USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > The Congress of Women : held in the Woman's building, World's Columbian exposition, Chicago, U.S.A., 1893 : with portraits, biographies and addresses > Part 36
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Dr. Freeda M. Lankton was born in Oriskany, N. Y., August 10, 1852. Her parents were Elizabeth Tremain Lodmer, of Southampton, England, and Eber Lodmer, of Nova Scotia, a Baptist clergyman. She was educated in the public schools of Rome, N. Y., later by private teachers, and graduated from the State University of Iowa. She married Mr. Byron F. Lankton, of New York, in 1870. Her special work has been in the interest of fallen womanhood and the sick and suffering. Her principal literary works are papers for medical journals and societies, "The King's Daughters," and W. C. T. U. Conventions. Her profession is that of physician and surgeon. Dr. Lankton is a member of the Presbyterian Church. Her postoffice address is Omaha, Neb.
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that most difficult of all foes to overcome. Said one of the prominent professors in the medical world, now holding a chair in one of the eastern colleges: "History, physiology, and the general judgment of society, unite in a negative of woman's fitness for the medical office." In the "Buffalo Medical Journal," 1869, is found among its edi- torial, the following: "If I were to plan with malicious hate the greatest curse I could conceive for woman; if I would estrange them from the protection of women and make them so far as possible loathsome and disgusting to men, I would favor this so-called reform, which proposes to make doctors of them." This was in 1869, less than twenty-five years ago. We trust this editor has taken the position of the wise man, who always changes his mind when he finds that his conclusions have been based upon false conceptions. We hope that he is alive today to see that his prophecy has failed utterly of its fulfillment. The curse which he feared has proved a blessing both to men and women. Why should the office of physician make women "loath- some and disgusting to men?'
The modesty and sense of propriety, which, in their opinion, should forever keep us from the halls of medical colleges where we may study with all grave and reverend. feeling the mysteries of these bodies of ours, which are truly "fearfully and wonder- fully made," and which can only inspire us with awe, and a more firm belief in the wisdom and love of our Creator. While this type of person is filled with consterna- tion at the thought of woman as student and physician, there seems never to have entered his masculine brain the possibility of woman's objection to lay bare all her secrets and sufferings, and to receive the administrations necessary at his hands. Custom has so long given him these privileges that he cannot easily adapt himself to any change. It was said, too, that the result of woman's medical education would be a lowering of her moral nature. This also has proved untrue.
It is said, also, that woman has not sufficient physical strength to endure the demands of the life of the physician. This also is fallacy. In reply to questions sent out to large numbers of women in the profession, the universal answer has been " health better than before entering the profession." Many of them add: " I attribute it to the constant tonic of fresh air." To be sure it is a laborious life, so is that of the society woman, with far less mental compensation. Work seldom kills; to each of its victims can be counted ten killed by discontent, born of too much time, and too little definite aim and purpose in life. It is well known that the Blackwell sisters, Eliza- beth and Emily, were the pioneers in medical education. This was in 1845. There was no college willing to admit a woman, and not until 1849 did the elder sister grad- uate. A Boston journal at that time published an article in which we find this sen- tence: "The ceremonies of graduating Miss Blackwell at Geneva may well be called a farce. The profession was quite too full before." Even this criticism did not put a stop to the whole business, as evidently this cynic expected it would. Think of the crowded condition of the profession having added to its numbers one lone woman. It was the beginning of a new era. What had been done could be done again. It is interest- ing to note the courage and perseverance of these women. Dr. Susan B. Edson was the entering wedge to open the doors of the Cleveland Homoeopathic College. She grad- uated in 1854. Says the " Woman's Tribune: "This college would not sell its scholar- ships to women." It was owing on the construction of its new building which it could not pay, and the creditor insisted on having a scholarship before he turned over the keys of the building. This scholarship he sold to Miss Edson, who became thereby
entitled to enter. They had a faculty meeting over her, and decided that she could not enter the following year, but she informed them that she should be there. "Well," said the president, " it will not be very pleasant for you." "That is your lookout," said Miss Edson; " If the men who come here to study medicine cannot treat a woman decently here, they are not fit to treat them elsewhere. If I live I shall be here." When the authorities found that she could not be frightened away, they admitted a few others who applied later. Dr. Edson was for years the physician of President Garfield and his family, and " was in constant attendance upon him during his last
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illness, though he was under the surgical care of six other physicians." She also "introduced to the United States the first Chinese baby of rank born in this country." There are now thirty-six medical colleges which admit mixed classes, and five med- ical schools exclusively for women, besides a school of pharmacy for women at Louis- ville, Ky. All this since 1849, when one woman was too great a crowd for the Boston editor. He has probably gone long since, to the country where, if present indications are at all reliable, he will find the majority of its inhabitants women. What are the qualifications necessary for a woman to be successful in the profession? We can only give a few of them.
