime faith and devotion
the power of knowledge and culture, the more efficaciously shall she
work to purify life, to make justice, temperance, chastity, and love
prevail. She is more unselfish, more capable of enthusiasm for
spiritual ends, she has more sympathy with what is beautiful, noble,
and god-like than man; and the more her knowledge increases, the
more shall she become a heavenly force to help spread God's king-
dom on earth. "

FUTURE OF WOMEN IN SCIENCE 415

the most learned and most cultured of nations are still
evils to be guarded against, and that one of the means
over and above moral rule and revealed truth of safe-
guarding their own interests and preserving the sanctity
of the home is to make themselves by knowledge and cul-
ture the intellectual equals of their consorts.

They realize also that if they are to attain the highest
measure of success as wives and mothers, a broad and
thorough education — a knowledge of science, as well as fa-
miliarity with art and literature and the teachings of re-
ligion— is essential to them for their children's sake. It is
said that

"The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world,"

but how much truer is it that * ' The domestic hearth is the
first of schools, and the best of lecture-rooms; for here the
heart will cooperate with the mind, the affections with the
reasoning power/' It is only when the mothers of this,
the woman's century, shall dispute with men the primacy
of erudition — when they shall prove their mastery of those
newer sciences by which our age sets such great store —
when they shall possess

"Seraphic intellect and force

To seize and throw the doubts of man";

that their grown-up sons will have the same confidence in
their intelligence as they now have in their hearts. Then
only will mothers be properly equipped for developing
the character of their children; for inspiring them with a
love of the true, the beautiful and the good; for stimu-
lating their talents and aiding them to attain to all the
sublimities of knowledge ; for assisting them in doubt and
despondency and firing them with an ambition to strive
for supreme excellence in all that makes for the nobility
of manhood and the glory of womanhood; for making

416 WOMAN IN SCIENCE

them, as Beatrice made Dante after he was renewed and
purified in the waters of Eunoe, "fit to mount up to the
stars."

"Puro e disposto a salire cdle stelle."

The romantic idea of treating woman as a clinging vine,
and thus eliminating half the energies of humanity, is
rapidly disappearing and giving place to the idea that
the strong are for the strong — the intellectually strong;
that the evolution of the race will be complete only when
men and women shall be associated in perfect unity of
purpose, and shall, in fullest sympathy, collaborate for the
attainment of the highest and the best. Then, indeed, will
man's helpmate become to him and to his children

"More rich than pearls of Ind or gold of Ophir,
And in her sex more wonderful and rare."

Then will men and women for the first time fully supple-
ment each other in their aspirations and endeavors and
realize somewhat of that oneness of heart and mind which
was so beautifully adumbrated in Plato's androgyn. Then
will the world witness the return of another Golden Age —
the Golden Age of Science — the Golden Age of cultured,
noble, perfect womanhood. Then to all who really think
and love will be manifest the clearness and power of vision
of England's great poet laureate when in matchless num-
bers he sings:

"The woman's cause is man's; they rise or sink
Together, dwarfed or godlike, bond or free.

*******

For woman is not undevelopt man

But diverse: could we make her as the man,

Sweet Love were slain; his dearest bond is this,

Not like to like, but like in difference.

Yet in the long years liker must they grow;

The man be more of woman, she of man;

FUTURE OF WOMEN IN SCIENCE 417

He gain in sweetness and in moral height,
Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world;
She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care,
Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind;
Till at the last she set herself to man,
Like perfect music unto noble words;
And as these twain, upon the skirts of Time,
Sit side by side, full-summ'd in all their powers,
Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be,
Self-reverent each, and reverencing each,
Distinct in individualities,
But like each other ev'n as those who love,
Then comes the statelier Eden back to men;
Then reign the world's great bridals chaste and calm;
Then springs the crowning race of human-kind.
May these things be!"

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PARTIAL LIST OF THE 'WORKS 'QUOTED OR REFERRED TO
IN THE, TEXT

AGASSIZ, MRS. L. Louis Agassiz, His Life and Correspondence.

Boston, 1893.
AGNESI, MARIA GAETANA. Instituzioni Analitiche. Milan, 1748.

. Propositiones Philosophic®. Milan, 1738.

ANZOLETTI, LUISA. Maria Gaetana Agnesi. Milan, 1900.
ARRIGHI, G. L. Storia del Feminismo. Florence, 1911.
ASSE, EUGENE. Lettres de la Marquise du Chatelet. Paris, 1882.
ATHEN^EUS. The Deipnosophists ; or the Banquet of the

Learned, Bohn Edition. London, 1907.
BECQ DE FOUQUIERES, L. Aspasie de Milet. Paris, 1872.
BEDE, VENERABLE. Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum.

London, 1848.

BIEVRE, LE COMTE DE. Histoire des Deux Aspasies. Paris, 1736.
BIGONI, D. GUIDO. Ipazia, Alessandrina. Venice, 1887.
BIRCH, UNA. Anna Van Schurman. London, 1909.
BLACKWELL, ELIZABETH. Pioneer Work in Opening the Med-
ical Profession to Women. London, 1895.
BONNET, J. Vie d'Olympie Morata. Paris, 1850.
BREMMER, C. S. Education of Girls and Women. London, 1897.
BRIAND, E. M. Histoire de Sainte Radegonde, Reine de France.

Paris, 1898.

BROCA, PAUL. Memoires d'Anthropologie. Paris, 1871-1888.
BURCKHARDT, J. Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien. Leip-

sic, 1899.
CANDOLLE, ALPHONSE DE. Histoire des Sciences et des Savants

depuis Deux Siecles. Geneve, 1885.
419

420 BIBLIOGRAPHY

CASTIGLIONE, BALDASSARE. Libro del Cortigiano. Milan, 1890.
CHABAUD, L. Mesdames de Maintenon, de Genlis et Campan.

Leur Role dans I'Education Chretienne de la Femme. Paris,

1901.

CHATELET, MAEQUISE DU. Principes Mathematiques de la
Philosophic Naturelle. Paris, 1759.

CHIAPPELLI, A. Saggi e Note Critche. Bologna, 1895.
COUDREAU, MME. H. Voyage au Maycuru. Paris, 1903.

. Voyage au Bio Curua. Paris, 1903.

CURIE, PIERRE, MME. Traite de Radio-activite. Paris, 1910.
DELAMBRE, J. B. Histoire de FAstronomie. Paris, 1817.

DENIFLE, H. Die Entstehung der Universitaten des Mittel-
alters. Berlin, 1885.

DENTFLE ET CHATELAIN. Chartularium Universitatis Parisien-
sis. Paris, 1889-1891.

DIOGENES LAERTIUS. Lives and Opinions of the Ancient Philos-
ophers, Bohn Edition. London.

DDSULAFOY, MME. At Susa the Ancient Capital of the Kings
of Persia, Narrative of Travel through Western Persia and
Excavations made on the Site of the Lost City of the Lilies,
1884-1886. Philadelphia, 1890.

'. . La Perse, la Chaldee et la Susane. Paris, 1887.

D'lSTRiA, DORA. Des Femmes par une Femme. Paris, 1865.

DONALDSON, JAMES. Woman: Her Position in Ancient Greece
and Rome among the Early Christians. London, 1907.

DRANE, AUGUSTA T. Christian Schools and Scholars. London,

1881.
DRUON, H. (Euvres de Synesius, fiveque de Ptolemais, Tra-

duites entierement pour la premiere Fois en Francais et

Precedees d'une Etude Biographique et Litteraire. Paris,

1878.

DUPANLOUP, MGR. La Femme Studieuse. Paris, 1895.
ECKSTEIN, LENA. Women Under Monasticism. Cambridge,

1896.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

421

ELLIS, HAVELOCK. Man and Woman. London, 1898.

FANTUZZI, GIOVANNI. Notizie degli Scrittori Bolognesi.
Bologna, 1781.

FAVARO, ANTONIO. Galileo Galilei e Suor Celeste. Florence,
1891.

FENELON, FRANCOIS DE SALIGNAC DE LA MOTHE. De 1'Education
des Filles. Paris, 1881.

FINOT, J. Problems of the Sexes. New York, 1913.

FIORELLI, Jos. Pompeinarum Antiquitatum Historia. Naples,
1860-1864.

FRANKLAND, MR. AND MRS. PERCY. Pasteur. London, 1898.

GASQUET, AIDAN. Henry VIII and the English Monasteries.
London, 1895.

GIBSON, MARGARET DUNLOP. How the Codex was Found. Cam-
bridge, 1893.

GIOCOSA, PIERO. Magistri Salernitani Nondum Editi. Turin,
1891.

GIRARD, PAUL. L'Education Athenienne au Ve et IVe Siecle
avant Jesus Christ. Paris, 1889.

GLADSTONE, W. E. Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age.
Oxford, 1858.

GRIMAUX, E. Lavoisier, 1743-1794, d'apres sa Correspondence,
Ses Manuscrits, Ses Papiers de Famille et d'Autres Docu-
ments Inedits. Paris, 1896.

HALL, G. STANLEY. Adolescence. New York, 1904.

HAMEL, F. An Eighteenth Century Marquise. A Study of
Emilie du Chatelet and Her Times. New York, 1911.

HARLESS, C. F. Die Verdienste der Frauen um Naturwissen-
schaft und Heilkunde. Gottingen, 1830.

HARRISON, JANE E. Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Re-
ligion. Cambridge, 1903.

HAWES, HARRIET BOYD. Gournia, Vasilike and Other Prehis-
toric Sites on the Isthmus of Hierapetra, Crete. Philadel-
phia, 1908.

HENSCHEL, G. E. T. Daremberg, C., e Renzi de, S. Collectio
Salernitana, Ossia Documenti Inediti e Trattati di Medicina

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Appertenti alia la Scuola Medica Salernitana. Naples,
1852-1859.

HERRADE DE LANSBERG. Hortus Deliciarum. Strasburg, 1901.

HERSCHEL, MRS. JOHN. Memoirs and Correspondence of Caro-
line Herschel. London, 1879.

HERTZEN ET Rossi. Inseriptiones Urbis Roma3 Latins. Berlin,

1882.

HILDEGARDIS, S. CaussB et Cura3. Leipsic, 1903.

. Opera Omnia, Edition Migne. Paris, 1882.

. Nova S. Hildegardis Opera. Ed. J. B. Card. Pitra.

Paris, 1882.

HILL, GEORGIANA. Women in English Life. London, 1896.
HUNT, CAROLINE L. The Life of Helen H. Richards. Boston,

1912.
HUXLEY, L. H. Life and Letters of Thomas H. Huxley. New

York, 1900.

JEROME, ST. EpistolsB, Edition Vallarsi. Verona, 1734-42.
JEX-BLAKE, SOPHIA. Medical Women. Edinburgh, 1886.
JOURDAIN, CHARLES. Excursions Historiques et Philosophiques

a travers le Moyen Age. Paris, 1888.

KENDALL, PHEBE M. Maria Mitchell, Life, Letters and Jour-
nals. Boston, 1896.
KINGSLEY, MARY H. Travels in West Africa. London, 1897.

. West African Studies. London, 1899.

