Page:Women Wanted.djvu/269

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IN THE PROFESSIONS
249

tor of Public Health." And though a woman had thus practically invented "public health" and another woman, Dr. Baker is the first real and original doctor of public health, Dr. Baker herself was refused at Harvard the opportunity to take their course leading to such a title. The university did not admit women. But a little later the trustees of Bellevue Hospital Medical College, initiating the course and looking about for the greatest living authority to take this university chair, came hat in hand to Dr. Baker, even though their institution does not admit women to the class rooms. "Gentlemen," she answered, "I'll accept the chair you offer me with one stipulation, that I may take my own course of lectures and obtain the degree Doctor of Public Health elsewhere refused me because I am a woman." Like this the woman who has practically established the modern science of public health, in 1916 came into her title. It is probably the last difficulty and discrimination that the American woman in medicine will ever encounter.

The struggle of women for a foothold in the medical profession is the same story in all lands. It was the celebrated Sir William Jenner of England who pronounced women physically, mentally and morally unfit for the practice of medicine. Under his distinguished leadership the graduates of the Royal College of Physicians in London pledged themselves, "As a duty we owe it to the college and to the profession and to the public to offer the fullest re-