Chapter VIII: The “medic” (1)

Belle and I decided to go to a coeducational school to study medicine, and settled upon Boston University. I was a happy girl that summer, getting ready and picturing the future. Associating Boston with Emerson, Holmes, Longfellow, and Whittier, I loved it before going there. Belle, who had studied guide-books and maps, was glib in her knowledge of the city; she knew just where the railway station was, and the college, and how to get from one to the other. Her confidence impressed me, for maps and topography were ever a vexation to my spirit; her assurance impressed our parents also, and it was decided to let us make the journey alone.

Our family physician, who had written to the Dean, had received an assuring letter: we were to go directly to the College and matriculate, and there obtain addresses for boarding-places. In later years I have realized what misgivings our parents must have had in letting us start out alone, mere schoolgirls who had never been more than thirty miles from home, green village girls, unused to city ways--ignorant of the world, of life, of themselves.

The last picture I have of my grandfather, is the one as he rode into our door-yard the October afternoon of the evening I was to start for Boston. Sitting his horse firmly and proudly (he was then eighty-five) he brought me a fine full ear of yellow corn for a “keepsake.” I have often wondered what made him bring that particular thing. Was it that he knew the sight of it when far from home would be so dear, serving to bring back Grandma’s kitchen and the overhanging ears suspended by their turned-back husks? Or was it that he recollected what a fascination the full golden ears had had for me when I had played around the corn-house years before in the October weather? I never knew. I think I did not then question why. But that long yellow ear of corn which he brought to me on the eve of my first leaving home was a precious gift, inexplicably precious as I try to explain it now. I clung to him with unwonted tenderness as I bade him good-bye, and through my tears watched him slowly ride away.

The night we left home, just before I started for the train, my class-mate, Walter, came to the door and asked for me. I wondered why he had not gone ahead to the station with the other young people. Drawing me out on the “stoop”, in the darkness he quickly kissed me, wrung my hand, and with a choked “good-bye” ran down the steps. Astounded as I was, and with my strict ideas about such things, still I did not resent that kiss. And as Father and I drove to the station in the darkness, leaving Mother alone at home, to weep, I was sure (though she had kept up till the good-byes were over) Walter’s kiss was a welcome diversion, a partial relief to the pang of leaving home and parting with Mother.

At the station the young people were gathered, chatting gaily, but Sister was unusually quiet. They loaded us down with fruit and flowers and absurd advice--a merry noisy party as the train came thundering in; merry and noisy except for the few who were pale and silent with something wretchedly painful tugging at our hearts and rising in our throats.

Hurried kisses and hearty handclasps to the girls and boys, and then--my sister! We had not thought it would be so hard. It was like tearing one’s body apart. Never till that moment had we realized what we were to each other. We had never been separated more than a week in our lives, and here was this train ready to bear me away from home, away from my precious sister, into a life in which she was to have no part! The agony as they separated us (for we clung in desperation as the men shouted “All aboard!”) was the most cruel thing that had then come into my life.

When at Syracuse, after putting us on the sleeper, Father left us, another pang was added; the last link was snapped. I can see him now trying to look cheerful as he waved to us from the platform; and I trying to keep the tears back till the train should bear us from his sight. Never a word of all the anxiety and misgiving he and Mother must have felt! The train moved off bearing the two girls with aching throats and tear-stained faces--two girls who had never left the home shelter, bearing them rapidly away in the darkness to the unknown city to begin the study of medicine.

Soon reacting from the sadness of parting, after the lumps had left our throats, we became excited, even gay. Everyone had advised us what to do on a sleeper; had warned us about thieves; told us of queer amusing things which happened to inexperienced travellers, and we were fairly spoiling for an adventure of some sort. But as our fellow-passengers seemed strangely indifferent to us, we began to feel it was going to be quite uneventful. Still, though detecting no one who looked like a thief or a cut-throat, we hid our purses and watches with care, and I kept my hat-pin within easy reach, in case any one should molest us. We found some difficulty in fastening the curtains of our bed; there were great gaps between the fastenings; men passing down the narrow aisles would drag the curtains aside. It was a novel and not at all reassuring experience--we girls cooped up on that narrow bed, undressing in the dark stuffy place, right in the sound of men’s voices, with men continually passing. It seemed then, and to this day it seems, a kind of indelicate thing to disrobe in the proximity of a carful of strange men, with only insecure draperies to insure privacy.

In our apprehension and unsophistication, we thought this continued brushing aside of our curtains must be done intentionally. Not then realizing how narrow the aisles were, or that it was not the same person going by repeatedly, we grew angry: “If I hear him coming again I shall grab the curtains together and hold them, so he can’t brush them aside,” I said resolutely to Belle. The steps soon came again, the curtains began moving. I made a desperate grab to hold them together, but, oh horrors! what happened!

“What’s wanted?” I heard in calm, clear, gentlemanly tones, and then learned that I had also grabbed the coat of a passer-by!

Chagrined, I stammered, “I--I--thought----,” and suddenly realizing my mistake, felt the impossibility of explaining my awkward blunder--the man had doubtless inadvertently brushed past, as had the others, in the narrow aisle. His innocent coat-tail released, he passed on. Wondering in shame what he must have thought of us, we suddenly awakened to the realization that no one was inclined to molest us; that our school fellows had been telling us “yarns”; and we had better lie down and try to sleep. So, using the hat-pin to fasten the refractory draperies, we lay down to sleep, though fitfully, the long night through.