KIRCHHOFF, A. Die Akademische Frau. Berlin, 1897.
LABE, LOUIZE. CEuvres de. Paris, 1871.
LAGRANGE, F. Histoire de Sainte Paule. Paris, 1870.
LAIGLB, MATHILDE. Le Livre de Trois Vertus de Christine de

Pisan et son Milieu Historique et Literaire. Paris, 1912.
LALANDE, JEROME. Bibliographic Astronomique. Paris, 1803.
LAMY, E. La Femme de Demain. Paris, 1912.
LANGE, HELENE. Higher Education of Women in Europe. New

York, 1890.
LAURIE, S. C. Historical Survey of Pre-Christian Education.

London, 1900.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 423

LECKY, W. E. History of European Morals. New York, 1905.

LEFEVRE, M. La Femme a travers FHistoire. Paris, 1902.

LEFFLER, ANNA CARLOTTA. Sonya Kovalevsky, Her Recollec-
tions of Childhood, with a Biography. New York, 1895.

LEPINSKA, MELANIE, MLLE. Histoire des Femmes Medecins.
Paris, 1900.

LEWIS, AGNES SMITH. In the Shadow of Sinai. Cambridge,
1898.

LIGIER, HERMANN. De Hypatia Philosopha et Eclectismi Fine.
Dijon, 1879.

LOURBET, J. La Femme devant la Science. Paris, 1896.
LUNGO, ISODORO DEL. Women of Florence. London, 1907.
MACPHERSON, GERALDINE. Memoirs of the Life of Anna Jame-
son. London, 1878.

MAISTRE, COMTE JOSEPH DE. Lettres et Opuscules Inedits.

Paris, 1851.

MARINI, GAETANO. Archiatri Pontifici. Rome, 1784.
MASON, 0. T. Woman's Share in Primitive Culture. London,

1895.

. Origin of Inventions. London, 1895.

MAULDE LA CLAVIERE, R. DE. The Women of the Renaissance.

New York, 1901.

MAZZUCHELLI, GIAMMARIA. Gli Scrittori d'ltalia. Brescia, 1758.

MEDICI, MICHELE. Compendio Storico della Scuola Anatomica
di Bologna. Bologna, 1857.

MENAGIUS, .^EGIDIUS. Historia Mulierum Philosopharum. Am-
sterdam, 1692.

MEYER, H. F. Geschichte der Botanik. Kb'nigsburg, 1856.

MICH^ELIS, A. A Century of Archaeological Discoveries. New
York, 1908.

MILL, JOHN STUART. The Subjection of Women. London,
1909.

MOBIUS, P. J. Ueber die Anlage zur Mathematik. Leipsic, 1907.

MONTAGU, LADY MARY WORTLEY. Letters and Works of, Bohn
Edition. London, 1887.

424 BIBLIOGRAPHY

MONTALAMBERT, CoMTE DE. Monks of the West. London, 1896.
MYERS, ANNIE N. Woman's Work in America. New York,
1891.

NUTTALL, ZELIA. The Fundamental Principles of Old and New
World Civilizations. Cambridge, Mass., 1901.

NOLHAC, PIERRE DE. Petrarque et FHumanisme. Paris, 1892.
CELSNER, ELISE. Die Leistungen der deutschen Frau in den

letzen vierhundert Jahren auf wissenschaftlichem Gebiete.

Guhrau, 1894.

OZANAM, A. F. Documents Inedits pour servir a PHistoire
Litteraire de PItalie. Paris, 1850.

PLATO'S DIALOGUES, Jowett's Translation. London, 1892.
POESTION, J. C., Griechische Dicterinnen. Wien, 1876.
. Griechische Philosophinnen. Norden, 1885.

RASHDALL, H. The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages.

Oxford, 1895.

REBIERE, A. Les Femmes .dans la Science. Paris, 1897.
REICH, EMIL. Woman through the Ages. London, 1908.

RENAUD, A. Histoire Nouvelle des Arts et des Sciences. Paris,
1878.

RENZI DE, SALVATORE. Storia Documentata della Scuola Medica
di Salerno. Naples, 1857.

RODOCANACHI, E. La Femme Italienne a 1'Epoque de la Ren-
aissance. Paris, 1907.

ROUSSELOT, PAUL. Histoire de Ffiducation des Femmes en
France. Paris, 1883.

SABBADINI, REMIGIO. Vita di Guarino Veronese. Genoa, 1891.

SAINTE-BEUVE, CHARLES-AUGUSTIN DE. Nouvelle Galerie de
Femmes Celebres. Paris, 1872.

SARTI, MAURI, ET FATTORINI, MAURI. De Claris Archigymnasii
Bononiensis Professoribus a Saeculo XI usque ad Sa«culum
XIV. Bologna, 1888-1896.

SCHLIEMANN, H. Ilios, the City and Country of the Trojans.
New York, 1881.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 425

SCHMIDT, A. Sur PAge de Pericles. 1877-79.
SERTILLANGES, A. D. Feminisme et Christianisme. Paris, 1908.
SIMON, JULES. La Femme du Vingtieme Siecle. Paris, 1892.
SOCRATES, SCHOLASTICUS. Ecclesiastical History. London, 1848.

SOMERVILLE, MARY. Personal Recollections from Early Life to

Old Age. Boston, 1874.
STANTON, THEODORE. The Woman Question in Europe. New

York, 1884.
STUPUY, H. CBuvres Philosophiques de Sophie Germain. Paris,

1896.
SYMONDS, J. A. A Short History of the Renaissance in Italy.

London, 1893.

THIERRY, A. Saint Jerome, La Soeiete Chretienne a Rome et

1' Emigration Romaine en Terre Sainte. Paris, 1867.
TmABOSCHi, G. Storia della Letteratura Italiana. Milan, 1822.
VEITCH, J. Memoir of Sir William Hamilton. Edinburgh, 1869.

VIVES, JOANNES LUDOVICUS. De Tradendis Disoiplinis. Colon,
Agr., 1536.

WALLACE, R. Eleanor Ormerod, Economic Entomologist, Auto-
biography and Correspondence. London, 1904.

WHARTON, H. T. Sappho. London, 1898.

WOLF, J. C. Mulierum Graacarum Quse Oratione Prosa Usae
Sunt Fragmenta et Elogia Graece et Latine. London, 1739.

. Poetriarum Octo, Erinnas, Myrus, Myrtidis, Corinnae,

Telesillae, Praxillae, Nossidis, Anytae, Fragmenta et Elogia.
Hamburg, 1734.

Sapphus, Poetriae Lesbiae, Fragmenta et Elogia. Ham-

burg, 1733.

WOODWARD, W. H. Vittorino da Feltre arid Other Humanist
Educators. Cambridge, England, 1905.

WRIGHT, T. Womankind in Western Europe. London, 1869.

ZUCCANTE, GIUSSEPPE. Fra il Pensiero Antico e il Moderno,
Milan, 1905.

426 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Women Inventors to whom Patents have been granted by the
United States Government, Compiled under the Direction of
the Commissioner of Patents. Washington, D. C., 1888.

Histoire Letteraire de la France, Commencee par des Religieux
Benedictins de S. Maur et Continuee par des Membres de
rinstitut. Paris, 1793-1906.

INDEX

Abelard, 141, 142.

Abella, physician, 286.

Abrege de Navigation, La-
lande's, 182.

Academy of ancient Athens, ad-
mission of women to, 10.

Academy of the Lincei, Donna
Caetani-Bovatelli, dean of,
326.

Academy of Science, French.
See French Academy of Sci-
ence.

Acta Mythologica Apostolorum
in Arabic, translated by Agnes
Lewis, 331 footnote.

Adams, (Mrs.) Abigail, quoted,
100.

Adams, Charles Francis, quoted,
100.

Adams, Elizabeth, 344.

Addison, 98.

Adelheid, 52.

-^Egidius, quoted, 282 footnote.

^Eschines, 13.

Africa, Mary Kingsley's explora-
tions in, 257, 258.

Agamede, physician, 267, 268.

Aganice, daughter of Sesostris,
167.

Agassiz, (Mrs.) Elizabeth Gary,
255, 377.

Agassiz, Jean Louis, 255, 378.

Aglaonice, the first woman
astronomer, 167.

Agnesi, Maria Gaetana, 78, 79,

105, 228, 230; knowledge
of languages of, 143, 144;
achievements of, in mathe-
matics, 144-150; charitable
works of, 148-151; exclusion
of, from French Academy,
393.

Agnodice, physician, 268, 269,
290.

Agricola, Eudolph, 62.

Agriculture, English Board of,
250.

Agriculturists, women as, 335,
338.

Agrippina, 24, 25; prose writ-
ings of, 28.

Albategni, 169.

Albert the Great, 233.

Alcaeus, in praise of Sappho, 6.

Alcala, University of, 68.

Alciphoron, 11.

Alexandria, Hypatia's work in,
138, 199, 200.

Algae, Dr. Snow's work on, 254.

Algarotti, Francisco, 152.

Algebra, taught by Hypatia, 139.

Alpine flora, Amalie Dietrich's
collection of, 243.

Amazonia, explorations of Ma-
dame Coudreau in, 259-261.

Ambrosius, Franciscus, 142.

American Chemical Society, 228.

American Philosophical Society,
228.

Amoretti, Maria Pellegrina, 77.

427

428

INDEX

Ampere, in praise of l3milie du

Chatelet, 151.
Analyse des Infiniment Petits, by

Marquis 1'Hopital, 376.
Anatomical models, perfected by
Anna Manzolini, 236; per-
fected by Mile. Biheron, 238.
Anatomy, the study of, by

women, 236-238.
Anaxagoras, 12.
Ancren Riwle, 40.
Andrea, Novella d', 53, 79.
Andromeda, 6.
Anguisciola sisters of Cremona,

61.

Annals of Tacitus, 28.
Antelmy, Agnesi 'a Analytical
Institutions translated into
French by, 146.
Antiochis, physician, 270.
Antipater, epigram of, 6 foot-
note.

Anytae, 17.
Apelles, 11.

Apocrypha Ardbica, edited by
Margaret Gibson, 330 footnote.
Apocrypha Sinaitica, 330 foot-
note.

Apocrypha Syriaca Sinaitica, ed-
ited by Agnes Lewis, 331 foot-
note.

Apollonius, Conic Sections of,
Hypatia 's commentary on,
168.

Apollonius of Perga, 139, 140.
Aquinas, Thomas, quoted, 297

footnote.

Arabic Version of the Acta Apoc-
rypha Apostolorum edited by
Agnes Lewis, 331 footnote.
Arabic Version of the Acts of
the Apostles and the Seven
Catholic Epistles, edited by

Margaret Gibson, 330 footnote.
Arabic Version of St. Paul's
Epistles to the Romans, Corin-
thians, Galatians and part of
Ephesians, by Margaret Gib-
son, 330 footnote.
Arago, 202.

Archaeology, museums of, 309,
310; women in, 309-333;
American women in, 321-324.
Archagatos, 271.
Archimedes, 197.
Archlanassa, 10.
Ardinghelli, Maria Angela, 77,

142.

Arditi, Michele, 311.
Areometer, invention of, by Hy-
patia, 200.

Arete of Gyrene, teacher of phil-
osophy, 197-199.

Arezzo, Leonardo d'? course of
study for women planned by,
84 footnote.

