Part 16
Among the women, whose names appear in the history of the Civil War, one of the most brilliant was =Miss Clara Barton=. Devoting herself to the care of the wounded soldiers, she won for herself as superintendent of the hospitals in the army of the James the surname “the Florence Nightingale of America.” During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 she joined the German branch of the Red Cross Society, that noble institution, which in 1859 had been founded by Henry Durant, a citizen of Geneva, Switzerland.
Inspired by the example of Miss Nightingale, and horrified by the ghastly scenes of the Italian battlefields, he resolved to work for the proper treatment and nursing of wounded soldiers, while still on the ground. At his strong appeal the Swiss Federal Council invited all European nations to a convention in order to discuss proper steps to be taken in this direction. Attended by delegates from Baden, Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Prussia, Switzerland and Wurtemberg, the convention met on August 22, 1864, in Geneva, and decided, that henceforth not only all places where wounded soldiers are treated, but also all persons, engaged in this samaritan service, should be regarded as neutrals and distinguished by white flags or white bands showing a red cross. Such places must not be attacked, but protected by the soldiers of all combating armies.
In the further history and evolution of this international =Society of the Red Cross= women have played a most prominent part. Miss Barton established during the Franco-Prussian War several military hospitals and, by conducting them, distinguished herself so that she was decorated with the Iron Cross. After her return to the United States she organized in 1882 the “American Red Cross Society,” of which she became the first president. The work of Miss Barton and the Red Cross in the Spanish-American War and the great help given to the sufferers after the great tidal wave in Galveston, Texas, caused the United States Senate and the Texas Legislature to adopt resolutions of thanks.
All these great efforts of women could not fail to create a most favorable impression toward woman’s activity in medicine. In England an act of 1868 for the first time opened the study of pharmacy to women; and after a long struggle they obtained their footing as physicians. In 1874 a special medical school was opened for women in London. In 1876 an act authorized every recognized medical body to open its doors to women. In 1878 a supplemental charter enabled the University of London to grant degrees to women in all its faculties, including medicine. As a result up to the close of 1895 264 women had been placed on the British register as duly qualified medical practitioners.
In the United States similar progress was made.
According to the census of 1910, there were 7399 women physicians and surgeons in the United States.
Whereas fifty years ago there was great objection to admitting women to the medical societies, now the men of the profession welcome women physicians to the societies and to their discussions, and are more than willing to consult with them. The advantage of employing women physicians has been recognized likewise by many hospitals, sanitariums and insane asylums; the courts too recognize the justice of women’s preferring women in the physical examination required by law. There can be no doubt, that the 20th Century opens to women physicians undreamed-of possibilities in science and in the art of healing.
WOMAN IN THE PROFESSION OF THE LAW.
When in the year of our Lord 1869 American papers reported that in Iowa a woman had been admitted to the bar, most readers were inclined to regard this “bit of news” as one of the many jokes, sprung occasionally upon credulous people in order to warn them what the “new woman” might be able to do. But in this case the “joke” turned out to be a fact. And if people had been somewhat better acquainted with their Bibles, they would have known that the woman lawyer of Iowa was only another confirmation of Rabbi Ben Akiba’s famous saying: “There is nothing new under the sun!”
Open your Bible and read in Chapter 4 of the Judges IV about =Deborah=, the Joan of Arc of the Hebrews. Of this most extraordinary woman recorded in Jewish history it is stated that she was a prophetess as well as a judge, “to whom the children of Israel came for judgment.”
The Greeks and Romans too had female lawyers. From writers of the classic past we know that =Aspasia= pleaded causes in the Athenian forum, and =Amenia Sentia= and =Hortensia= in the Roman forum. And Valerius Maximus (Hist. lib. VIII, Chapter 3) states that the right of Roman women to follow the profession of advocate was taken away in consequence of the obnoxious conduct of =Caliphurnia=, who, from “excess of boldness” and “by reason of making the tribunals resound with howlings uncommon in the forum,” was forbidden to plead. The law, made to meet the especial case of Caliphurnia, ultimately “under the influence of the anti-feministic tendencies” of the period, was converted into a general one. In its wording the law sets forth that the original reason for woman’s exclusion “rested solely on the doings of said person.”