As we breakfasted from our lunch-boxes in the morning, we felt years older; how long it seemed since we had left the little village amid the drumlins! We were in a new world. It was raining when we reached Boston, which did not add to our light-heartedness.

How queer to see so many strange faces; everyone so busy, so intent upon his own concerns, oblivious to the forlorn girls transplanted to the strange city--everyone but the horrid, importunate cab-drivers who leaned out from their stalls, and beckoned and called to us, bewildering us so that we were a long time in settling upon one who looked less villainous than the rest. We drove directly to the College to matriculate. The unwonted scenes, the poor sleep, the irregular meals, and the rain, all contributed to our gloom; but the Dean’s letters--we had a friend at court!

How forlorn we must have looked, and pitiably young and inexperienced for such an undertaking! The janitor eyed us curiously, and to our request to see the Dean said he was not there then, but that Dr. Caroline Matson was the one to call for--“She sees the new students.”

She came into the room. Shall I ever forget the chill and depression she brought with her? A short, stout, middle-aged woman with light brown hair, a turned-up nose, a pink and white complexion, spectacles, and penetrating steel-blue eyes. She looked us up and down and through and through. I never felt so utterly small and insignificant. I think she said “Humph!” when, in desperation at her scrutiny, I faltered, “We’ve come to study medicine.” I tried to add that we wanted to see the Dean; that he had written us; was expecting us; but she interrupted me. The Dean was not to be seen then; we were to register, fill out certain blanks, answer the questions, and then write an essay of a given number of words setting forth our reasons for studying medicine, _if we had any_; or write on any topic we chose. Then she left us.

Glancing furtively at each other, we each read the dismay that neither dared express. I think we felt her ears were as sharp as her eyes and that she would hear the lightest whisper. We almost feared she could hear our thoughts. For an hour or more we wrote on the questions and the essay. Then she came and told us we were to meet others of the Faculty to be examined orally in Latin translation, physics, and chemistry. What a blow! Coming from New York state where the all-powerful Regents reigned, we had supposed that our Regents’ certificates and our academic diplomas would exempt us from all examinations.

“We don’t have to be examined,” we ejaculated in unison.

“You don’t? Are you college graduates?” (Sarcastically)

“No, but we have our Regents’ Certificates and pass-cards.”

“Regents’ certificates?--what are they?”

Had the bottom fallen out of everything? The Regents, THE REGENTS--that tyrant for which we had toiled so long, whose coveted seal we had on our precious diplomas! _And she doesn’t even know what the Regents is!_

We learned several lessons that bitter hour. Our explanations, though lame, must have been intelligible, for, moderating a little, she explained that they had no such system in Massachusetts, and that it would be necessary to qualify in certain studies since we were not graduates of a college; but that as we were so recently out of school (and this seemed reprehensible on our part), we would probably have no difficulty. Then she examined our papers. Those cold eyes passed rapidly up and down; once in a while she would look up, sometimes ask a question, then read on. She could not have been conscious of the torture she inflicted, or she would surely have been easier on those sleepy, hungry, homesick girls, so completely at her mercy. Now as I dimly recall what my essay was, I wonder that her sarcasm and harshness were so moderate. I remember I quoted from “Lucile” about the mission of woman being “to help and to heal the sick world that leans on her.” She grunted when she put my paper down, and I breathed freer. Then, taking up Belle’s, she gave an angry snort--something had acted like a red rag to a bull:

“Minnie Isabel Washburn! Is that your name?”

“Ye-es, ma’am,” Belle timidly confessed.

“Were you christened that?” (Glaring at her)

“I wasn’t christened, I was baptized,” Belle corrected boldly, the Baptist in her rampant--her religion was something for which she could show courage even in this encounter.

“Well, it won’t be tolerated here. When _will_ mothers learn to give their children sensible names? Doctor _Minnie_ Washburn! How will that sound?” and she almost annihilated us in scorn. Belle was speechless, Belle the assured one, to whom I had looked for leadership and help in all these new experiences; Belle of the boasted self-confidence, of the undaunted courage! It was a strange sight to see her cowed, but that woman’s face and voice were enough to intimidate any one. Without thinking, surprised and scared at my own voice, but goaded to it by the pain she was inflicting, I ventured:

“I don’t suppose Belle’s mother knew she was going to be a doctor when she gave her that name.”

My! how she turned and glared at me! Our eyes were about on a level. I don’t know whether I flinched or not; I have a recollection of a superhuman effort to glare back, but dare say I weakened. I remember her look seemed to say:

“You little upstart! who asked you to speak?” Then she announced:

“Well, it can’t go down ‘Minnie’--that’s settled. You will have to drop that and just keep the ‘Isabel.’”

“But I can’t drop it (Belle was almost crying)--it was my grandmother’s name; I’ll have to write home and ask my father first.”

“No time for that--the way you register to-day, that way your diploma has to read. We will have to see the Dean about this; but you may as well understand we will have no ‘_i-e_’ names here; we graduate women, not babies. I’ll see the Dean.”