Ariosto, quoted, 6 footnote, 57;
in praise of Vittoria Colonna,
61, 63, 66.
Aristippus, 10, 197.
Aristotelian theory of difference
between intellectual capacity
of men and women, 110.
Aristotle, in praise of Sappho, 5,

10, 197.

Arithmetica of Diophantus, Hy-
patia's commentary on, 139,
168.

Arrighi, G. L., 364 footnote.
Art, achievements of women in,
in Italy during the Renais-
sance, 60, 61.

Ascham, Roger, 69 footnote.
Asclepiades, 271.
Ashley, Mary, 196.
Aske, Robert, quoted, 41.

INDEX

429

Aspasia, of Miletus, 12-14, 16,

17, 26.

Aspasia, physician, 199, 270.
Assisi, St. Francis, 358.
Astrolabe, invention of, by Hy-

patia, 140, 200.
Astronomical Canon, Hypatia 's,

140, 168.
Astronomical Society of France,

Dorothea Klumpke first woman

member of, 194.
Astronomic des Dames, La-

lande's, 178, 181.
Astronomy, achievements of Hy-
patia in, 139, 200-201; women

in, 167-196.
At Susa by Mme. Dieulafoy, 320

footnote.
Athenaeus, 137.
Athens, position of women in,

3-5, 16, 18, 19, 199, 414, 415 ;~

culture of, 404.
Attica, 198.

Aucassin et Nicolette, 275.
Augustus, Emperor, 19, 24.
Aurelia, mother of Julius Caesar,

22.

Austen, Jane, 98.
Auzoux, Dr., 236.
Ayrton, Mrs. W. E., achieve-
ments of, in electricity, 212,

230.

Baker, Lady, wife of Sir Samuel
Baker, 374.

Balzac, 88.

Barbapiccola, Eleonora, of Sa-
lerno, 76.

Bascom, Florence, 254.

Bassani, Signora, lacemaker, 337.

Bassi, Laura, 78, 79, 147, 148,
203-209, 210, 211, 212, 298;
birth of, at Bologna, 203;

Doctorate of Physics bestowed

upon, 204; letters of Voltaire

to, 207.

Bazzani, Doctor, 204.
Beatrice, 357, 361.
Beausoleil, Baroness de, 238-240.
Becquerel, M. H., 223, 227, 228.
Beethoven, 359.
Bellini, 66.
Bembo, Cardinal, 61, 63; in

praise of Elizabetta Gonzaga,

67.
Benedict XIV, 78, 147, 148, 203,

204, 228.
Berlin Academy of Sciences,

371.

Bern, University of, 304.
Bernouilli, Jean, 152.
Bernstein, Dr. Julius, on intel-
lectual capacity of women,

133.

Berthollet, 216.
Besant, Sir Walter, quoted, 102-

105.

Bianchetti, Giovanna, 298.
Bianchetti, Maddalena, 298.
Biheron, Mile., 238.
Biology, 245, 254; as a basis

for woman's equality with

man, 399.
Biot, 154, 216; in praise of

Sophie Germain, 156.
Bishop, Isabella Bird, 256.
Blackwell, Miss Elizabeth, phy-
sician, 300-304, 305, 307.
Bobinski, Countess, 196.
Boccaccio, 197.
Bocchi, Dorotea, 298.
Boileau's satire on Mme. de la

Sabliere, 172.
Boke of the Cy'te of Ladyes,

quoted from, 106, 107, 108.
Boleyn, Anne, 69.

INDEX

Bollandists, on work of St. Hil-
degard, 47.

Bologna, Academy of Sciences
of, 207.

Bologna, University of, 203-210,
236, 296-299; in Middle Ages,
53; women lecturers and pro-
fessors in, 57, 78, 79; Dorotea
Bucca of, 62; degrees con-
ferred upon Maddalena Ca-
nedi-Noe and Maria Vittoria
Dosi by, 77; chair of higher
mathematics in, given to
Maria Gaetana Agnesi, 78, 148.

Bonaparte, Caroline, archaeologi-
cal excavations of, 311, 312,
317.

Bonaparte, Joseph, 311.

Borghini, Maria Selvaggia of
Pisa, 76.

Borromeo, Clelia Grille, of
Genoa, 77, 142.

Bos, J. Eitzema, 253 footnote.

Bossuet, Abbe, 88, 146.

Boston, public schools of, 99.

Botany, 256; Frau Kablick's
studies in, 242, 243; Amalie
Dietrich's studies in, 243-244;
cryptoganic, 254.

Bouchet, Jean, quoted, 74 foot-
note.

Bovin, Mme. Marie, physician,
293-295.

Bowles, Ada C., quoted, 346, 347.

Boyd, Ella F., 254.

Boyd, Harriet, 317; archaeolog-
ical investigations of, 321, 322.

Boyd, Mary E., of Smith, 195.

Brahe, Sophia, 170.

Brahe, Tycho, 170.

Brain, convolutions of, as an
index to intelligence, 122, 123;
frontal lobe of, in man and in

woman, 122; gray matter of,
and its relation to intelligence,
123.

Brain weight, relation of, to
mental power, 118-122, 124-
126.

Brenzoni, Laura, 58, 59.

Brescia, University of, 62.

British Museum, 256, 258.

Britton, Elizabeth G., 254.

Broca, 116, 126.

Bronte sisters, 98, 114, 115, 264.

Brosses, M. Charles de, quoted,
144.

Brougham, Lord, 159.

Brown, Alice, 196.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett,
114.

Bruce, Miss C., 196.

Brush, Mary, 344.

Brussels, 229.

Brutus, 23.

Bryn Mawr, College of, 166.

Bucca, Dorotea, 62, 79.

Biichner, 246.

Buckland, Mrs. William, 374,
375.

Buckle, 384, 385, 386.

Burckhardt, 210.

Burney, Fanny, 98.

Burnmeister, 248.

Bush, Katherine J., 254.

Butter, Josephine E., 291 foot-
note.

Caedmon, influence of St. Hilda

on, 37, 38.

Caesar, Aurelia, mother of, 22.
Caetani-Bovatelli, Donna Ersilia,

archaeologist, 324-327.
Caetani-Sermonetta, Duke of, 324,

325.

INDEX

431

Caius Musonius Eufus, on educa-
tion of women, 30, 31.

Calendrini, Bettina, 298.

Calendrini, Novella, 298.

California, University of, 323.

Galphurnia, letters of, 29.

Calpurnia, 356, 361.

Cambridge, University of, funds
from suppressed convents de-
voted to, 41, 42; exclusion of
women from, 80, 100, 230, 330-
333.

Camoens, 57.

Candolle, Alphonse de, 392, 393.

Canedi-Noe, Maddalena, 77.

Cannon, Annie J., 195.

Canova, in praise of Suor Plan-
tilla Nelli, 60 footnote.

Canticle of the Sun, The, by
St. Francis Assisi, quoted, 359.

Cape Observations, Herschel 's,
186, 189.

Carlyle, quoted, 79 footnote.

Cassius, wife of, 23.

Castiglione, 66, 67; in praise of
women, 359.

Catalogue of Eight Hundred and
Sixty Stars Observed by Flam-
steed but Not Included in the
British Catalogue, by Caroline
Herschel, 186.

Catani, Giuseppina, professor of
pathology at Bologna, 296.

Caterzani, 299.

Catherine of Aragon, 68, 69.

Cato, quoted, 27.

Catullus, 5.

Celeste, Sister Maria, daughter
of Galileo, 363-369.

Celleor, Mrs., quoted, 268.

Celsus, 174.

Ceretta, Laura, 62.

Cervantes, 57.

Chantry, bust of Mary Somerville

by, 159.

Charity, Sisters of, 308.
Charlemagne, 39.
Chateaubriand, 256.
Chatelain, 289 footnote.
Chatelet, £milie du, 87; 151-153;

achievements of, in astronomy,

175-177; as mathematical

physicist, 201, 202.
Chaucer, quoted, 40 footnote.
Chemistry, women in, 214-232;

sanitary, 218.

Chesterfield, Lord, quoted, 97.
Chiavello, Livia, of Fabriano, 59.
Chinchon, Countess of, 299 foot-
note.
Chinchona bark, introduction of,

into Europe, 299 footnote.
Chopin, 359.
Christian Inscriptions in the

Irish Language by Miss

Stotes, 316.

Christine of Sweden, 82, 94, 370.
Church of the Household, 31-34.
Cibo, Catarina, of Genoa, 59, 60.
Cicero, 8; tribute of, to Laelia,

23; Tulia's letters to, 29.
Cirey, 201.
Cite des Dames, 106, 107, 108,

109, 134.
Clairaut, 152; work of, with

Mme. Lepaute, 179, 180.
Clapp, Cornelia M., 254.
Clarke, Cora H., 254.
Claviere, in praise of women,

360.

Claypole, Agnes M., 254.
Claypole, Edith J., 254.
Cleopatra, physician, 270.
Clerke, Agnes M. and Ellen M.,

196.

432

INDEX

Codex Ludovicus, discovery of,
328, 333.

Codex Nuttall, 324.

Codex Sinaiticus, 328.

Coeducational institutions, com-
parative standing of men and
women in, 128, 129.

Colonna, Vittoria, 61, 62, 65, 359.

Colton, Eev. John, Agnesi's Ana-
lytical Institutions translated
into French by, 146, 147.

Columbus, 56, 380.

Comstock, Anna Botsford, 254.

Comte, 245.

Conde", 88.

Condorcet, 334 footnote.

Conic Sections, of Apollonius,
Hypatia's commentary on, 139,
140, 168.

Connection of the Physical Sci-
ences by Mary Somerville, 160,"
211.

Considerations Generales sur
I'fitat des Sciences et des Let-
tres aux Differentes fipoques
de Leur Culture by Sophie Ger-
main, 156.

Convent of Aries, 36 ; of Poitiers,
36; of St. Hilda, 36; of Bish-
opsheim, 39; of St. Rupert at
Bingen, 46; of Helfta, 49.

Convent schools, 36, 41.

Convents, as centers of learning
in Middle Ages, 35-53; sup-
pression of, in England, 41,
42; advantages of, 51; in-
fluence of, 51-53.
Conventus Matronarum, 27.
Conversations on Chemistry, by

Mrs. Marcet, 372.
Copernicus, 56, 189.
Corinna, 6, 17.
Corneille, 88.

Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi,
22, 25, 26.

Cornelia, wife of Pompey, 22.

Cotton gin, invention of, 351,
352.

Coudreau, Henri, 258.

Coudreau, Mme. Octavie, 256,
258-264; books by, 263 foot-
note.

Courtier, Castiglione Js, 66, 67.

Cramoisy, Marie, 82.

Cranial capacity, relation of, to
mental energy, 115-117.

Crete, the Forerunner of Greece,
by Mrs. Hawes, 322.

Crevaux, 262.

Crisculo, Maria Angela, 61.

Gumming, Constance Gordon,
256.

Cummings, Clara E., 254

Cunitz, Maria, 170, 171.

Cunningham, Susan, of Swarth-
more, 195.

Curie, Mme. Marie Klodowska,
326, 333, 362, 394, 397, 221-
232; birth and early life
of, 221-222; marriage of, to
Pierre Curie, 222; scientific in-
vestigations and discoveries of,
223-226; honors of, 227-232.

Curie, Pierre, 222, 224.

