A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Nichols, Mary Sargeant Gove
NICHOLS, MARY SARGEANT GOVE,
Wife of T. L. Nichols, M, D., formerly an Allopathic physician in the city of New York, where he is now an eminent "Water Care" practitioner, with whom she is in profession associated. Before her marriage with Dr. Nichols, which took place in 1848, she conducted with great success a Water Cure establishment in that city, and was widely known as Mrs. Gove—her name by a former marriage—the physician for her own sex.
Few, among living women, deserve more respect than Mrs. Gove-Nichols; she has, in her own example, illustrated the beneficial results of knowledge to her sex, the possibility of success tinder the greatest difficulties, and above all, the importance that women, as well as men, should have an aim in life,—the high and holy aim of doing good.
Mrs. Gove-Nichols, whose maiden name was Neal, was born in 1810; her native place was Goffstown, State of New Hampshire, where her early years were passed The advantages of education for girls were at that time very limited, and Mary Neal was not in a favoured position to secure even these. But she had an ardent desire to acquire knowledge, and become useful; and Providence, as she believes, aided her fervent wish. When a young girl, chance threw in her way a copy of Bell's Anatomy; she studied it in secret, and received that bias towards medical science which decided her destiny. Every medical book she could obtain she read, and when these were taken from her, she turned her attention to French and Latin,—good preliminary studies for her profession, though she did not then know it.
When about eighteen years of age, she commenced writing for newspapers; these poems, stories, and essays are only of importance as showing the activity of her genius, which then, undeveloped and without an aim, was incessantly striving upward. Soon after her marriage with Mr. Gove, she had an opportunity of reading the "Book of Health," published in London, being a sort of Domestic Materia Medica, which gave the true impulse to her ardent temperament. At about the same time she read the works of Dr. John Mason Good, and her attention was particularly arrested by his remarks on the use of water; and from his writings and the "Book of Health," which she read during the year 1832. she became convinced of the efficacy of cold water in curing diseases.
From this time she appears to have been possessed by a positive passion for anatomical, psychological, and pathological study, which she ardently pursued, in spite of the obstructions offered by her sex and a natural timidity and bashfulness. After having thoroughly qualified herself for this important work, she, in 1837, commenced lecturing on anatomy and physiology. She had before this given one or two lectures before a Female Lyceum, formed by her pupils and some of their friends. At first she gave these health lectures, as they were termed, to the young ladies of her school, and their particular friends whom they were allowed to invite, once in two weeks; subsequently, once a week. In the autumn of 1838, she was invited by a society of ladies in Boston to give a course of lectures before them on the same subjects, and she delivered this course of lectures to a large class of ladies, and repeated it afterward to a much larger number. She lectured pretty constantly for several years after this beginning in Boston, in several of the States of the Union, with great success.
Besides these engrossing, medical pursuits, Mrs. Gove found time to continue her literary studies. In 1844, she commenced writing for the "Democratic Review;" she wrote the "Medical Elective Papers," in the "American Review," and was a contributor to "Godey's Lady's Book." She prepared her "Lectures to Ladies on Anatomy and Physiology," which work was published by the Harpers, in 1844. They also published, about the same time, Mrs. Gove's little novel, "Uncle John, or it is too much trouble," under the nomme de plume of Mary Orne, which she assumed when writing fictitious tales. In this way she sent forth "Agnes Norris, or the heroine of Domestic Life," and "The Two Loves, or Eros and Anteros;" both written in the hurry of overburdened life, and, as might be expected, evincing that the spirit was prompting to every means of active exertion, while the natural strength was not sufficient for all these pursuits.