Out she went. Belle and I looked at each other hopelessly. “If _that_ is what women doctors are like, I don’t want to be one,” each of us thought, and knew the other’s thought.

Disheartened, disillusioned, tired, sleepy, hungry, far from home, our Regents’ certificates counting for nothing, this great unfriendly building, the dull sky, and we not knowing where we were going to stay that night--all this and more we felt as we looked at each other and tried to keep back the tears.

And then SHE came back and told us to go across the hall to the Dean.

We saw the sign “Faculty Room,” and went in. Rising to greet us, coming with both hands extended, his ruddy face and smiling eyes beaming a welcome, a short, stout, gray-haired man waddled toward us, enveloping us in his benevolent presence. It was a wonder we did not throw ourselves into his arms. Taking us by the hand he beamed and we basked in the sunshine of his fatherly welcome. Many a time in the years that have passed I have wished I could tell him what he was to us girls that day. I think I did essay it once, three years later, when I came to see much of him. I have always loved him for that welcome. He is gone now. A remarkable man, overflowing with energy and tact, a champion of Homœopathy in its early days in Boston--the University, in fact, Homœopathy in general owes more to him, probably, than to any other man in New England. We came in time to hear him criticized by certain students; sometimes heard it said that he carried his politic measures to the point of insincerity; but I never had the slightest reason for changing the feelings toward him which were born that day. Though subsequently seeing some of his limitations, I admired his exceptional gifts--his indomitable energy, and his wonderful executive ability, while his warmheartedness won my lasting regard. I did change my opinion of Dr. Caroline Matson, but of that later.

How tactfully the Dean went to work to soothe Belle, and yet bring about the proper registering of a name that would be dignified and in good taste as a physician!

“‘Minnie’--let us see--that is your first name? I suppose you are fond of it, but it doesn’t sound just right for a physician, does it?”

Under his kindly glance Belle explained that she had never used that name, that she had always been called “Isabel” or “Belle,” but that as the paper asked for her full name, she had given it.

“Quite right, quite right; well now, if that is not the name you are accustomed to, why not drop it? Anyhow, your name is a long one, ‘Isabel Washburn,’ what a fine-sounding name! ‘Dr. Isabel Washburn’--I like that.”

“So do I,” said Belle, getting confidential, “but I can’t drop ‘Minnie,’ because it is my grandmother’s name; my father, I’m sure, would object.”

This gave him pause, but he was equal to the occasion:

“Of course, of course you can’t drop your grandmother’s name-ah, but-ah--why, it is all as clear as can be now--‘Minnie’ is only the nickname for ‘Mary’--your grandmother’s name was Mary, even if they called her familiarly ‘Minnie’; and all you need to do is to use your grandmother’s real name instead of her nickname.” And he beamed on her benevolently.

Belle hesitated, but his charm of manner won the day. The alteration was made, the obnoxious “Minnie” gave place to “Mary,” and we were smilingly turned over to other members of the Faculty, who questioned us on chemistry and botany, in which, I believe, we did fairly well. We read the easy Latin at sight, conjugated a few verbs (I remember how they tried to conceal their smiles at our faulty pronunciation--we knew it was faulty, for we had shifted from the Roman to the English method, and our hybrid pronunciation was enough to excite mirth). When it came to physics, always a difficult study for me, we floundered and failed ignominiously. I’m sure I did the worse, for Belle could reason out such things pretty well, while I never could. We were “conditioned” in physics, and in a month’s time were to be examined again. Although they were very kind, we felt disgraced. Realizing that we had failed in one study, and probably had been leniently passed in others, we felt ourselves the ignorant, homeless creatures that we were. They told us to come the next day at ten for the opening lecture.

Copying several addresses from the bulletin board, we trudged out of the big building, with our satchels and lunch-boxes in our hands. A fine rain was falling; it seemed later in the day than it was. We were adrift in that great city. Deciding to look up none of the addresses till the morrow, we started for the Young Women’s Christian Association, of which we had heard before leaving home. Belle thought that when we got out to Washington Street she could get her bearings and easily find Warrenton Street, where the Association building was. But on reaching there, she could not be sure whether to go up or down; so we plodded on, not knowing whether we were going toward or away from our hoped-for destination. Everyone we accosted was kind, but no one knew where Warrenton Street was. Car after car would go by, but we did not know what one to take. The only policemen we could discover were on the cars. We laughed miserably as we thought of our parents’ injunctions to “ask a policeman.” The Boston policemen didn’t like walking in the rain.

On and on we trudged, our arms aching from the satchels, and, much of the way, harrowed by uncertainty. Finally someone told us we were nearing the street in which the Y. W. C. A. was located. How good it was to spy that sign, and how like a shelter the huge building was as it loomed before us! The street was narrow and dismal (it was even on a sunshiny day) and on that dark day looked especially unpromising, but our goal was reached; our strength and courage were well-nigh spent. Shelter, refuge--what meaning in those words, and how soon we had learned the need of them in this big, strange, rainy Boston!