Cushman, Florence, 195.

Cuvier, weight of brain of, 119;
215, 216.

Gyrene, school of philosophy at,
197.

Dacier, Mme., 82, 83 footnote.
Damien, Father, 274.
Danophila, 7.

Dante, 117, 324, 325, 357.
Darboux, M., in praise of Doro-
thea Klumpke, 193, 194.

INDEX

433

Daremberg, Dr. Charles, 234, 270,

287 and 288 footnote.
Darmstadt, Medical College of,

292.

Darwin, on man, 3, 113; quoted,
124.

Darwin's Origin of Species, the
French translation of, by
Clemence Koyer, 245.

Davy gold medal of the Eoyal
Society awarded to the Curies,
227.

Davidson, Ada B., 254.

Da Vinci, Leonardo, 66.

Dawes, 191.

Decameron, The, 197.

De Compositione Medicamen-
torum, by Trotula, 285.

Deffand, Mme. du, 11, 89, 92;
Marquise du Chatelet ridiculed
by, 177 and footnote, 178 foot-
note.

Deipnosophistce, of Athenaeus,
137.

Delambre, 216.

De Lamennais, on woman's in-
tellectual inferiority, 136.

De Morbis Mulierum et Eorum
Cura, by Trotula, 284 footnote.

Demosthenes, quoted, 3 footnote;
10.

Denifle, 79, 289 footnote.

Denver School of Mines, woman
principal of, 254.

De Orbium Celestium ^Revolution-
ibus, 189.

De Problemate quodam Hydro-
metrico by Laura Bassi, 209
footnote.

De Problemate quodam Mechan-
ico by Laura Bassi, 208 foot-
note.

De Prony, in praise of Sophie

Germaine, 154.
Descartes, 88, 94, 202; doctrines

of, 175, 176; female pupils of,

369, 370.

Destouches, 86, 87.
Diaz, Porfirio, 324.
Didascalia Apostolorum in Syr-

iac, The, edited by Margaret

Gibson, 331 footnote.
Diderot, attitude of, toward

women, 93.
Dietrich, Amalie, botanist, 243-

244.
Dieulafoy, Mme., archaeologist,

317, 362; archaeological expe-
ditions of, 318-321.
Dieulafoy, Marcel, 318.
Diocletian, 272.
Diogenes, 10.
Diophantus, AritTimetica of, Hy-

patia's commentary on, 139,

168.
Diotima of Mantinea, Socrates'

tribute to, 11.

Divina Commedia by Dante, 357.
Dock, Lavinia L., 280 footnote.
Doni Gasquet on dissolution of

convents, 41.

Donne, Maria dalle, 79; as pro-
fessor of obstetrics, 209; as
surgeon, 299-300.
Dorat, Jean, quoted, 71 footnote.
Dosi, Maria Vittoria, 77, 298.
Dramas of Hroswitha, 43, 44.
Draper, Mrs. Henry, endowment
of the Henry Draper Memorial
at Harvard by, 196.
Dryden, 98.
Dumee, Jeanne, 171.
Dunraven's Notes on Irish Archi-
tecture, edited by Miss Stotes,
316.

434

INDEX

Dupanloup, Mgr., quoted, 396

footnote.

Dupre, Marie, 82.
Dupuytren, 294.

Early Christian Art in Ireland,
by Miss Stotes, 316.

Eastman, Alice, 254.

Ecclesia Domestica, 31-34.

Eckenstein, Lina, quoted, 50
footnote; on influence of con-
vents, 52, 53.

£cole de Medecine of Paris, ad-
mittance of women to, 290.

Hicole de Physique et de Chimie
in Paris, 223.

ficole des Femmes, 412.

Edinburgh, University of, 228,
305; opposition of, to women,
80; Miss Ormerod receives de-
gree of Doctor of Laws at,"
252.

Education, during the Renais-
sance, 71-75; in England, in
the Middle Ages, 36-42; in
France, in the post-Eenais-
sance period, 83-85.

Education of women in ancient
Greece, 1-18; in ancient Eome,
18-34; in Greece and Eome
compared, 26, 27; in the Mid-
dle Ages, 64-54; during the
Eenaissance, 54-75; in Ger-
many, in post-Eenaissance pe-
riod, 93, 94; in England, in
post-Eenaissance period, 96-
98; in the United States, in
the post-Eenaissance period,
99, 100; changes in, in last
.three-quarters of a century,
102-105; in Italy, 210.

Edwards, Amelia B., 256.

Eigeuman, Eose S., 254.

Electricity, work of Mrs. Ayrton
in, 212.

Eliot, George, 98, 264.

Elizabeth of Bohemia, 94, 369,
370, 371.

Elizabeth, Queen, 69, 70; failure
of, to provide for education of
women, 42.

Elizabeth of Sweden, 82.

Elizabeth, wife of Hevilius, 175.

Ellis, Havelock, 117, 343 foot-
note.

Mogie Historique, Voltaire 's,
152, 153.

Emerson, quoted, 105.

Encyclopedists, attitude of, to-
ward women, 93.

Engineering, on trans-Siberian
railroad in charge of a woman,
102.

England, education in, in the
Middle Ages, 36-42; prestige
of abbesses in, 52; position of
woman in, during the Eenais-
sance, 57, 69; position of
women in, during post-Eenais-
sance period, 95-99; women
physicians in, 304-307; femi-
nine population of, 407.

Entomology, 256; achievements
of Missouri woman in, 254.

Entomology, economic, Eleanor
Ormerod 's work in, 247-252;
her publications on, 249-250.

Entretiens sur I' Opinion de Co-
pernio Toucnant la MoMlite de
la Terre, by Jeanne Dumee,
171.

Ephemeris of the Academy of
Sciences, Mme. Lepaute's work
on, 181.

Epicurus, 8, 10.
fipinay, Mme. d'; 92.

INDEX

435

Erasmus, 57, 68, 69, 73.

Erinna, 7, 17.

Erucarum Ortus, Aliment a et

Paradoxa Metamorphosis, by

Frau Merian, 242.
Erxleben, Dorothea Christin, phy-
sician, 293 footnote.
Espinasse, Mile, de 1', 11.
Este, Beatriche d', Duchess of

Milan, 65, 66.
Este, Isabella d', Marchioness of

Mantua, archaeologist, 65, 66,

310, 311.

Estienne, Robert, 71.
Ethnology, 323.
Euler, Leonard, 202.
Euripides, 12, quoted, 3 footnote;

12; 13 footnote; 268.
Eustochium, 31-34, 357, 361.
Everett, Alice, 196.
Evolution, Clemence Royer's

theory of, 246.
Explorations carried on by

women, 257-263.

Fabiola, physician, 272-274.
Fabricius, 248.

Fairfax, Mary. See Somerville.
Fairfax, Sir William, 157, 211.
Fantuzzi, Giovanni, 205, 208,

237 footnote.
Faraday, 372, 373.
Fawcett, Mrs. Henry, 128.
Faye, Mme., 196.
Fedele, Cassandra, 59.
Feijoo, Benito Jeronimo, 110.
Felicie, Jacobe, physician, 289-

290.
Feltre, Vittorino da, 58 and 59

footnote.
Femmes Savantes of Moliere, 30,

85-87, 172.

Ferrara, court of, 65, 66.

Ferrara, University of, 62, 79.

Ferreyra, Bernada, 68.

Fiorelli, 312 footnote.

Flammarion, Mme., 196.

Fleshier, 88.

Fleming, Mrs. W., achievements
of, in astronomy, 195.

Fletcher, Alice C., archaeologist,
322, 323.

Fontana, Lavinia, 61.

Foot, Katherine, 254.

Form and Rotation of the Earth,
The, by Mary Somerville, 212.

Fortunatus, 36.

Forty-one Facsimiles of Dated
Christian Arabic Manuscripts
by Agnes Lewis and Margaret
Gibson, 331 footnote.

France, women in, during the
Renaissance, 70, 71; women
in, during the post-Renaissance
period, 81-93; mineral re-
sources of, Mme. de Beauso-
leil's interest in, 239; femi-
nine population of, 407.

France, University of, 304.

Frankland, Percy, 376 footnote.

Frederick the Great, mother of,
370.

Frei, Frau Teresa, physician,
292.

French Academy of Sciences,
133, 146, 155, 201, 228, 232
footnote, 238, 326; exclusion
of women from, 78, 229, 230,
333, 393, 394.

French Institute, 246; Sophie
Germain honored by, 155; dis-
crimination of, against women,
230-231 footnote.

Frontal lobe of brain in man
and in woman, 122.

436

INDEX

Fuller, Thomas, quoted, 75
footnote.

Fundamental Principles of Old
and New World Civilizations,
The, by Mrs. Nuttall, 324.

Gadolinium, discovery of, 219.
Gage, Susanna Phelps, 254.
Galfrido, quoted, 298 footnote.
Galileo, 364-369, 380.
Galindo, Beatrix, 68.
Galvani, Luigi, 210, 236, 372.
Galvanic electricity, 210.
Gambara, Veronica, 61.
Gambetta, weight of brain of,

120.
Garden of Delights. See Hortus

Deliciarum.
Garrett, Elizabeth, physician, 290

footnote, 304.
Gassendi, 94.
Gaufrey, Antoiue Hamilton 's,

169.

Gebert, 141.
Gegner prize from the French

Academy of Sciences awarded

to Mme. Curie, 228.
General Index of Reference to

Every Observation of Every

Star in the Above-mentioned

British Catalogue, by Caro-
line Herschel, 186.
Geneva, University of, 228, 304.
Geneva, New York, College at,

301.

Genlis, Mme. de, 238.
Geoff rin, Mme., 89.
Geographical Society of Berlin,

256.

Geology, 254.
Geometry, taught by Hypatia,

139.

Geraldini brothers, 68.

Gerberg, Abbess, 43.

Germain, Sophia, 87, 154-157,
391, 392; grand prix of French
Academy of Science won by,
155; exclusion of, from French
Academy, 393.

Germanicus, wife of, 24, 25.

Germany, education in, during
Middle Ages, 43-52; privileges
of abbesses in, 52; position
of woman in, during the Re-
naissance, 57, 70, 74; women
in, in post-Renaissance period,
93-95; universities of, open to
women, 101; attitude of, to-
ward women to-day, 130-134;
feminine population of, 407.

Gernez, M.D., 226, footnote.

Gertrude the Great, 46, 49.

Gibbon, quoted, 19.

Gibson, Margaret Dunlop, archae-
ologist, 327-332, 333.

Giessen, University of, 293.

Giliani, Alessandra, 237, foot-
note.

Girton College, 100.

Gladstone, quoted, 398, footnote.

Glycera, 10.

Goethe, 385.

Golden, Katherine E., 254.

Goldsmith, 98.

Goncourt, 109.

Gonzaga, Cecelia, 58 and 59, foot-
note.

Gonzaga, Elizabetta, 66, 67, 310.

Gorgo, 6; quoted, 17.

Gospel of Isbodad in Syriac and
English, by Margaret Gibson,
331, footnote.

Gottingen, University of, 293.

Gozzadina, Bitisia, 298.

Gozzadini, Bettina, 53.

INDEX

437

Gracchi, Cornelia, mother of the,
22.

Granville, Lord, quoted, 97 and
98 footnote.