First, energy and courage, self reliance, great perseverance, firmness, love for sci- entific truths, dignity above and beyond all true womanliness. There was never greater mistake made than in thinking one's influence greater, or that it is in any sense neces- sary, to become masculine or mannish when entering upon any line of public work. The exact reverse is true. We can neither afford to create prejudice nor offend good taste by being ill-mannered or ill-bred. To hold the confidence and respect of both ยท good men and good women we must not only avoid evil in all forms, but even the appearance of evil. Each one must prove her ability by doing better work than her brother practitioner to receive the same credit. Does she lose a patient, nine out of ten of the neighbors and friends will say, or think, if too courteous to express their opinion, you should have known better than to have employed a woman. Docs her brother physician lose half a dozen in the same neighborhood, there are grateful words of how he stood by them to the last; of how peculiar were the complications of dis- case, and the impossibility of understanding the dispensations of providence. Unjust, do you say? Yes, but it will grow less so as the years go by. For already it is becom- ing noticeable that women do not lose their patients as frequently or in as large a per cent as do men. This is easily accounted for when we pause to consider the facts and reason to natural conclusions. Men too frequently drift into the profession. The father, or brother, or uncle, is a doctor, and it is easy to read with them, and so they drift, as we say, into the medical profession, without thought of special fitness, or special taste, or qualification. Not so with the woman seeking this avocation. Truly to her must there be a distinct call, an overwhelming must. There is no case or drift- ing to her. She must be the woman who has the pride of excelling, the pride of standing at the head, who will have the best and do the best or nothing. Who has the courage of her convictions, who knows no defeat. This is the type of woman who comes into the profession because nature, which is our most imperative councilor, has been her teacher; because she knows that suffering womanhood can be better understood by women than it ever can be by men. Theory and experience are widely different in practical results. The woman understands at once, from a woman's knowl- edge and woman's standpoint, what the man fails to get from books or theory, and cannot experience in himself. The prejudice against women among the men of the profession is fast dying out in college and class room; at the bedside and in our med- ical societies we are accorded every help and encouragement, every courtesy and equality. It is only occasionally that we meet one of the ancient type, and he impresses us with a feeling of amusement rather than one of resentment. It is said that women are nervous and fail in emergencies. This is a libel upon the sex. No greater acts of heroism have ever been shown to the world than those performed by women. It is my experience and observation that sex has nothing to do whatever with the matter of coolness in emergency. I have seen extremely nervous men in the profession, and women who, for calmness, might have stepped from the pedestal of the marble statuc. Knowledge is the basis of self-reliance. The man or woman who knows what to do and does it, knows also that they have nothing to fear either from public criticism or self-accusation, whatever the results may be.