The girl who answered the door-bell, a slow-moving, stolid creature, replying to our request to see the Superintendent, said that she was at dinner; that we would have to wait. It was then after two in the afternoon. Of course we would wait; we asked for nothing better. We volunteered that we had come to engage room and board.

“I’m sorry, but the house is full,” she said.

Belle dropped into a chair. She had gone through so much! Her vaunted courage was proving a broken reed. I stood there, desperate, not knowing which way to turn. On the way thither it had gradually dawned upon me that Belle’s courage was rapidly oozing. I had had to exchange satchels with her and carry her heavier one (though she was taller and larger than I), as she had declared she could carry it no farther. It was a novel position for me--to be the leader; but we tacitly changed places during that long rainy walk.

I looked at Belle, a forlorn heap in the chair. I saw that stolid girl, waiting for us to go, since she had told us there was no room--to go out in the rain, no shelter in view! I felt the humiliation of our position before the girl who was showing impatience for us to start, but summoned enough spunk to say, “Please tell the Superintendent we would like to see her when she is at liberty.”

Leaving us with the parting shot that “Every room in the house is taken,” she went away.

Bursting into tears, Belle declared she would go home on the morrow; she didn’t want to study medicine--had never wanted to--only did it to please her people--didn’t like Boston--hated Dr. Matson, and didn’t want to be a woman doctor any way; she would go back and teach school. Her outburst astonished me. Pitying her, and agreeing with her in part, her giving way put me on my mettle. So, having sense enough to know that we were both worn from the physical and emotional strain, and that, dark as things were, they seemed darker because of our exhaustion, I sat down and, opening our lunch-box, fairly forced the food into Belle’s mouth, and devoured some myself. The messenger girl passed the door several times, peering in curiously; she looked as though she were going to tell us we must not eat in the waiting room, but passed on. It must have been an unaccustomed sight to her. I myself felt the unfitness of it all, but did not care; we were nearly famished; it was the desperation of self-preservation.

As we ate and talked, Belle drooped less, and we soon got interested in the coming and going past the door. Happy, laughing girls passed and re-passed, running to catch the elevator, peeping in at us with half-veiled curiosity, and moving on. How envious we felt at seeing them greet one another--everybody knew everybody else in Boston, except these two miserable girls who knew only each other.

We kept looking at the clock; we tried to jest, wondering what that woman had for dinner that kept her so long. We must have sat there an hour, expectant, anxious. The messenger girl seemed to have disappeared for good. At last, desperate, I started out down the strange corridor, and there met her:

“Hasn’t the Superintendent finished her dinner _yet_?” I queried.

“Oh, my, yes, an hour ago--I forgot to tell her you were waiting.”

I must have looked my wrath, for she went off in short order, returning soon with a tall, stern, handsome woman, the Superintendent’s assistant. This lady heard our tale calmly, looked at us critically, and told us the house was full; she was sorry, but she would give us addresses of boarding-places near by. Belle declared she could not stir another step to look for a place. At this vehemence the calm lady lifted her eyebrows, but said nothing. I must have said in my most supplicating tones, “Can’t you make room for us some way, just for to-night--we are _so_ tired,” for she deliberated, then said, “We will go and see what Miss Dillingham has to suggest.” And she ushered us up to the office of the Superintendent.

Dark and gloomy every corner of that building had seemed that rainy afternoon, but as the door opened, a cheerful fire, and an atmosphere of warmth and ease and home enveloped us. Sitting at a desk was a stout, red-cheeked, red-nosed woman with bright gray eyes. She looked up, nodding a greeting to us, and listened to her assistant’s explanations.

“I’ve told them I don’t see how we can accommodate them,” the younger woman said, not unkindly but dispassionately. I remember admiring her stately grace as she moved about the room, but feeling from the way she closed her lips that we had little to hope from her.

“Why have you come to Boston?” queried the Superintendent as she rose and came toward us.

“We came to study medicine,” I said, and tried to explain further, when my voice gave way, and I lost the self-control I had been maintaining all day against such odds. I turned to Belle and she took up the tale, but broke down, too. Then the good soul gathered us both in her arms, held us close to her broad bosom and let us sob out the grief that refused to be suppressed any longer.

Then, conferring with her assistant, after some directions about changes, she rang for the bell-girl and told her to have room 60 prepared for us at once; they would manage to keep us that night, and to-morrow would help us find a boarding-place. She then told us the supper hour, and the time for evening prayers, and, advising us to get a nap, said we would feel like new creatures by evening.

The clean little room with its two narrow beds and scanty furniture--what a haven it was! Exploring our surroundings, and removing the dust of travel, we lay ourselves down in our little white beds and quickly fell into a sound if not untroubled sleep. We must have slept several hours. The first thing I was aware of was the singing of a hymn in a distant part of the building. It was dark. I wondered where I was. Low sobs from the other side of the room brought me to my senses. The singing made me homesick, my throat ached, my own tears started, and creeping out of bed I went over to Belle, and there we sobbed away in our misery, while those young voices on the floor above sang:

“Jesus, Saviour, pilot me
Over Life’s tempestuous sea;
Unknown waves before me roll,
Hiding rock and treacherous shoal.
Wondrous Sovereign of the sea,
Jesus, Saviour, pilot me.”