Grassi, Ippolita, 298.

Gravitation, discovery of, 384,
385.

Gray matter in the brain, rela-
tion of, to intelligence, 123.

Gray's Elegy, quoted, 403.

Greece, ancient, woman and edu-
cation in, 1-18, 398; position
of woman in, compared with
Borne, 18, 19, 25-27; medical
women in, 267-271.

Greene, Catherine L., cotton gin
invented by, 351.

Grey, Lady Jane, 69.

Grignan, Mme. de, 82.

Grimaldi, Cardinal, 203.

Guarna, Eebeca de, physician,
286.

Gubernatis, A. de, in praise of
Donna Bovatelli, 325.

Gustavus of Sweden, 238.

Haeckel, 246.

Haeser, 278.

Hall, Mrs. Asaph, 376.

Hall, Edith H., archaeologist,

321.

Halle, 332.
Halley, 140.
Hamilton, Antoine, 169.
Hamilton, Lady, 382, 383.
Hamilton, Sir William, 382, 383.
Hare, Christopher, 311 footnote.
Harmony of Women, by Peric-

tione, 8.
Harrison, Jane E., archaeologist,

332, 333.
Harvard Observatory, women on

staff of, 195,

Harvard University, 99, 100;
Henry Draper Memorial at,
196, 322.

Haiiy, 385.

Hawes, C. H., 322.

Hawes, Mrs. C. H. See Boyd,
Harriet.

Heidelberg, University of, 62,
332.

Heine, quoted, 30 footnote, 113.

Hell, Mme. Hommaire de, 373.

Heller, 375.

Helmholtz, Hermann von, weight
of brain of, 125 footnote.

Heloise, 141, 142.

Henry VII, 107.

Henry VIII, suppression of con-
vents by, 41; law of, in favor
of women physicians, 291.

Henschel, G., 287 and 288 foot-
note.

Heptameron, 70.

Heredity, as a basis for woman's
equality with man, 399.

Herpyllis, 10.

Herrad, 45, 48, 49.

Herschel, Caroline, 159, 182-190,
362, 377, 379, 383 footnote;
discoveries of, 183, 185; astro-
nomical writings of, 186; hon-
ors of, 187-189.

Herschel, Mrs. John, quoted, 187,
380 footnote.

Herschel, Sir John, 159, 182, 186.

Herschel, Sir William, 182-185,
185 and 186 footnote, 378.

Hertzen, 272 footnote.

Hetaerae, the, 9-12, 18, 414; mis-
tresses of French salons com-
pared with, 92.

Hevilius, 175.

Hierophilos, 269.

438

INDEX

Hill, Georgiana, Women in Eng-
lish Life, 41.

Hinckley, Mary H., 254.

Hipparchia, 8.

Histoire d'Henriette d' Angle-
terre, 91.

Eistoire des Insects de I'Europe,
by Frau Merian, 242.

Eistoire des Sciences et des Sa-
vants depuis Deux Siecles, Can-
dolle's, 392.

History of the Art of Antiquity,
by Winckelmann, 311.

Hopital, Marquis de I1, 375.

Horace, 5, 21 footnote, 113.

Horce SemiticcB, 330.

Hortensia, 27.

Eortus Deliciarum, by Herrad,
48, 49.

Hospital, first, founded by Fabi-
ola, 272.

Hotel de Kambouillet, 88-89.

Houllerigue, M. L., 226 footnote.

How the Codex Was Found, by
Mrs. Gibson, 330.

Howard, John, 281 footnote.

Hroswitha, 43-45.

Huber, Mme., 371, 383 footnote.

Huber, Francois, 371.

Hudson, W. H., on the dramas
of Hroswitha, 44.

Huggins, Lady, 196.

Humboldt, Alexander von, 160,
188, 211, 216, 256.

Huschke, 122.

Huxley, 251, 371, 377, 387, 388;
on physical disability of wo-
men, 127, 128.

Huxley, Leonard, 388 footnote.

Hyde, Dr. Ida H., 254.

Hyghens, Constantine, 94.

Hypatia, 235; achievements of,
in mathematics, 137-141; in-

ventions of, 140; letters of
Synesius to, 141; achievements
of, in astronomy, 168; attain-
ments of, in natural philosophy
and astronomy, 199-201.

Icthyology, 254.

Iliad, translated by Mme. Dacier,
82; quotation from, 267.

Imperial Academy of Sciences of
St. Petersburg, 228.

In Artem Analyticam Isagoge,
by Francois Viete, 363.

In the Shadow of Sinai, by Mrs.
Lewis, 327 footnote, 330.

Incarnata, Maria, physician, 297.

India, position of woman in, 5.

Insects, destructive, Eleanor
Ormerod's study of, 247; her
famous leaflets on, 249, 250.

Insects, microscopic, Anna Corn-
stock 's work on, 254.

Institut de Saint Cyr, 83, 85.

Institutions de Physique, by
Marquise du Chatelet, 152, 202.

Instituzioni Analitiche, by Maria
Gaetana Agnesi, 78, 144-150,
228.

Inventions of Hypatia, 140.

Inventors, women as, 334-355.

Isabella of Castile, 290, 380.

Isabella of Spain, 59, 68.

Isis, inventions of, 335.

Isocrates, 10.

Isotta of Rimini, 59.

Italy, women of the Renaissance
in, 55, 57-68; women in, dur-
ing the post-Renaissance peri-
ods, 76-81; women mathema-
ticians in, 142-151; education
of women in, 210, 295, 296.

INDEX

459

Jacobi, Dr. Mary Putnam, 128.

Jameson, Mrs., work of, in Chris-
tian iconography, 313-316.

Jansen, Mme., 196.

Jaquier, Pere, 152.

Jeffrey, Lord, 91.

Jenner, 299 footnote.

Jerusalem Delivered, 276.

Jesus College, Cambridge, nun-
nery of St. Eadegund trans-
formed into, 41.

Jex-Blake, Sophia, physician, 269
footnote, 305-307.

Johnson, Dr., 98, 113; quoted,
410, 412 and 413 footnote.

Jonson, Ben, 67.

Joseph II of Austria, 237.

Journey in Brazil, by Mr. and
Mrs. Agassiz, 379.

Joya, Isabella de, 68.

Juana, daughter of Isabella the*
Catholic, 68.

Julius II, 309.

Juvenal, quoted, 20 footnote. 30.

Kablick, Josephine, 242-243.

Kant, Immanuel, on woman's in-
capacity for mathematics, 136.

Kaschewarow, Mme., physician,
304.

Kelvin, Lord, 227.

Kepler, 375.

Kies, Mary, 346; first United
States patent awarded to, 344.

Kingsley, Charles, 257.

Kingsley, George, 257.

Kingsley, Mary H., African ex-
plorer, 256-258, 264.

Kirch, Gottfried, 173.

Kirch, Maria, 173, 174.

Kirchhoff, Arthur, investigation
of, regarding intellectual ca-
pacity of women, 129-132.

Kirwan's Essay on Phlogiston,
214.

Klumpke, Anna, 194.

Klumpke, Augusta, 194 footnote,
290 footnote.

Klumpke, Dorothea, 193, 194.

Klumpke, Julia, 194.

Knight, Miss, 351.

Koenig, 152.

Kovalevsky, Sonya, 133, 161-165,
397; weight of brain of, 123
and footnote', studies of, in
Germany, 162 ; appointment
of, to chair of higher mathe-
matics, in University of Stock-
holm, 162, 163; Prix Bordin
won by, 163.

Krauss, Dr., 313 quoted, 317
quoted.

Kronecker, in praise of Sonya
Kovalevsky, 164.

Labe, Louise, 71.
La Bruyiere, 108.
La Gaze prize awarded to the

Curies, 228.
La Chappelle, Mme. Marie

Louise, physician, 293, 294.
La Condamine, 262.
La Cruz, Juana de, 69.
Laelia, Cicero 's tribute to, 23.
La Fayette, La Comtesse de, 88,

91.

La Fontaine, 88, 172, 173.
Lagrange, 154, 216.
La Harpe, quoted, 90.
Lais, 10, 11.
Lalande, 178, 179; in praise of

Mme. Lepaute, 180, 181; in

praise of Mme. Lefrangais,

182.
Lamartine, 256.

440

INDEX

Lamennais, de, quoted, 388.
Lamy, M. :6tienne, quoted, 409,

410.

Landi, Eosanna Somaglia, of Mi-
lan, 76.

Langdon, Fannie E., 254.
Lanzi, in praise of Suor Plantilla

Nelli, 60.
La Perse, La Chaldee et la Susi-

ane, by Mme. Dieulafoy, 320

footnote.

Laplace, 216, 245.
Laplace 's Mechanique Celeste,

Mary Somerville 's translation

of, 159, 211.
Lapse and Conversion of Theo-

philus, by Hroswitha, 45.
La Eochefoucauld, 88.
Lasthenia, 11.
La Vigne, Anne de, 82.
Lavoisier, Mme. Antoine Lau-
rent, 214-216, 225, 362.
Laws of Plato, 15, 16.
Leavitt, Henrietta S., 195.
Lebrixa, Francisca de, 68.
Lecky, on dissolution of convents,

41.

Lefebre, Mme., 353.
Le Fevre, Tanquil, 82.
Lefran<jais, Mme., 182.
Legendre, 154.
Legends of the Madonna, by

Mrs. Jameson, 316.
Legion of Honor, decoration of,

refused by Pierre Curie, 227;

chevalier of, conferred on

Mme. Dieulafoy, 321.
Legrange, 155.
Leibnitz, 173, 202, 369, 370.
Leland, Eva F., 195.
Lemmon, Sarah A. Plummer, 254.
Leo X, 59.
Leontium, 8, 10.

Leoparda, physician, 271.

Lepaute, Mme. Hortense, 87,
362; achievements of, in
astronomy, 178-182.

Lepinska, Melanie, 307 footnote.

Lespinasse, Mile., 89, 90, 91.

Lewis, Mrs. Agnes Smith, archae-
ologist, 327-333.

Liber Composites Medicince, by
St. Hildegard, 278.

Liber Simplicis Medicines, by St.
Hildegard, 278.

Liber Subtilitatwn Diversarum
Naturarum Creaturarum, 233.

Liebig, 217, 247,

Linnaeus, 300 footnote.

Lipmann, Professor, 222.

Literature, women in, in ancient
Greece, 1-18; in ancient Eome,
27-30; achievements of Paula
and Eustochium in, 31-34;
achievements of women in, in
Italy during the Eenaissance,
58-62 ; women of to-day in, 406.

Livia, 24.

Livingstone, David, 373, 374.

Livre des Fais et Bonnes Meurs
du sage "Roy Charles V, by
Christine de Pisan, 107.

Livre des Faits d'Armes et de
Chevalerie, by Christine de
Pisan, 107.

Lombard, Peter, on equality of
woman, 47 footnote.

Lombroso, 109.

London Chemical Society, 228.

London, University of, attitude
of, toward women, 54 footnote,
207, 288, 305.

Longfellow, 316; quoted, 379.

Losa, Isabella, 68.

Louis XII, 59.

INDEX

441

Louis Agassis, His Life and Cor-
respondence, 379.

Louise of Saxe-Gotha, Duchesse,
178, 179.

