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Women Physicians

  
Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson

Dr. SARAH HACKETT STEVENSON is the first woman admitted to the American Medical Association. This admission was granted in June, 1876. " The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin " of June 2 says, --- " The doctors have combined millennial with centennial glories. The largest assemblage of the medical profession ever held in America yesterday honored itself by bursting the bonds of ancient prejudice, and admitting a woman to its membership by a vote that proved that the long-waged battle is won, and that henceforth professional qualification, and not sex, is to be the test of standing in the medical world. Looking back over the past fierce resistance by which every advance of woman into the field of medical life was met, yesterday's action seems like the opening of a scientific millennium. It was a most appropriate time and place for the beginning of this new era of medical righteousness and peace. Here, in the centennial year, in the city of brotherly love, where the first organized effort for the medical education of women was made, where the oldest and best appointed medical college for women in the world is located, and where the fight against women's entry into the medical profession began and was most hotly waged, was the place to take the manly new departures, which, so far as the national association is concerned, began yesterday in the election of Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson as a member in full standing from the State of Illinois.
  

As she was educated for a teacher, she acted in that capacity from the time she graduated till five years ago, always as principal ; and for her services in dissection she has received the State certificate. Five years ago she went to Chicago with the purpose of adopting literature as a pursuit, and to that end began a course of scientific study, as the scientific was the style of writing she preferred. From the elementary studies of anatomy and physiology, she gradually became interested to know more of the "human form divine," and so was persuaded to take a full medical course. Two of these five years she spent in Europe, visiting hospitals, attending clinics, and a course of lectures in biology by Prof. Huxley. The governor of our State gave her a commission to the Exposition in Vienna ; and she spent her vacations travelling through Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, Great Britain, and Ireland. When she returned to graduate in the Woman's Hospital Medical College of this city, she was elected valedictorian of the class, and, after graduating, was appointed to the chair of physiology in the same college, and attending physician to the Hospital for Women and Children, which positions she now occupies. She characteristically writes: 

" Though in possession of two titles, professor, and doctor of medicine, I never use either, only when I'm obliged to. I'd so much rather be plain Sarah Hackett Stevenson, without prefix or suffix.

" The path I have chosen, or rather that into which I have been pushed, is not a path for the ambitious or those desirous of fame. One can spend a lifetime in scientific work without being known outside of his immediate circle. If the amount of vitality which a surgeon puts into a single operation, or that a physician expends in 'carrying through' a single case, or that a physiologist consumes in a single lecture and experiment before his class, if the same amount of energy were coined into letters, and published as literature, the author's name would be heralded abroad by every tongue. The greatest lights in our profession are not 
known, even by name, outside of the profession ; and yet is not a scientific, conscientious physician one of the world's truest philanthropists ? 

Very sweetly Dr. Stevenson adds : " As to my religion, I was born and brought up in the Methodist Church, and expect to die in it. My parents were Episcopalians ; but the Methodist was the pioneer church, and my parents joined it rather than be without a home. I retain my membership in the same old place, preferring its little homely, humble altar to any thing I have found elsewhere. Though I hold liberal views of Christianity, and though the enemies of God have tried to class me as a materialist, probably because of my studies, I still cling to the sweet restful faith of my childhood. The best place I have ever found was at my sainted mother's feet, when I prayed ' Now I lay me down to sleep; and the most beautiful vision of life I have ever known, is when I believed that four angels watched at the four posts of my trundle-bed. I look with great distrust upon every thing that tends to rob humanity of its trust in God." 

Dr. Stevenson has not been idle with her pen, letters, essays, sketches, &c. Her book mentioned in Women Scientists is not the last, it is hoped, with which she will bless the world.