Our cry out, we felt better. Belle experimented with the gas, finally succeeding in lighting it. (It was a week or more before I felt safe in doing it--I disliked that sudden noise just as it ignited, it made me jump; and I always felt doubtful whether I had turned it off, too, and had to call Belle to come and see if it was leaking.)

As the supper hour was long past, we ate the remnants of our lunch, looked out on the strange street with the hurrying passers-by, explored the bath-room, and, after much investigation about the fixtures, took our first baths in a bath-tub, and went to bed for the night, in almost a cheerful frame of mind. We talked long in the darkness, getting better acquainted than we had in all the years of school together. Never especially congenial, as children contending together for the supremacy of the things we espoused--Republicanism and Methodism _versus_ Democracy and the Baptist faith--over these in former years we had waged war; but there in the darkness we discussed earnestly and amicably our individual faiths (or doubts, now, in my case), our hopes, our ideals, coming to a better understanding than ever before.

In the morning the sun shone gloriously. In the great dining room a hundred or more girls were seated. No doubt we showed by our awkwardness that it was our first venture into city life; but we had a grip on ourselves, and felt equal to the day’s experiences; they couldn’t possibly be worse than yesterday’s and, I felt exultantly, we had lived through them. As she left the dining room the Superintendent nodded kindly to us, later sending for us to come to the office. There she told us they would manage to keep us a week, or until a room could be secured for us at the branch Association on Berkeley Street, a newer and better building, and much nearer the College. This was indeed good news, and we started off for College with almost pleasurable anticipations-so bright was the sun, so crisp the October air, and so eager were we to see what was in store for us.

I remember well those first walks to and from the College; our perceptions alert, everything so different from what we were accustomed to; the ordinary street scenes, the ways of the people, the peculiar pronunciation of the passers-by, even of the newsboys--everything was food for wonder, amusement, or ridicule to the two village girls: Why didn’t they build their side-walks on a level, instead of making the pedestrian step down at every crossing, and then up again? Gradually we learned that these marked the ends of blocks. We did not like the houses built all together, they looked queer and dismal. We marvelled at the huge dray-horses, and laughed at the queer herdics tumbling along; we puzzled over the street cries; we looked with interest at the “Tech” boys as we passed them on their way to the Institute of Technology, and felt a community of interest with them, as well as with the Conservatory students, as, crossing a little park, we saw them file into the New England Conservatory of Music. On nearing the College we saw the medical students coming briskly from all directions, nearly all of them carrying what seemed to be part and parcel of their equipment--the ubiquitous brown-leather Boston bag.

A thrill of expectancy went through me as, turning into Concord Street, we felt ourselves a part of this life. The building looked quite familiar on seeing it for the second time, and despite our disheartening experiences of the previous day, I went up the steps eagerly, in half-suppressed excitement.

It was some days before Belle ceased her threats of going home, and she was always more or less of a malcontent. I am sorry to say we were not very harmonious roommates, though we never openly quarrelled. If I received higher marks than she did in our trial “exams,” she usually made herself and me wretched; if I met with special cordiality and friendliness, her ill-natured comments often took the savour out of what would have been pleasant experiences for me. I frequently found myself guiltily trying to conceal things of which I would ordinarily have been frankly glad, just to save a scene. There’s no denying that she was inordinately jealous, and it was a temperament I had never come in contact with before. Though seldom airing our differences, there was, with me, I know, a good deal of unexpressed irritation. Sometimes I would go in the clothes-press and shake my fist at her wrapper, a garment which seemed peculiarly to personify her. This relieved me a little.

New as it all was, I felt at home in Boston at the start, and was disposed to like everything. Happy and interested in my work, I also revelled in the good general library at the Y. W. C. A., in the churches, the lectures, the Art Museum, the symphony concerts, the quaint old parts of Boston, the Common, the Public Gardens--it was all life, and more abundant than I had dreamed would be mine. And people liked me. One of my weaknesses in later years--this liking so to be liked--then it was merely an innocent pleasure to feel, as I usually instinctively felt, that I was generally liked.

As a class we were on friendly terms; the ages ranged from girls in their ’teens to women of perhaps thirty-five; the men were mostly in the twenties; a few were older. Two of the young men were always talking to Belle, between lectures, against women studying medicine. She would rehearse their arguments to me, especially toward the close of the year, telling how they laboured with her to give up medicine; that it unsexed women; that they didn’t care a rap about most of the women in the class, but hated to see “nice girls” like her and me keep on with the course, and at last turn out like Dr. Matson and some of the masculine senior girls.

I thought then, and still think, that there is nothing in the study or practice of medicine that need make a woman less womanly. It ought rather to make her more so. By reason of being a woman she may lack some qualities that go to make the ideal physician, but, if so, this limits her as a physician; it need not detract from her qualities as a woman. But few women, and by no means all men, physicians, possess the mechanical skill and other qualities that make a good surgeon; but the general practice of medicine, I think, is not beyond the mastery of many a woman’s mind and strength. If a capable woman, with a well-trained mind, and with self-mastery, engages in the study and practice of medicine and fails, it is, I believe, rather because stronger interests attract her than because she cannot master it. And as for masculinity as seen in women physicians, those same women, as I used to point out to Belle, were masculine before they began to study medicine--would have been so in any walk in life. We occasionally saw Dr. Anna Shaw around the College--she had graduated there some years before--distinctly the masculine type. Many of the women of the faculty were charmingly feminine; and, better still, some that were not so charming were strong and womanly, and commanded the respect of their _confrères_, both as women and as physicians.