Lungo, Isidoro del, 361 footnote.

Luther, attitude of, toward wom-
en, 75.

Luynes, Mile, de, 82.

Lyceum of ancient Athens, ad-
mission of women to, 10.

Lyell, Mrs. Charles, 373.

Mace, Hanna, 195.

Machina Ccelestis, of Hevilius,
175.

Macpherson, Geraldine, 316 foot-
note.

Maintenon, Mme. de, 83, 84, 85.

Maistre, Count Joseph de, quot-
ed, 395, 396.

Malacorona, Kudolfo, 285, 286.

Malatesta, Battista, 62.

Malvezzi, Virginia, 298.

Mangord, daughters of, 54.

Manning, Mrs. A. H., 352.

Mantua, Marchioness of, 310,
311.

Manzolini, Anna Morandi, 236-
238, 298.

Marburg, University of, 294.

Marcella, 31.

Marcet, Mrs., 372, 373.

Marchina, Marta, 78.

Margaret of Navarre, 70.

Margarita, physician, 297.

Maria Theresa, Empress, 147.

Marine invertebrates, Mary Bath-
bun 's work on, 254.

Marine life, Sophia Pereyaslaw-
zewa's study of, 244, 245.

Markham, Clements E., 300 foot-
note.

Marlow, 67.
Marmontel, 90.
Marot, Clement, 66.
Marriage, intellectual develop-
ment of women and, 412, 415,

416.

Martia, 356, 361.
Martial, quoted, 20 footnote, 28,

30.
' ' Mary Kingsley Society of West

Africa, The/' 258.
Mary Stuart, 69.
Masi, Ernesto, 208 footnote.
Mason, O. T., 343 footnote.
Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology, 217, 220.
Massalsky, Princess Helena Kol-

zoff (Doria d'Istria), traveler,

255.

Mastellagri, Maria, 298.
Matapi, the, woman's invention

of, 340.

Materia medica, 278.
Mathematics, women in, 136-166.
Mather, Sarah, 345.
Matilda, Abbess of Quedlinburg,

46, 52.

Matildas of Helfta, 49.
Matteo, Thomasia de, physician,

297.

Maupertuis, 152.
Maury, Antonia C., 195.
Mazois, Fr., 312.
Mazzuchelli, quoted, 142 footnote.
Meaux, C., 288 footnote.
Mechanique Celeste, Laplace 's,

Mary Somerville's translation

of, 159.
Mechanism of the Heavens,

Mary Somerville 's, 159.
Medaglia, Diamante, 142.
Medical women in Greece, 267-

271; in Kome, 271-274; in

442

INDEX

England and Germany, 290-
295.

Medical Women — A Thesis and
a History, by Dr. Sophia Jex-
Blake, 307 footnote.

Medici, Michele, 237 footnote.

Medicine, attitude of Italian and
Anglo-Saxon universities to-
ward women students of, 80;
women in, 266-308.

Medico-Chirurgical Academy of
St. Petersburg, 304.

Melanchthon, daughter of, 70.

Memoire sur le Feu, by Marquise
du Chatelet, 202.

Memoirs on Chemistry, by Lavoi-
sier, 215.

Memorial de I' Art des Accouche-
ments, by Mme. Bovin, 294.

Menagius, 137.

Menander, 10.

Mendelssohn, Fanny, 264.

Mendelssohn, Felix, 264, 359.

Mendoza, Dona Maria Pacheco
de, 68.

Mercuriade, physician, 286.

Merian, Dorothea and Helena,
241.

Merian, Maria Sibylla, naturalist,
240-242.

Merriam, Florence, 254.

Messia Castula, duumvira, 27.

Metallurgy, 238, 240.

Metaneira, 10.

Metcalf, Betsy, 351.

Meteorologico Ozonometric sta-
tion at Eome organized by
Caterina Scarpellini, 192.

Metradora, physician, 270.

Mexican National Museum, 324.

Meyer, Ernest H. F., 234 foot-
note.

Michaelangelo, 359; Vittoria Co-
lonna and, 62, 65.

Michaelis, 312 footnote.

Michelet, quoted, 70.

Middle Ages, the education of
women during, 34-54.

Mill, John Stuart, 109; on intel-
lectual capacity of women,
134; quoted, 381, 387, 397, 398.

Miller, Olive Thorne, 254.

Milton, quoted, 99.

Mineralogy, 238, 256; Herr Kab-
lick's study of, 243.

Minerva, 338.

Mines, Denver School of, 254.

Mining, Mme. de Beausoleil's
treatment of, 240.

Mitchell, Maria, achievements of,
in astronomy, 191, 192.

Moliere, 30, 90; plays of, 85-87;
Femmes Savantes, and Pre-
cieuses Ridicules of, 172;
L'ficole des Femmes of, 412.

Molluoca, 254.

Molza, Tarquinia, 60.

Monasteries, as centers of learn-
ing in Middle Ages, 35.

Mondino, 237 footnote.

Monographic de Turbellaries de
la Mer Noire, by Sophia Pere-
yaslawzewa, 245.

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley,
quoted, 96, 97; 299 footnote.

Montaigne, attitude of, toward
women, 75.

Montalembert, quoted, 37, 38.

Montespan, Mme. de, 84.

Montesquieu, attitude of, toward
women, 93.

Montmorency, Charlotte de, 88.

Montpensier, Duchess of, 84, 87.

Morandi-Menzolini, Anna, 79.

INDEX

443

Morati, Fulvia Olympia, 62, 70.

More, Sir Thomas, daughters of,
69.

Morella, Juana, 68, 69.

Morphology, cellular, 254.

Motherhood, intellectual develop-
ment and, 415, 416.

Mozart, 359.

Miiller, John, of Konigsburg,
170.

Murat, Joachim, 311.

Murfeldt, Mary E., 254.

Murphy, Anna. See Jameson,
Mrs.

Myrtides, 17.

Myrus, 17.

Nairne, Lady, 264.

Naples, school of medicine at,

297.
Napoleon, 155, 209, 299, 311,

313; weight of brain of, 120.
Natural sciences, women in, 233-

264.
Naturalists, Congress of, in 1893,

245.
Nautical Almanac, Miss Mitchell,

compiler for, 191, 192.
Navarre, Pierre de, quoted, 45

footnote.
Navier, 156.
Navigation, Janet Taylor 's

works on, 161.
Necker, Mme., 281 footnote,
Nelli, Suor Plantilla, 60.
Newnham College, 100; Jane E.

Harrison's lectures at, 332.
Newton, 202, 207, 209, 371, 384.
Newtonism for Women, Alga-

rotti's, 152.
Newton's Principia, 206; Mme.

du Chatelet's translation of,

152, 175, 176, 201.

New York Infirmary, 303.

Nicarete, 11.

Nightingale, Florence, 267, 274,
281 footnote.

Ninon de Lenclos, 11, 90, 92.

Nobel prize, in chemistry award-
ed to Mme. Curie by King of
Sweden, 228 ; in physics award-
ed to the Curies and M. H.
Becquerel, 228; won by Ma-
dame Curie, 394.

Noe-Candedi, Maddelena, 298.

Nogorola, Ginevra, 58 footnote.

Nogorola, Isotta, 58 footnote.

Nossidis, 17.

Nouvelles Observations sur les
Abeilles, by Francois Huber,
372.

Noves, Laura de, 357, 362.

Nuns, Anglo-Saxon, 36-42; Ger-
man, 43-50 ; accomplishments
of, 51; influence of, 51-53;
medical work of, 274-281.

Nur Mahal, 336.

Nuttall, Zelia, archaeologist, 322-
324.

Nutting, M. Adelaide, 280 foot-
note.

r

Oclo, Mama, inventions of, 336.

Octavia, 24.

Odyssey, 267; translated by
Mme. Dacier, 82; quotation
from, 267.

On Curves and Surfaces of
Higher Order, by Mary Som-
erville, 160.

On Molecular and Microscopic
Science, by Mary Somerville,
160, 212.

On the Theory of Differences,
by Mary Somerville, 160.

444

INDEX

Opuscula of Anna Maria von
Schunnan, 95.

Ordronaux, J., 283 and 284 foot-
note.

Origenia, physician, 270.

Origine de I' Horn/me et de So-
cietes, by Clemence Boyer, 246.

Orlando Furioso, 276.

Ormerod, Eleanor, economic en-
tomologist, 246-252, 264; ento-
mological publications of, 249-
250; important positions of,
251, 252.

Ornithology, 254.

Orr, M. A., 196.

Ostia, Fabiola's hospital at, 272.

Otto III, 52.

Ovid, 5; in praise of Livia, 24.

Oxford, H. Eashdall, 288 foot-
note.

Oxford, University of, funds
from suppressed convents de-
voted to, 41, 42; attitude of,
toward women, 65, 80, 100,
230.

Oxygen, discoveries of, 216; dis-
covery of, by Lavoisier, 216.

Ozanam, quoted, 55.

Padua, 296.

Padua, University of, Elena Cor-

naro Piscopia honored by, 77.
Palatine, Princess, 82.
Paleontology, Frau Kablick's

study of, 242-243.
Palgrave, comparison of Milton

and Caedmon by, 38.
Pallas Athene, inventions of, 335.
Palmer, Mrs. Margaretta, of

Yale, 195.

Paradise Lost, quoted from, 389.
Paris, medical work of women in,

288-290, 292; Faculty of Medi-

cine in, opposition by, to

Jacobe Felicie, 289.
Parthenay, Catherine de, 362.
Pascal, 82, 113, 140.
Pascal, Gilberte and Jaqueline,

82.
Passions de I'Ame of Descartes,

370.
Pasteur, Louis, 113, 114, 226,

247, 248.
Pasteur, Mme., 376, 377, 383

footnote.

Patch, Edith M., 254.
Patents granted to women in-
ventors, 344-355.
Patterson, Florence Wambaugh,

work in, 254.
Patterson, Florence Wambaugh,

254.

Paula, 31-34, 357, 361.
Pavia, 296 ; University of, degree

conferred on Maria Pellegrina

Amoretti by, 78.
Peckham, Elizabeth W., 254.
Pennington, Lady, quoted, 98

footnote.

Pennsylvania, University of, 322.
Pereyaslawzewa, Sophia, biolo-
gist, 244-245.
Perez, Antonio, 68.
Perez, Gregoria, 68.
Perez, Luisa, 68.
Pericles, quoted, 4; influence of

Aspasia on, 12-14.
Perictione, 8.
Perugino, 66.

Petraccini-Terrettl, Maria, 79.
Petrarch, 357, 358 footnote.
Pfeiffer, Ida, traveler, 255, 256.
Phelps, Almira Lincoln, 254.
Phidias, 12.
Philosophy, achievements of wo

men in, in ancient Greece, 8;

INDEX

445

Clemence Beyer's books on,
245.

Phryne, 11.

Physica, 233, 234.

Physica, by St. Hildegard, 278.

Physical Geography, by Mary
Somerville, 160, 211.

Physical power, relation of, to
mental energy, arguments
based on, 111-115, 127.

Physicians, women, in Italy, 295-
300; American attitude to-
ward, 300-304; See also Medi-
cal women.

Physics, women in, 197-213;
Clemence Eoyer's books on,
245.

Physiology, vegetable, Florence
Patterson 's work in, 254.

