men's feet by the Chinese, lest they might claim and
exercise the liberty of walking the streets at pleasure, as their
husbands do. A woman will be no more expected to give credence to every
thing her husband believes, no matter how absurd the belief may be, at
his dictation, because he is her husband, or to yield implicit obedience
to his commands, no matter how tyrannical, than she will be to follow
him to the funeral pyre.

Already ladies, by dint of untiring industry and perseverance, have
mounted to honorable positions, and have acquired meritorious fame as
artists, both in painting and in sculpture. Who, in our times, stands
higher on the list of artists than Rosa Bonheur or Miss Hosmer? In the
study of medicine, women have been met by the most scandalous opposition
and insult by those conservators of good morals, male medical students.
Yet, believing that women were as capable of acquiring skill in the
healing art as men, and that, where the peculiar diseases of women were
concerned, they were better adapted to it, and that there was less
impropriety in their attending their own sex than in men doing so, they
persevered, and have won for themselves honorable distinction. That
women have, for years, distinguished themselves in connection with
medical science, may be seen from the following interesting historical
facts presented by Caroline H. Ball:

Madame Francoise, the midwife of Catharine de Medici, lectured ably to
students of both sexes. James Guillemeau was a French surgeon of great
eminence, who died in 1813; but the obstetrical observations which gave
value to his books were contributed by Madame Veronne. It was to the
Countess of Cinchon, and the influence which she used at every court in
Europe, and finally at the Court of Rome, that the world owed the use of
Peruvian bark, and consequently of quinine. Its early name, "Jesuit's
Bark," showed one step of her process. (See "Anastasis Corticis
Peruviani, Seu China Defensis.") Madame Breton patented a system of
artificial nourishment for infants, in use in France as late as 1830.

At the age of twenty-four, in the year 1736, Elizabeth Blackwell, of
London, published a work on Medical Botany. It was in three volumes,
folio, well illustrated, and was the first of its kind in any country.
Madame Ducoudray, born in Paris, 1712, was the first lecturer who used a
manikin, which she herself invented and perfected. Physicians persist in
ignoring this fact, althoug