It was months before either Belle or I ceased to shudder when we saw those steely eyes of “Dr. Caroline” fastened upon us. As she was professor in anatomy, we saw much of her the first year. Her lectures were thorough, painstaking, and interesting. But, though excellent as an instructor, she scared the life out of us at quizzes. She would call each student by name, then pause--time for every eye to fasten upon one--then a searching look into one’s eyes, and the question was fired. I never answered satisfactorily, even when I knew well the answer, she disconcerted me so, making me tremble to the very marrow of my bones--those bones she knew so well! She had a system of marking at quizzes, giving each student a plus mark for correct answers, ten of which would count one on his final examination. The boys called her “Our Caddie.” We even got so that we did ourselves. The incongruity of the “_i-e_” name, applied to HER, particularly pleased Belle and me. But we learned to respect her, as did all the students. It was rumoured that she never treated any student with geniality till he had passed her chair in anatomy; it was also rumoured that it was one of the hardest things to pass that chair. Occasionally we caught sight of her friendly manner to some of the upper-class students, and fairly revelled in her rare smiles when we saw them bestowed on some lucky senior. She was transformed when she smiled. And in spite of her mannish stride, and her abrupt, brusque ways, she had certain womanly traits which we rejoiced to see: she blushed exquisitely, and had pretty dimpled hands with pink finger tips--I used to note them when she passed the trays with the anatomical specimens, and her dainty way of using the towel after handling them. I have said that she was a middle-aged woman, but I wonder if she was not younger than that: in those days I regarded every one past the twenties as middle-aged, or old.

“Dr. Caroline” instructed us that first year, in microscopy, too, and was very exacting. I had no special aptitude for it, and was afraid of making blunders. She was so deft, and I so awkward in preparing specimens, often breaking the fragile cover-glasses and spoiling my bits of tissue which she doled out to us as precious morsels. How the smell of the oil of cloves which we used in the work brings up those sessions in microscopy--the students seated at the long tables “teasing” their specimens with the fine needles, and mounting and labelling the minute scraps of tissue!

We had private quizz-classes among ourselves: Four of us girls met for study in the evening--I say girls, the two others were no longer girls; one was probably twenty-five, the other perhaps near thirty. The younger of these, Miss Thorndike, was also from the Empire State, a bright, capable person, used to city life, a striking, winning personality, and one who had herself well in hand. She had some masculine ways which she tried rigorously to overcome. She seemed to know the ropes of college life pretty well; she was sophisticated, and we were not and, realizing our inexperience, she exercised a chaperonage over us so tactful that we were not aware of it till years after. Miss Wilkins was a typical strenuous New England woman, prim and sensitive, who constituted herself our avowed chaperone, directing, scolding, and mothering us; making peace between us, and dictating to us when we much preferred to paddle our own canoes. Though fond of her, we often teased her, sometimes deliberately doing things to shock her (how easily she blushed!); yet we always ended penitently with, “but Miss Wilkins is such a good woman!” And she was, and withal very human and tolerant of our uncurbed, undisciplined ways. I realize now how much we owe to hers and Miss Thorndike’s kind and wise supervision.

We rented bones to study the first year. I recall the amused feeling I had the night I carried home my box of bones: Crossing the park, as I met passers-by, I thought, “Wouldn’t they open their eyes if they knew what is in this box!” Here, as always, the incongruity, the hidden reality, appealed to me.

One day at the Y. W. C. A., when it was too cold to study in my room, taking Gray’s Anatomy and my rented femur, I went out and sat by the radiator at our end of the hall; there was but little passing to and fro and I was soon absorbed in reading Gray and tracing the various facets and foramina on the huge thigh-bone.

“Young woman, is that a human bone?” a voice called to me severely from the other end of the long hall.

“Yes, would you like to see it?” I answered--how innocently, I cannot say. I am under the impression that even at the start I recognized her horror, and did it mischievously, but with an air of innocence as I held it toward her.

“You horrid thing!” she gasped and disappeared in her room. This disconcerted me: She was the head-laundress of the institution, and she and the Superintendent were great friends. I well knew she was angry, but I was a bit angry, too. I didn’t like being called names, and had high ideas of the respectability of my pursuit; I knew it was neither horrid nor disgraceful to study anatomy, whatever she in her prim, prudish way might think. Getting more and more angry, I could study no longer.

That night, dear, sensitive Miss Wilkins came to me in perturbation: I had offended Miss Tyler; she might complain of me to the Superintendent. I got on my highest heels of dignity: Miss Tyler had offended me; I was sitting in my end of the hall attending to my own affairs when she accosted me; and when I politely answered her, even offering to show her what I was interested in, and about which she seemed so curious, she had insulted me, rudely called me names, and slammed her door, and the episode had spoiled my afternoon’s study; and did not Miss Wilkins herself think that the cause for complaint was on my side?