Pierry, Mme. du, 178, 179.

Pindar, defeated by Corinna, 6.

Pio Albergo Trivulzio, Maria
Gaetana Agnesi in charge of,
149.

Pioneer Work in Opening the
Medical Profession to Women,
by Elizabeth Blackwell, 302
footnote.

Pisa, Leonardo da, 141.

Pisan, Christine de, 53, 106-108;
on intellectual capacity of wo-
men, 134, 135.

Piscopia, Elena Cornaro, of Ven-
ice, 77, 142, 143.

Planisphere, invention of, by
Hypatia, 140, 200.

Platearius, John, 284.

Plato, 10, 11, 137; in praise of
Sappho, 5; quoted, 11; influ-
ence of Aspasia on, 13, 16; on
education of women, 15, 16;
on the seclusion of Athenian

women, 26, 27; ideal of, of
equal rights for women, 399.

Pliny, 270; quoted, 28, 29.

Plotinus, 200.

Plutarch, 22, 167; quoted, 4 foot-
note, 95; in praise of Cornelia,
26.

Poetry, achievements of women
in, in ancient Greece, 5-7; in
ancient Eome, 28; in the Re-
naissance, 61, 62.

Pogson, Miss, in the Observatory
of Madras, India, 196.

Poisson, 154.

Polignac, Cardinal, 204.

Politian, 63, 73.

Political economy, Clemence
Royer's work in, 245.

Polonium, discovery of, by Mme.
Curie, 223.

Polydamna, physician, 267, 268.

Pompeii, excavations of Queen
Caroline at, 311, 312.

Pope, 98, 113.

Porcia, 23.

Portico, the admission of women
to, 10.

Portinari, Beatrice, 357.

Poupard, Mary E., 347 footnote.

Pratique des Accouchements, by
Mme. La Chapelle, 294.

Praxilla, 6, 17.

Praxiteles, 11.

Precieuses Ridicules, of Moliere,
30, 85-87, 172.

Priestly, 216.

Primitive Athens as Described by
Thucydides, by Jane E. Har-
rison, 332 footnote.

Princesse de Cleves, 91.

Principia, Newton's, Emilie du
Chatelet's translation of, 152,
175, 176, 201,

446

INDEX

Principia Philosophice of Des-
cartes, 369, 370.

Priscianus, Theodorus, 271.

Prix Bordin, won by Sonya Ko-
valevsky, 163.

Problema Practicum of Anna
Van Schurman, 95 footnote.

Procopius, 277 footnote.

Proctor, Mary, 196.

Proctor, E. A., 196.

Prodromus Astronomies, of Hev-
ilius, 175.

Prolegomena to the Study of
Greek Religion by Jane E.
Harrison, 332 footnote.

Prony, 216.

Proudhon, 111, 245, 334, 338,
346.

Psalter, Latin, St. Jerome's ver-
sion of, corrected by Paula
and Eustochium, 32, 3.3.

Psychology, as a basis of wo-
man's equality with man,
399.

Public affairs, woman's influ-
ence in, in ancient Borne, 23-
25.

Pudentilla, 356.

Punch, quoted, 302 footnote.

Pusey, E. B., 113.

Putnam, Mary C., physician, 290
footnote; 304.

Pythagoras, 137, 197, 199.

Queensland Amalie Dietrich 's
botanical work in, 244.

Quintilian, Hortensia praised by,
27.

Quintus Maxinius, 273.

Eabelais, 57; attitude of, toward

Eadcliffe College, 255.

Eadium, discovery of, by the
Curies, 224.

Eambouillet, Marquise de, 88, 89.

Eandolph, Harriet, 254.

Eaphael's School of Athens, 141.

Eashdall, quoted, 55, 56.

Easponi, Donna Felice, 60.

Eathbun, Mary J., 254.

Recognitions of Clement trans-
lated by Margaret Gibson, 330
footnote.

Eed Cross, nurses of, 308.

Reduction and Arrangement in
the Form of Catalogue, in
Zones, of All the Star-clusters
and NebulcB Observed by Sir
W. Herschel in His Sweeps, by
Caroline Herschel.

Reflections sur le Bonheur, by
£milie du Chatelet, 153.

Regimen Santatis Salernitanum,
282.

Eegiomontanus, 170.

Eeinhardt, Anna Barbara, 154.

Eenaissance, 309, 310; women
poets of, 7; dates of, 54-56;
women and education during,
54-75; in Italy, 55; literary
exponents of, 57; women of,
in Italy, 57-68; women and
education following, 76-105.

Eenan, in praise of Mme. Eoyer,
246.

Eenaud, A., 343 footnote.

Eenee, Duchess of Ferrara, 65,
66.

Eeni, Guido, 61.

Eenzi, S. de, 287 and 288, foot-
note.

Republic of Plato, 15, 16.

Rerum Medicarum, by Theodorus
Priscianus, 271.

INDEX

447

destitution de Pluton, by Baron-
ess de Beausoleil, 238.

Eetzius, Prof., 124.

Eeuss, Dr. F. A., quoted on St.
Hildegard, 279.

Eibera, Catherine, 68.

Kichards, Mrs. Ellen H., sanitary
chemist, 217-220.

Kichelieu, Cardinal, 88, 94, 239.

Eingle, Chevalier, 238.

Eitter, Frederic, 363 footnote.

Eitter, Karl, 256.

Eoberval, 172.

Eoccati, Cristina, 142.

Eochechouart, Elizabeth de, 82.

Eochechouart, Gabrielle de, 82.

Eohan, Anne de, 82.

Eohan, Marie-Eleanore de, 82.

Eohan, Princesse de, 362.

Eomana, Francesca de, physician,
286.

Eome, ancient woman and edu-
cation in, 18-34; medical wo-
men in, 271-274; medical fac-
ulty of, 297.

Eonsard, quoted, 70 footnote.

Eontgen, 223.

Eosales, Isabella, 145.

Eossi, Giovanni Battista de, 326.

Eossi, Properzia de, 60, 298.

Eousseau, 413; quoted, 30 foot-
note; attitude of, toward wom-
en, 92, 93.

Eoyal Agricultural Society of
England, 251.

" Eoyal Asiatic Society, " 258.

Eoyal Astronomical Society,
Mary Somerville elected to,
159 ; gold medal bestowed upon
Caroline Herschel by, 186,
187; Caroline HerschePs books
published by, 186; Caroline
Herschel elected to, 188.

Eoyal College of Science for Ire-
land, comparative standing of
men and women in, 128, 129.

Eoyal Historical and Archaeologi-
cal Association of Ireland, 316.

Eoyal Institution of Great Brit-
ain, 228.

Eoyal Irish Academy, election of
Caroline Herschel to, 189.

Eoyal Society of Great Britain,
attitude of, toward women,
230, 393, 394.

Eoyal Swedish Academy, 228.

Eoyer, Clemence Augustine,
scientist, 245-246.

Rudolphine Tables, Maria Cu-
nitz's abridgment of, 171.

Eiimker, Mme., 191.

Eusticana, 356.

Euteboeuf, in praise of Trotula,
285.

Eyssel, Professor V., 331 foot-
note.

Sabatier, Paul, 359 footnote.

Sabbadini, quoted, 59 footnote.

Sabliere, Mme. de la, 171-173.

Sacred and Legendary Art by
Mrs. Jameson, 313, 315, 316.

St. Andrews, University of, 332.

St. Augustine, 212.

St. Boniface, 39.

St. Clara, 358, 359, 361.

St. Cyr, Institut de, 83, 84, 85.

Saint-Evremond, 88, 390.

St. Hilda, Abbess of Whitby, 36-
39.

St. Hildegard, Abbess of the
Convent of St. Eupert, 45-48,
233-235; knowledge of astron-
omy of, 169, 170; as physi-
cian, 277-281.

St. Jerome, 31-33; quoted, 273.

448

INDEX

St. Jerome's Vulgate, 357.

St. John of Beverly, 37.

St. John's College, Cambridge,
endowment of, by funds from
suppressed convents, 41, 42.

St. Lioba, Abbess of Bishops-
heim, 39, 40.

St. Nicerata, physician, 272.

St. Kadegund, Abbess of Poi-
tiers, 36.

St. Theodosia, physician, 272.

Salerno, 53, 54 footnotes, 296.

Salerno, University of, 281-288;
women as students and profes-
sors of medicine in, 80, 281-
288.

Salons, French, 88-92.

Samarium, discovery of, 219.

Sand, George, 246, 264.

Sanitation, study of, by Mrs.
Ellen H. Eichards, 217-220.

Sapienza, chair in, offered to
Marta Marchina, 78.

Sappho, 5-8, 17.

Sarti, 298.

Satire contre les Femmes, Boi-
leau's, 172.

Saussure, de, 215.

Savari, Mme. Pauline, 231 foot-
note.

Saxony, privileges of abbesses in,
52.

Scala, Alessandra, 59.

Scarpellini, Caterina, 192.

Scarpellini, Feliciano, 192.

Scheele, 216.

Schiffi, Chiara. See St. Clara.

Schiller, 113.

Schliemann, Dr. Henry, 317, 318,
319.

Schliemann, Mme. Sophia, archae-
ologist, 317, 318, 319, 362.

Scholasticism, 233,

School of Athens, Raphael's, 141.

Schopenhauer, 111, 414.

Schubert, 359.

Schumann, 359.

Scipio Africanus, Cornelia,
daughter of, 22.

Scott, Miss Charlotte Angas, 166.

Scudery, Madeleine de, 88, 91.

Scutari, 274.

Sebastopol, biological station at,
244.

Select Narratives of Holy Wo-
men translated by Agnes
Lewis, 331 footnote.

Selenographia of Hevilius, 175.

Se-ling-she, invention of silk by,
336.

Semiramis, 341 footnote.

Serment, Louise, 82.

Servilia, 23.

Sevigne, Mme. de, 88.

Seymour, Anne, Margaret and
Jane, 69.

Shakespeare, 57, 67.

Sheldon, J. M. Arms, 254.

Shelley, 67.

Sidonius, Caius Apollinaris, 356.

Siebold, Carlotta von, physician,
292.

Siebold, Begina Joseph von, phy-
sician, 292.

Sigea, Luisa, 69.

Silk- worms, Frau Merian's work
on, 242.

Simms, Dr. Joseph, 120.

Sir Isumbras, 275.

Sixtus IV, Pope, 297, 309.

Skull, relation of size of, to men-
tal energy, arguments based
on, 115-117.

Slosson, Annie T., 254.

Small-pox, prevention of, 299
footnote.

INDEX

449

Smith, Emily A., 254.

Smith, Sydney, quoted, 92, 413
footnote.

Smithsonian Institute, 323.

Snow, Dr. Julia W., 254.

Social and economic conditions,
intellectual growth of women
and, 405, 406.

Socrates, 199, 200; tribute of, to
Diotima of Mantinea, 11; in-
fluence of Aspasia on, 12, 13,
16; woman's equality with
man asserted by, 15, 16.

Solomon, quoted, 336.

Solon, in praise of Sappho, 5.

Some Pages of the Four Gospels
Eetr (inscribed from the Sina-
itic Palimpsest, by Agnes
Lewis, 330 footnote.