The “howlings of Caliphurnia” furnished the legislators of all later periods with a welcome pretext to exclude women from practice of the law, and it was not till 1869 that a woman again obtained admission to the bar. This pioneer was =Miss Arabella A. Mansfield= of Mount Pleasant, Iowa, who was admitted to the Iowa bar in 1869, under the statute providing only for admission of “white male citizens.”
The next female lawyer was =Mrs. Belva Ann Lockwood=, a graduate of the Law School of the National University at Washington, D. C. Having been admitted in 1873 to practice before the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, she applied in October, 1876, for admission as practitioner of the Supreme Court of the United States, but was rejected under the following decision: “By the uniform practice of the Court from its organization to the present time, and by the fair construction of its rules, none but men are admitted to practice before it as attorneys and counselors. This is in accordance with immemorial usage in England, and the law and practice in all the States, until within a recent period; and the Court does not feel called upon to make a change until such a change is required by statute or a more extended practice in the highest courts of the States.”
But if the members of the Supreme Court had entertained the hope of scaring away women once and for all, they soon enough found that they were mistaken. Mrs. Lockwood drafted a bill and secured its passage in Congress, providing “that any woman who shall have been a member of the bar of the highest court of any State or Territory, or of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, for the space of three years, and shall have maintained a good standing before such court, and who shall be a person of good moral character, shall, on motion, and the production of such record, be admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States.” This bill was approved on February 15th, 1879. Since then Mrs. Lockwood as well as a number of other female lawyers have been admitted under this law to practice before the highest court of the United States.
A “Woman’s International Bar Association” was organized in 1888, for the purpose of establishing law schools for women and of promoting the interests of female lawyers as well as of securing better legal conditions for women.
According to the Census of 1910 there were 1010 woman lawyers in the United States.
“Having taken up the law,” so said Miss Edith J. Griswold, herself a counsellor-at-law, “woman will not rest until she stands on a level with man, and the end of the Twentieth Century will probably find an equilibrium in the United States Government that can only be obtained (as in the home government) by the equal balancing of the different propensities of male and female mind in the making and enforcing of laws. The prophecy that the time is coming when woman will govern seems ludicrous, and yet it is no more ludicrous than the present lopsided arrangement whereby man has the exclusive power of government. With the rapid advance of woman conditions are being manifested that require woman’s judgment, and to obtain true justice in matters relating to both sexes an equal number of men and women should compose both the court and the jury. By the end of the Twentieth Century, I believe, a woman’s judgment will carry as much weight as a man’s, and the opinions handed down from our higher courts will have to be concurred in by an equal number of male and female judges.”
WOMEN AS INVENTORS.
Sometimes, when the merits of the woman movement were discussed, its opponents made it their trump that the female sex is without any inventive spirit and that this want should be regarded as a convincing evidence for the inferiority of woman s mind. That this assertion was never true at all, but made in absolute ignorance of the real facts, becomes evident, when we recall, that primeval and aboriginal women have been the inventors of our most important industries, of agriculture, weaving, basketry, pottery, tannery, brewing, and many other peaceful arts. And there is not the slightest doubt, that during the times of Antiquity and the Middle Ages women have been the greatest factor in the evolution of these industries, in which they remained constantly busy.
Among the few instances of which records have been preserved, is that of =Barbara Uttmann=, a German woman of Annaberg, Saxony, who in 1561 invented the Cluny-lace. Herewith she opened, for the extremely poor people of the Erzgebirge, at the most critical time, a new and well paying industry, in which in 1800 about 35,000 girls and women were busy.
Another important invention was made in 1792 in America by the widow of General Nathaniel Green. It was the so-called cotton gin by which the difficult work to separate the seed from the lint was greatly simplified. To pick the seed from one pound of cotton had been formerly considered a good day’s work. With the aid of the cotton gin, which consists of a series of saws revolving between the interstices of an iron bed upon which the cotton is placed so as to be drawn through whilst the seeds are left behind, several hundred pounds of cotton can be cleaned in the same time. This invention stimulated enormously the cultivation of cotton and the manufacture of cotton goods in America. In the South, where so far cotton had been produced only in small quantities, it now became the main product. While in 1792 the quantity exported from the United States was 138,324 pounds, it increased by the year 1800 to nearly 18,000,000 pounds. In the North it led to the establishment of cotton mills and factories on a large scale.
As only few countries have taken the trouble to prepare statistics about inventions made by women it is impossible to give reliable facts about what women have contributed to human culture in this line.