Then it was that Miss Wilkins laboured with me. At first I was obdurate, and even in the end did not quite agree with her; but so persuasive was she, that I promised not to study my bones in the hall again, and not to offend Miss Tyler, or any one else, by what was to them unquestionably an offensive sight. She reminded me that we must not expect everyone to look upon these things from the scientific standpoint; that we must respect the prejudices of others; that we surely did not want to make ourselves conspicuous or obnoxious, and bring reproach upon women medical students. She struck the right note there, knowing how I recoiled from Dr. Matson’s mannish ways, and that I had said I would rather not be a doctor at all, if I had to get coarse and masculine. As she showed how timid and conservative Miss Tyler was, she made me feel it my duty to refrain from further wounding her sensibilities.

How we observed, and insensibly estimated, our various instructors! Our professor in physiology was a diffident, scholarly man, stiff as a poker; dry and ponderous as a lecturer. We liked the chemistry professor, and liked the laboratory work, yet chemistry was for me the hardest first-year study. Nowadays when I see certain chemicals that we used in experiments, I get a sudden vision of my desk in the laboratory, with the test-tubes, the gas-burners, the retorts, the filter-papers, and all; and can even see the faces of the various students as they stand at their desks heating solutions; holding others up to the light--now one bends to record something on a chart, now there’s a crash of broken glass, a rustle and a stir, perhaps a giggle, as some unlucky student blunders in an experiment. How it all comes back at the sight of a bottle marked Cupric Sulphate, or H_{2} SO_{4}! What a witty lecturer we had in the History and Methodology of Medicine--a short, fidgety man with big blue eyes and benevolent face. He had a funny way of pulling at his collars and cuffs while lecturing, as if they choked him and he wished he could take them off.

When early in the first year our courses in dissections began, I was all eagerness--the untried always having its charm for me. My name being at the beginning of the alphabet, it fell to me to be one of the first six students to work on the first subject. I had bought my dissecting-case from one of the “middlers”; my long-sleeved apron was ready; and I awaited impatiently the day, little dreaming what I was so eager about.

Assembled in the dissecting room that first day to see us begin were many middlers and seniors, as well as the sixty or more in our own class. Each “subject,” as the cadavers are called, is apportioned in six “parts,” lots being cast for the “parts,” six students working simultaneously on a body. Half the abdomen and the right lower extremity fell to me. My partner on the other side was a young woman, older than I, but very shy and reserved. Other students drew the head and neck, the chest and upper extremities.

That first day as we entered the dissecting room there lay the body, a man’s body, stiff and stark, on the slanting zinc-covered table. The arteries had been injected with red wax, and much of this loose wax and other extraneous matter was clinging to the skin of our subject. It was horrible to see the naked body. I had not thought of that. I don’t know what I had thought of, surely not that--and this room full of onlooking students!

The Demonstrator in anatomy gave us a serious talk, inciting us to earnestness, cautioning us against carelessness, levity, or other unseemly behaviour, after which he told us to set to work. The first thing, he said, was to sponge the part assigned to us, then make our incisions, as we had been previously instructed, and proceed with the dissections.

I shall never forget the repugnance as well as the embarrassment I felt at beginning our task. The young men in our class, as new as were we to it all, were awed as well as we, but those horrid middlers and seniors looking on with amusement! I felt my face getting redder and redder, and Miss Bigelow’s cheeks looked as though they would burst; but with downcast eyes we kept at work, probably taking far more pains than we needed to. I can see just how gingerly we held the sponges; the wax stuck; we thought we had to get off every speck. Then Miss Bigelow, without looking up, whispered, “What shall we do with the pail?”

“Empty it, I suppose,” I snapped out; and getting up courage enough to glance round the room, spied a sink. Stooping, I picked up the loathsome pail and, with blazing cheeks, started across the room, feeling that a great indignity was being undergone--to have to do this at all was bad enough (I still think it was janitor’s work), but it was intolerable to do it before those idle middlers.

Before I had taken many steps a young man in our class came up, took the pail from me, and in a soothing tone said, “Please let me--now the worst is over, Miss Arnold.” The tears started at his kindness. The other young men must have felt ashamed, for they soon rallied round the table, showing us how to make the first incisions, how to hold our scalpels and tissue forceps, in fact, giving us many useful hints. We had had the theory, but to make the actual incisions, to lift the skin and deftly dissect it from the tissues beneath--was different from what we had imagined.

Going from student to student, the Demonstrator instructed and encouraged each in turn. Soon the room, thinned of its spectators, took on a different aspect: the novices bent over their work with interest and absorption. The painful emotion I had felt at seeing those bodies, stripped and at the mercy of our little knives and forceps, soon gave place to genuine enthusiasm. I dreaded the feel of the cold skin, but once that was removed, I was all interest; one then lost sight of the human side, and saw only the beautiful mechanism. How wonderful it seemed when I had the external abdominal muscle laid bare, and its structure disclosed, and this and the other muscles and their adaptations seen! Some days later when one of the girls, working on an arm, had the deltoid exposed, I was surprised to hear one of the assistant demonstrators (a woman) say to her, “It is a pretty muscle, isn’t it?” “Pretty” seemed such an incongruous word to use, but I soon learned to admire the well-dissected muscles, though rather than “pretty” I should have called them “beautiful.”