In a medical journal we read, not long since, two articles, both upon women as physicians and surgeons. The editor must have had a fine sense of humor, placing them, as he did, upon consecutive pages of his journal. The first stated certain facts
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regarding some operations performed, then added words of praise and thanksgiving that "the time had come when women coming to the hospital or clinic could there meet women as physician and surgeon, standing side by side as equals with the men in the profession, thus taking away much of the fear and dread which every woman must feel in being in the hands of men only during her unconscious helplessness. Now woman was there as operator or assistant, with deft touch, kindly encourage- ment, gentle womanly ministration, although thoroughly scientific and strong to do her duty." The pages following were also in regard to her position as physician. The writer, a man, as in the former article, said that " while women had proven them- selves capable, they had also proved to be utterly heartless, and without pity or sense of care and gentleness;" that they were " far less cautious in inflicting pain," and ended by a most solemn warning to all women to "avoid the sex professionally, unless they expected and wish rough handling." Here were two men speaking from their respective standpoints-the one of elderly years and long experience, a firm friend of woman, and one who has done much to place her in the position which she holds today in the profession. The other, a young man, with probably a rival whom he wished to annihilate. Possibly he had met one who did not honor her calling. Even among the disciples of our Lord there was one who failed utterly in his professions. We do not take him as a type, however, of the other eleven. Women do not ask favors, they expect criticism. They do not ask leniency, but they do ask justice and fair dealing. Taking the same course of study-passing the same examinations, standing, with but few exceptions, at the head of her classes, compelling by her hard- earned success the admiration of both faculty and classmates-woman demands only fair play, at the hands of both the men in the profession and the public at large. She should have, too, in all state and public institutions where women and children are confined, the first positions as physician in charge. The conditions unearthed in some of our insane asylums, so monstrous as to defy, almost, our belief in possibilities, would be made impossible did we have women as physicians and attendants, as we should have. In our police stations, our jails and prisons, wherever we find women degraded, poverty-stricken or diseased, there should we find women by their side as physician. We are so frequently told that women do not stand by each other, do not trust each other, and then when we ask that she may be placed in positions where she may prove this assertion untrue, they are refused her. These congresses, meeting as they have, day after day, and month after month, have been one great object lesson of the fallacy of this saying.
Believing most thoroughly in womanhood and womankind, proud of my sisters in the profession and the business world, you will accept kindly, I trust, one bit of criticism which I have to offer, some of our business and professional women; that is, in regard to the use of our names. Think of Susan B. Anthony as " Susie," or Harriet Beecher Stowe as " Hattie" Beecher Stowe. Would our peerless Frances Willard seem quite as dignified as " Fannie?" Had Abigail Adams lived in our day we hope she would not have been "Abbie," or that Martha Washington would have been " Mat- tie." We have grave fears, however, and feel thankful that they got safely into another world before losing the plain but dignified names 'which always convey a sound of strength and sturdy independence. Personally, we see no necessity for the women in the profession to use the whole name unless they so wish. The initials only are suf- ficient for men-why not for women? Let me make this plea, then, for greater appre- ciation of the small things which go to make up the success of our business life, one of which, by no means the smallest, is a more dignified standard for the names which we bear, and which we all hope to hand down to posterity as honored, worthy a place among those remembered as having done something to lessen the sum total of human suffering, and to have made broader the pathway and brighter the light shining upon woman's work. That work, in its many departments, has received an impetus by these congresses, held during this never-to-be-forgotten year, which in their results can never be measured. We have taken great strides in learning, in this world-wide touch with
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humanity, that " all mankind is kin," learned that we have one common interest, and that "from one blood was made all nations of the earth." To this great American republic, founded upon principles of justice and freedom for all good, must we give the no small honor of first placing woman with equal education, equal rights and equal privileges in the medical profession. Here, with a purpose unfaltering, a will unchang- ing and a faith undying, does she stand, to work for the betterment of humanity and add what she may to the sum of human happiness.
THE LEGAL PROFESSION FOR WOMEN. By MRS. WINONA BRANCH SAWYER.
The Constitution of the United States is to woman as an Emancipation Procla- mation, in that it erects no barriers, imposes no limitations, sanctions no discrimina- tions on account of sex. Tacitly implying the per- fect equality of man and woman as citizens, alike entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, its very silence concerning the status of woman is an eloquent pleading in her behalf.
