Читать книгу The History of Woman Suffrage - Various - Страница 58

In September, 1850, in a rented building, No. 229 Arch Street, Philadelphia, the College began its first session with six pupils; others were added before the class graduated, so that it then numbered eight:—Hannah E. Longshore, Ann Preston, Phebe W. May, Susanna H. Ellis, Anna M. Longshore, Pennsylvania; Martha M. Laurin, Massachusetts; Angonette A. Hunt, New York; Frances G. Mitchell, England. Since its foundation, the "Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania" has prospered, and on its lists of graduates we see, among other familiar names, those of Dr. Laura Ross Wolcott (1856), Dr. Mary J. Scarlett Dixon (1857), and Dr. Emeline H. Cleveland (1855).

Chief among those interested in placing the medical education of woman on a sound foundation was Ann Preston. The "Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania" was the first ever chartered for this purpose, and Dr. Preston early became identified with its interests. She was one of its first students, and a graduate at its first commencement. After the didactic teaching of the regular college course was well established, each year showed to her more clearly the necessity for clinical and hospital instruction, since its students were denied such advantages in other places; and to Dr. Preston's thorough appreciation of this need may be traced the very origin of the Woman's Hospital in Philadelphia. Speaking of her efforts in this direction, she says: "I went to every one who I thought would give me either money or influence." She was liberally assisted by many noble and true-hearted men and women, and at last raised sufficient funds, obtained the charter, found competent men and women willing to serve as Managers, and skillful physicians who would act on a Consulting Board; and, when the Hospital was opened, was herself appointed one of the Managers, Corresponding Secretary, and Consulting Physician—offices which she held till her death, April 18, 1872.

At the same time, she was serving with equal fidelity and ability the College whose advancement had so long been one of the chief interests of her life. For nineteen years she had been one of its Professors, for six years Dean of the Faculty, and for four years a member of its Board of Corporators. She lived long enough to see the fruits of her labors, and to foresee to some extent the position which both College and Hospital would hold in the medical world. And when, after her death, her will was published, the friends of the College and Hospital found that both institutions had been remembered by endowments.

Almost contemporary in length of days with the Medical College is another useful institution, The Philadelphia School of Design for Women, which began its corporate existence the first Monday of November, 1853. There had previously been a class for women in connection with the Franklin Institute, and this school was its further development. It was mainly supported by contributions, the scholars' fees paying merely for the coal, gas, and other necessaries of the house. The management of the institution was vested in a Board of twelve Directors, elected annually, and a Board of twelve Lady Managers, elected by the Board of Directors at the first stated meeting after the election; these ladies disburse the money received at the school, and also that appropriated monthly by the Directors. It is noticeable in the first report of the School of Design for Women, that men held the leading positions and received the highest salaries, but that has since been changed.

That there was no organized action in this State, no woman suffrage association formed, until after the war, was undoubtedly due to the fact that the same women were prominent in both the anti-slavery and woman's rights movements. And as Pennsylvania bordered on three slave States, the escape of fugitives and their innumerable trials in the courts, just as the whole system was on the eve of dissolution, compelled the Philadelphia friends to incessant vigilance in the care and concealment of the unhappy victims. Thus their hands and thoughts were wholly occupied until the first gun at Sumter proclaimed freedom in the United States.

For collecting many of the facts contained in this chapter we are indebted to Julia and Rachel Foster, daughters of Heron Foster, who founded The Pittsburgh Dispatch. What an inspiring vision it would have been to the earnest women sitting in that Convention in 1854, could they in imagination have stretched forward to the bright winter days of 1881, and seen these two young girls tastefully attired, enthusiastic in the cause of woman's suffrage, tripping through the streets of Philadelphia, paper and pencil in hand, intent on some important errand, now here, now there, climbing up long flights of stairs into the offices of the various journals, to find out from the records what Lucretia Mott, Frances Dana Gage, and Ernestine L. Rose had said over a quarter of a century before, about the rights and wrongs of women. Turning over the dusty journals hour after hour as they copied page by page, it would have been a pleasing study to watch their earnest faces, now sad, now pleased, reflecting with every changing sentiment they read the feelings of their souls, just as their diamonds paled and glowed in the changing light.

Could the satisfaction of these girls in reading Garrison's stern logic, Mrs. Mott's repartee and earnest appeal, and all the arguments by which their opponents had been fairly vanquished; could the new-born dignity they realized in the conscious possession of rights and liberties once unknown, confident that full equality could not be long deferred; could all this have been pre-visioned by the actors in those scenes, they would have felt themselves fully compensated for the persecution and ridicule they had endured. And thus the great work of life goes on; the toils of one generation are the joys of the next. We have reaped what other hands have planted; let us then in turn sow bountifully for those who shall follow us, that our children may enter into a broader inheritance than any legal parchment can bequeath.