The instructors demonstrated the viscera, which, with the muscles and other “soft parts” were removed piecemeal, and disposed of daily. Whitman’s tremendously realistic line, “What is removed drops horribly into the pail,” always takes me back to the dissecting room with its repulsive odours and its sorry sights. But our growing interest did much to mitigate the repellent features.

The actual dissection was interesting and easy for me, but it was not easy to demonstrate the muscles and groups of muscles, for it was always difficult to comprehend their action. Never having been able to understand levers and pulleys and mechanical things, I could not reason out things which were so obvious to others. It was absurd, after getting the muscles nicely dissected, with their points of origin and insertion before my very eyes, to be unable to deduce what their actions were. I had no “gumption.” This inability on my part puzzled the Demonstrator and his assistants--the senior students, who moved about from table to table, listening to our recitations whenever we would get a group of muscles exposed for demonstration. One dignified senior who was usually on hand to hear me recite, was painstaking in trying to make me understand their action: “Why, can’t you see?” he would ask; then, convinced that I could not, would try to drill it into my head. His dignified air awed me considerably, and I was demure and respectful to him, always calling him “Doctor” as, in the freshness of our first-year’s awe of them, we supposed we had to call the seniors. But one day, when in the reading room, I saw him try to kiss one of the senior girls, my awe vanished; after that I was a trifle pert and independent. It was funny how my whole attitude then changed toward him. I suddenly saw through the mock dignity he carried while in the dissecting room. In vain he tried to impress me with his gravity, I only laughed in his face. So we soon got on fairly friendly terms, as much as a humble junior and a “grave and reverend senior” could be. Sometimes I surprised him looking at me with a quizzical, half-amused look that changed to a frown and an attempt at dignity, when he saw I was observing him. I imagine he quite enjoyed the deference of my earlier manner, and was not a little annoyed at the discovery which had disillusioned me.

Some weeks after I had seen him trying to steal that kiss, when I was one day working on the head and face, he came up to hear me demonstrate the facial muscles. The action of the muscles had got to be a kind of joke between us, still he always laid particular stress on that, persisting until I understood, and when practicable usually requiring me to illustrate the action. That day I had been dissecting out the _Orbicularis Oris_--the round muscle of the mouth. After I had described it and its relations, he asked smilingly, “And the action?” I replied that it was used to pucker the mouth, as in whistling, and--and (mischievously) in kissing--_if you can_. He blushed furiously, knowing then, positively, that I had, on that occasion, seen the girl slip out of his grasp. Assuming a mock dignity he said, “I have a mind to require you to illustrate the action--it is within my province, you know.” Then _I_ felt cheap, and blushed furiously, too. Later in the afternoon the Demonstrator himself came round and slyly asked if I was ready to demonstrate the action of the _Orbicularis Oris_ yet, so I knew the senior assistant had told him about it.

We had been told that no parts of our subjects might be taken from the dissecting room--a necessary prohibition, as the College pledged itself to bury the skeletons intact. (The boys used to say it was so there would not be so much confusion on Resurrection Morn.) But each year students were intent on purloining a hand or a foot, or some part, as a souvenir. Because forbidden, of course I had this silly ambition, too. (We were on our honour, else it would have been easy.) I bethought me how I could get around the restriction: Our Anatomy said that sesamoid bones were small unimportant bones sometimes found in the tendons, not properly included as a part of the skeleton. The Demonstrator had urged us all to hunt for sesamoid bones, meaning, of course, the small adventitious ones that were a rarity. Herein I saw my chance: One day while working around the knee, as the Demonstrator stood watching me, I asked:

“Doctor S----, have any sesamoid bones been found this year?”

“No, I have heard of none.”

“They are not properly a part of the skeleton, are they?” (Innocently)

“Oh, no, no, they are very unimportant affairs--interesting only as anomalies,” he said pompously.

“Then (demurely) I suppose I may keep all the sesamoid bones I find in my subject, mayn’t I?”

He laughed and said, “Yes, you are welcome to all the sesamoid bones you find,” and started to walk away.

“Thank you, Dr. S----,” I said, with ill-concealed triumph, “I’ll take this patella when I go home to-night.”

He started, coloured, looked annoyed, then amused. He was fairly caught, for the patella, though of course a legitimate part of the skeleton, is formed in the tendon of the _Quadriceps Extensor_, and is described by Gray, because of its mode of development, as a kind of sesamoid bone--a fact which had somehow stuck in my memory, as unimportant things will, while others of greater import sifted through. The Demonstrator walked away looking a little chagrined, but later I saw him laughing on the sly with the seniors, and before he left he came back and said, “You may take your ‘sesamoid bone’, Miss Arnold; you have earned it.”

I had not thought out how I could contrive to get a souvenir from my next “part,” but this same Demonstrator unwittingly helped me out. I was at work on the wrist, and as he stood looking on he asked, “Have you found any more ‘sesamoid’ bones?” I said No, but just then the little pisiform bone, not much bigger than a pea, stood out so conspicuously that, seeing how easy it would be to sever it from the other small bones, I purposely made a careless cut, and the little thing rolled on the table.