Somerville, Mary, 157-161, 211,
391, 392; early life of, 157,
158; translation of Laplace's
Mechanique Celeste by, 159;
honors of, 159, 160; books by,
160, 211, 212; home life of,
161; election of, to Royal As-
tronomical Society, 188, 189;
achievements of, in astronomy,
190, 211, 212; death of, 212.

Somerville, Eev. Dr., 158.

Sophia Charlotte, Queen of Prus-
sia, 370, 371.

Sophocles, 12.

Sorbonne, lectures of Mme. Curie
at, 227.

South America, Mme. Coudreau's
explorations in, 258-263.

Spain, women of the Eenaissance
in, 68, 69.

Spalding, Most Rev. Archbishop
J. L., quoted, 413 and 414
footnote.

Spanheim, 94.

Specialization in scientific re-
search, 408, 409.

Spectator, 306.

Spencer, Herbert, 2, 113.

Spenser, 67.

Spiegelberg, Moritz von, 62.

Spilimbergo, Irene di, 61 foot-
note.

Stael, Mme. de, 89, 91, 246; Mar-
quise du Chatelet ridiculed by,
177.

Stampa, Gaspara, 61.

Steele, 98.

Stephens, Mabel C., 195.

Steppes de la Her Caspienne, by
Mme. Hommaire de Hell, 373.

Stevenson, Sarah Yorke, archsa-
ologist, 322, 323.

Stilpo, 11.

Stockholm, University of, ap-
pointment of Sonya Koval-
evsky to chair of higher mathe-
matics in, 162, 183; Sonya
Kovalevsky's lectures at, 164
footnote.

Stotes, Margaret, archaeologist,
316, 317.

Strindberg, 163, 165.

Strozi, Lorenza, 59.

Studia Sinaitica, 330.

Suetonius, quoted, 19.

Suidas, 200.

Sulpicia, 28.

Supellex Manzoliniana, 237.

Surgery, women in, 266-308.

Surinam, insects of, Frau Mer-
ian's book on, 240-241.

Survey of the Heavens, by Sir
William Herschel, 187.

Suslowa, Nadejda, physician,
304.

Sviani, Elisabetta, 298.

450

INDEX

Swallow, Ellen. See Kichards,

Mrs. Ellen H.
Swammerdam, 248.
Swetchine, Mme., 89.
Swift, 98, quoted, 98 footnote.
Symbols and Emblems of Early

MedicBval Christian Art by

Louise Twining, 316.
Symonds, J. A., 113.
Synesius, bishop of Ptolemais,

141, 168, 199, 200.

Tacitus, 24, 25, 28.

Taine, comparison of Milton and
Caedmon by, 38.

Taj Mahal, 337 footnote.

Tambroni, Clotilda, professor of
Greek, 78, 79, 209, 298.

Tasso, Torquato, 66.

Taylor, Janet, 161.

Telesilla, 6, 17.

Tencin, Mme., 92.

Tennyson, quoted, 416, 417.

Terentia, 356, 361.

Tertulla, 23.

Thais, 11.

Theano, 8, 17, 199, 269.

Themista, 8.

Theodicy, by Leibnitz, 371.

Theodora, 359.

Theon, 137, 168, 199.

Thucydides, quoted, 4 footnote.

Thurm, Christopher, 174.

Tiberius, wife of, 24.

Tides of the Ocean and Atmos-
phere, The, by Mary Somer-
ville, 212.

Tischendorf, 328, 329.

Titian, 61, footnote, 66.

Traite de Chimie, by Lavoisier,
215.

d'Horlogerie, 179.

Traite de Radio-Activite, by

Mme. Curie, 228.
Travelers, women, 255-264.
Travels in West Africa, by Mary

H. Kingsley, 257.
Treat, Mary, 254.
Trinity college, Dublin, 100.
Tristan und Isolde, by Godfrey

of Strasburg, 276.
Trombetas, explored by Madame

Coudreau, 258.
Trotula of Salerno, physician,

284-286, 296, 297, 299.
Tulia, letters of, 29.
Turgenieff, weight of brain of,

119.
Twining, Louise, archaeologist,

316.

Tyndall, 385.
Types and Figures of the Bible

Illustrated by Art, by Louise

Twining, 316.

United States, women in, in post-
Eenaissance period, 99, 100;
women mathematicians in,
166; women astronomers in,
195; famous women natural-
ists in, 253-255; women phy-
sicians in, 300-304; education
in, 401, 402.

United States National Museum,
254.

Universities, of England, Scot-
land and Ireland, attitude of,
toward women, 100, 101; of
Germany open to women, 101;
European, women as profes-
sors in, 102; coeducational,
comparative standing of men
and women in, 128, 129.

Universities, Italian, attitude of,
toward women, 57, 58; women

INDEX

451

in, during the Renaissance, 62-
65; women professors in, 78-
80; attitude of, toward wo-
men, compared with that of
Anglo-Saxons, 80.

Urania, muse of astronomy, 167.

Urania Propitia, by Maria Cu-
nitz, 171.

Urbino, court of, 66, 67.

Urbino, Duchess of, 310, 311.

Urbino, University of, 62.

Vaccination, 299 footnote.

Valiae, physician, 272.

Van Schurman, Anna Maria, 94,

95.
Vasari, in praise of Suor Plan-

tilla Nelli, 60.
Vasca de Gama, 56.
Vasourie, 236.
Vassar, Matthew, 100.
Vassar College, 100, 192, 216,

253.

Vatican, 309.
Vega, Lopez, 68.
Veitch, Professor John, quoted,

382, 383 footnote.
Venerable Bede, quoted, 37, 38.
Verronese, Guarino, 58 and 59

footnote.

Vico, Father de, 191.
Victoria, physician, 271.
Victoria, Queen, 316.
Viete, Francois, 362.
Vigri, Caterina, 60 footnote.
Virchow, Rudolph, 117, 278.
Virgil, quoted, 112, 335.
Vis viva, views of Marquise du

Chatelet on, 202.
Vita Nuova, by Dante, 357.
Vitalis, Ordericus, 285.
Vives, Juan, 68, 69, 73, 75.

Voet, 94.

Voght, 246.

Voiture, 88.

Voltaire, 89, 117; attitude of,
toward women, 93; iDmilie du
Chatelet and, 151, 153, 178
and 179 footnote; quoted 175,
206, 334, 346; election of, to
the Bologna Academy, 207;
letters of, to Laura Bassi, 207.

Voyage d la Mapuerd, by Mme.
Coudreau, 263 footnote.

Voyage au Cumind, by Mme.
Coudreau, 263 footnote.

Voyage au Itaboca et d I'Eta-
cayuna, by the Coudreaux, 263
footnote.

Voyage au Maycuru, by Madame
Coudreau, 262 and 263 foot-
note.

Voyage au Eio Curud, by Ma-
dame Coudreau, 262 and 263
footnote.

Voyage au Tapaos, by the Cou-
dreaux, 263 footnote.

Voyage au Tocantins- Araguaya,
by the Coudreaux, 263 foot-
note.

Voyage au Trombetas, by Ma-
dame Coudreau, 258, 263 foot-
note.

Voyage au Xingu, by the Cou-
dreaux, 263 footnote.

Voyage entre Tocantins et
Xingu, et Voyage au Ya-
munda, by the Coudreaux, 263
footnote.

Vulgate, 357; assistance of
Paula and Eustochium in prep-
aration of, 32.

Wagner, Rudolph, 120.
Wallace, Robert, 252 footnote.

452

INDEX

Walpole, Horace, 89; quoted, 97
footnote.

Waltharius, by Ekkehard, 276.

Warsaw, 221.

Watson, Sir William, quoted, 184.

Weber, 359.

Wells, Louisa D., 195.

West African Studies, by Mary
H. Kingsley, 257.

Westwood, 248.

Wheeler, Miss B. E., archaeolo-
gist, 321.

Whewell, Dr., 160.

Whiting, Sarah P., of Wellesley,
195.

Whitney, Eli, 352.

Whitney, Mary W., of Vassar,
195.

Wilhelm II, attitude of, toward
women, 94.

William of Auxerre, in praise of
St. Hildegard, 47, 48.

Williams, Blanche E., archaeolo-
gist, 321.

Winckelmann, 311.
Winlock, Anna, 195.
Wisdom, by Perictione, 8.
Woman Under Monasticism, Eck-

enstein's, 52.
Women in English Life, by

Georgiana Hill, 41.
Wordsworth, quoted, 372.
Wordsworth, Dorothy, 372.
Worms, Fannie Langdon's study

of, 254.
Wiirzburg, University of, 279.

Xenophon, quoted, 4j 25.

Young, Annie S., of Mt. Holyoke,

195.
Young, Arthur, 214.

Zoology, Herr Kabliek's study

of, 243.

Zoyosa, Casa, 59 footnote.
Zurich, University of, 244, 304.

(I)

FOLLOWING THE GQNQUISTADQRES

Up the Orinoco and Down the Magdalena

By H. J. MOZANS, A. M., Ph. D. Illustrated. 8vo,
cloth, gilt top, uncut edges. Price #3.00 net. By
mail #3.20.

"His pages breathe the poetry of travel, the romance of Sir
John Mandeville, tempered by the moderation of scientific research.
This is a very model of a travel book, and the author is to be
congratulated on a result that will insure a wide public for the
promised sequel." — The World, London, England.

"The book is beyond question the most valuable of all the
books on South America which has appeared. It is as interesting
as a novel, full of entertaining anecdote and of real value to
the student. It contains some maps and excellent illustrations from
photographs." — The Call, San Francisco, Cal.

"This is a remarkably interesting book, leading us through a
region little known to the majority of English travelers, and
possessing, in consequence, that charm of novelty in which works
of the same description are occasionally deficient." — The Standard,
London, England.

"The reader will find this trip with the author, "Up the
Orinoco and Down the Magdalena," as agreeable and instructive
as a personally conducted visit to the heart of the Andes." —
Evening Transcript, Boston, Mass.

"This volume, remarkable alike for its instructive qualities
and the excellent composition, will open a vista of delight to
the reader who relishes travel." — The News, Charleston, S. C.

"Dr. Mozans sees the country with the trained and experienced
eye of a world traveler and with the well stocked mind of the
lover of literature. The past is linked with the present, the
unknown with the known, and poetically appreciated in a way
that is most delightful." — The Tribune, Chicago, 111.

"The author, a traveler of many years of experience, who
has explored strange corners of the globe in every zone, com-
bines with accurate observation and a facile power of description
a knowledge of history that enables him to illuminate his work
with something of the romance that attaches to the tales of the
conquistadores in whose trail he followed on this journey. The
resulting book is one that gives the reader a complete new set of
impressions and ideas concerning Venezuela and Columbia and the
great rivers that water these still unsettled lands." — The Times Star,
Cincinnati, Ohio.

"Not since the appearance of Humboldt's "Personal Narrative
of Travels in the Equinoctial Regions of America" has the fertile
and romantic region of Tierra Firma — the scene of the exploits
of some of this most illustrious of the Conquistadores — been so
fully and so vividly described as by Doctor Mozans in his in-
structive and fascinating volume "Up the Orinoco and Down the
Magdalena." — Bulletin of the Pan-American Union.

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK

527 "

4

MOZANS, H.J. 130,

.23

Won an in science.