“What did she say?”, Sarah Hibbard diary, circa 1870s

“What did she say?”, Sarah Hibbard diary, circa 1870s

Transcription

[page 31]
Without going into the details of the past more than to gather up some facts upon the subject from the memorable years of 1869 and 70, I will say that the conduct of the male medical students of which so much has been said through the press, and their most unmanly deportment during the clinics of those winters, needs no comment further than to say that their “loss was our gain.” For certainly they did lose, and certainly we did gain, as the facts will show. But as to the manner of their abuse, I will not give the particulars, for the same reason that a San Francisco editor declined to publish the particulars of three murders, as “there was nothing original about the modes of death.” But if these poor fellows had sought to do us a life-long favor, they could not have done

[pages 32 and 33]
it more effectively than they did in their conduct towards us during those sessions. I say us, because I too, with others, have the pleasure of knowing that for two winters I sat an earnest listener to those clinic lectures: one in the old amphitheater at Blockley Alms House, and the other at the amphitheater of Pennsylvania Hospital, amid the groans and hisses of as ungentlemanly a set of fellows as one would care to meet, after paying just as much for our tickets of admission as they. And yet we bore all this for what? Simply that we might be the better fitted to minister at the bedside of our mothers, sisters, and friends throughout the land.

About this item

is part of: Pioneers in the Face of Adversity: “The Mob of ‘69”
contributing repository: Drexel University College of Medicine Legacy Center
title: “What did she say?”, Sarah A. Hibbard, M.D., papers
date(s) created: circa 1870
creator(s): Hibbard, Sarah A.
language: English
subjects: Diaries; Sex discrimination in medical education; Women medical students; Blockley Almshouse; Pennsylvania Hospital (Philadelphia, Pa); Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania
identifier (local): a189_001
link to item in repository’s digital library: https://drexel.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01DRXU_INST/h1chhv/alma991015166490604721
rights: This work is not in copyright, but commercial uses of this digital representation are limited. For more information, contact the contributing repository and see https://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-NC/1.0/?language=en.