Even in those countries where woman had been esteemed most happy, we find her debarred by the salic law, restrained by the canon law, coerced by the common law, subordinated by the civil law, misrepre- sented and robbed of freedom of will by the fictions of the statutory law. Whether enthroned as the idol of chivalry in one country, or bartered as chattels in another; whether affronted by poligamy, or tormented with a condition between indifference and contempt; whether immured by asceticism, or given the free- dom of social expulsion; whether crowned with a halo of a Madonna, or dishonored with the stigma of a Magdalen, in every land and in every age she has been the one legislated against, the one excluded from the benefit and deprived of the protection of the law.
MRS. WINONA BRANCH SAWYER.
The Renaissance and Reformation, which indeed widened existing horizons, sketched no line of demarcation between the zenith of man's prerogative and the nadir of woman's proscription, but the great wave of Revo- lution-a self-consciousness and self-assertion of individuality-which had been gath- ering momentum for generations, culminated on the shores of the Western Continent. Our country is pledged to a mission of justice to the individual. There is no forcing back the waters of this tide, no "thus far and no farther." Those who attempt to close the flood gates, to repairthe old-time dykes, are wasting precious time which might better be improved in accommodating themselves to the requirements of the age. The under- tow of this current has been undermining and sweeping away the accumulated debris of custom and tradition. The prejudices of race and religion have gone, and the dis- qualification of sex is disappearing by the free opening up of all professions to meri- torious applicants.
That " custom is law," is recognized as one of the fundamental maxims in ancient jurisprudence. For many ages advocates and judges tried to make all litigation rest on this "Procrustean bed." The deformities and failures which resulted from their efforts, gave rise to a new code based on principles of justice and denominated equity.
Mrs. Winona Branch Sawyer is a native of New York. She was born in 1847. Her parents were Rev. Wm. Branch and Elizabeth Trowbridge Branch. She was educated at Mt. Carroll Seminary, Ill., Class of 1871. She has traveled in all parts of the United States. She married Mr. A. J. Sawyer in 1875. She is engaged in literary pursuits and in aiding, self-sustaining young men and women to obtain a start in life. Over twenty-five such young people have been members of her family. Her principal literary works are addresses, lectures, essays, fiction and newspaper correspondence; her profession, attorney at law. She was admitted to the bar of the District Court in 1887; to the Supreme Court in 1889. She began the study of law under her husband's instruction. While not actively in the practice she assists her husband in the preparation of his cases. Postoffice address, Lincoln, Neb.
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In no department of law is the change more marked than in its application to woman. The common law measured her with the "regulation girdle" of home-maker and home-keeper. She was commanded and compelled to fill her prescribed limit of obedience and servitude. She was subordinated and coerced, lest she outgrow the standard. Thus saith the old law: "The husband hath by law power and dominion over his wife, and may keep her by force within the bounds of duty, and may beat her, provided the size of the cane be no larger than his thumb." The civil law gave to the husband the same or a greater authority over his wife.
What to do with woman has ever been one of the knottiest points of the law. At first, jurists thought to evade the issue by attempting to reduce woman to a ghostly nonentity; but, like Banquo's ghost, she would not " down" at the command of her Macbeth. Next she was concealed beneath the garb of legal fictions, and under the guise of vested rights smuggled through the departments of the blind goddess.
One link after another in the myriad chains which fettered her freedom and inde- pendence has been broken, until she is now not only recognized in legal procedure, but admitted into the very halls of justice, as an officer of the court, and permitted to participate in its proceedings. She may not only advocate her own rights, but may plead the rights of others. She has left in the rear her former colleagues-infants, idiots and the insane-and almost overtaken her rivals of the fifteenth amendment.
Perhaps you recall some early morn after a night of storm and darkness, how the first gleams of light struggled through scarcely perceptible rifts in the clouds, closing and reopening as the billowy curtains of the night were swayed by the lingering tempest. Anon a roscate liue would tinge the receding clouds, then spread and change until the many colors were blended into clear effulgent light, and the golden sun looked from the dazzling sky. Then the whole stretch of earth became eloquent with voice of man and bird and the hum of industry.
Such has been the breaking of dawn to woman, after her long civil night. The Sapphos and Cornelias, the Esthers and Hortensias, were only fitful gleams amid the surrounding shadows of superstitious customs. From the age of chivalry, which tinged her career with the rosy light of sentiment and love, the changes were rapid. Great rays of light, like Queen Elizabeth, Madame de Stael, Hannah Moore and Florence Nightingale gleamed above the horizon. The legal fictions and the guardians of her person and property melted away like the mist, and the present cent- ury ushered in a day of life and activity for woman in every department of art, science, literature and the professions.
This achievement has not been instantaneous. No " open sesame " has mirac- ulously placed within her reach this accumulated wealth of all vocations. No alchemy has transmuted the base elements of ignominy and degradation, to the noblest types of respect and equality. Woman has not obtained a place in the pro- fession by " demanding her rights," as Shylock contended for his pound of flesh, but like Portia, by unfolding the harmony and the correllation of legal and equitable claims.
The present century recognizes that the sphere of women is no longer a mooted question. Merit has no sex; and the meritorious lawyer, man or woman, who deserves success, who can both work and wait to win, is sure to achieve both recognition and reward.
Of the three so-called "learned professions" which are necessities of civilization, the legal profession has been perhaps the most reluctant to swing open its portals to admit in fellowship the former "pariahs" of legal procedure: nevertheless these majestic gates have in hundreds of cases responded to the reiterated taps of a woman's hand. In some states requests for admission to the bar were unheeded, and the dockets arc tarnished by the lawsuits which ensued ere the struggle for recognition was ended. Even supreme courts and legislatures have been importuned for opinions and special enactments, that woman might waive the custom of a proxy, and stand in suo jure, in the presence of the ermine. The woman lawyer has ceased to be a novelty. The
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United States inaugurated her reign, and like all American inventions, no matter how ultra and radical the innovation may appear, the indorsement of the inaugurator is a sufficient guarantee for its propriety and legality. Since June, 1869, upward of three hundred women have been admitted to practice law in the various state and federal courts, and at least one-third of these are in actual practice. It is as impossible to give the exact number of women lawyers in the United States, as it would be to state the actual number of practitioners among men. Twenty-two states have reported seventy- four women lawyers in active practice. Four states, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana and Maryland have statutory prohibitions comprised in the words " male citizens." In the remaining eighteen states and territories there is no agitation of the subject at pres- ent, but nothing in the laws to prevent their admission.
That the proportion of women engaged in the law is less than in the other profes- sions is, in a measure, due to the peculiar requirements of the law. Woman may be the weakest in this profession, but in it she lifts with the longest lever the social and legal status of her sex. A certain sentimentality concerning sex, supplemented by her innate dread of criticism, are the two monstrous lions that intimidate her at the entrance to the Palace Beautiful.
Also it is no trifling education that is needed for successful competition in this profession. The ramifications of the law are infinite, and the successful lawyer must be versed in all subjects. The law is not a mere conglomeration of decisions and statutes; otherwise " Pretty Poll " might pose as an able advocate. A mind unadapted to investigation, unable to see the reasons for legal decisions, is as unreliable at the bar as is a color-blind person in the employ of a signal corps. The woman lawyer who demands an indemnity against failure must offer as collateral security not only the ordinary school education, but also a knowledge of the world and an acquaintance with that most abstruse of all philosophies-human nature. She must needs cultivate all the common sense and tact with which nature has endowed her, that she may adjust herself to all conditions. She must possess courage to assert her position and maintain her place in the presence of braggadocio and aggressiveness, with patience, firmness, order and absolute good nature; a combativeness which fears no Rubicon; a retentiveness of memory which classifies and keeps on file minutest details; a self- reliance which is the sine qua non of success; a tenacity of purpose and stubbornness of perseverance which gains ground, not by leaps, but by closely contested hair breadths; a fertility of resource which can meet the " variety and instantaneousness " of all occa- sions; an originality and clearness of intellect like that of Portia, prompt to recognize the value of a single drop of blood; a critical acumen to understand and discriminate between the subtle technicalities of law and an aptness to judge rightly of the interpre- tation of principles.
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