Their most intensive activity has been observed in the United States, especially since with the founding of woman’s colleges and the opening of the universities, the education of the female sex became a more careful and broader one.
The U. S. Patent Office at Washington, D. C., has published “Lists of Women Inventors,” in three volumes, covering the period from 1790 to March 1, 1895. From these lists it appears that till 1849 only 32 inventions by women have been registered at the Patent Office. This number increased to 290 during the period from 1850 to 1870; during 1870–1890 to 2568, and up to 1910 to 7942. These numbers prove that with the increase of woman’s knowledge and with the closer contact with modern industrial life her inventive spirit has likewise developed. Also the inventions became more manifold. While prior to 1850 they were almost exclusively confined to dress and household, they now cover all fields of human activity.
This fact became most evident during the terrible years of the World War. Some time ago the “Women Lawyer Journal” reported that of all the many inventions registered since 1914, fifty per cent. have been entered by women. Among these inventions have been such for the better protection of soldiers and aeronauts as well as for the greater comfort of the wounded and crippled. Other inventions meant improvement in wireless telegraphy, gas masks, submarine boats and hundreds of other objects.
EMINENT FEMALE SCIENTISTS.
Just as hostile as had been the clergy to the admission of women to ecclesiastical office, so unwilling were many prejudiced scholars to admit women into the sacred realms of science. By hundreds of arguments they tried to prove the inability of women to do any deeply scientific work. They explained that the hard study would impair their health, their chances of marriage, and their true destination as mothers. Higher education would make women unfit for domestic life, and, besides, they would hardly produce anything of real scientific value.
If these learned gentlemen would have taken the trouble to make themselves somewhat more acquainted with the history of science they would have found the names of numerous women on record, who, at their time, were among the leaders in the most abstruse sciences. Several centuries before Christ Hellas as well as Rome had a number of brilliant female philosophers, among them =Damo=, the daughter of Pythagoras, who lived about 580–500 B. C. She was one of his favorite disciples, and to her the great savant entrusted all his writings, enjoining her not to make public all the secrets of his philosophy. This command she strictly obeyed, though tempted by large offers while she was struggling with poverty.
Socrates, the great philosopher, declares that he learned of a woman, =Diotima=, the “divine philosophy,” how to find from corporeal beauty the beauty of the soul, the angelical mind. Diotima lived in Greece, about 468 B. C.
=Arete= is known as the daughter of Aristippus of Cyrene, the founder of the Cyrenaic system of philosophy, who flourished about 380 B. C. She was carefully instructed by her father, and after his death taught his system with great success. =Leontium=, living about 350 B. C., was a disciple of Epicure, and wrote in defense of his philosophy. =Tymicha=, a Lacedaemonian, was the most celebrated female philosopher of the Pythagorean school. When she, in 330 B. C., was brought before Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, as a prisoner, he made her very advantageous offers, if she would reveal the mysteries of Pythagorean science; but she rejected them all with scorn and contempt. And when he threatened her with torture, she instantly bit off her tongue, and spat it in the tyrant’s face, to show him that no pain could make her violate the pledge of secrecy.
Of =Hipparchia=, a lady of Thrace, who lived about 328 B. C., it is known that her attachment to learning was so great, that having attended several lectures of Crates, the cynic, she resolved to marry him though he was old, ugly, and deformed. She accompanied him everywhere to public entertainments and other places, which was not customary with Greecian women. She also wrote several philosophical theses, and reasonings and questions proposed to Theodorus, the atheist; but none of her writings are extant.
Ancient Rome too had a number of female philosophers, among them =Cornelia=, “the mother of the Gracchi.” She frequently gave public lectures and was more fortunate with her disciples than with her sons. It was Cicero, who said of her that, had she not been a woman, she would have deserved the first place among philosophers. In what esteem she was held is shown by the fact that a statue was erected to her with the inscription, “Cornelia, Mater Gracchorum.” She died about 230 B. C.
The most renowned female philosopher of the classic times was =Hypatia=, the lovely daughter of Theon, the head of the famous Alexandrian School in Alexandria, Egypt. Born in 370 A. D., Hypatia was taught by her father and acquired such extensive knowledge and learning, that the Bycantine Church historian Socrates, as well as Nicephorus placed her far above all the philosophers of her time. Several other learned contemporaries praise her in similar terms. Sinesius, bishop of Ptolemais, never mentions her without the profoundest respect, and in terms of affection little short of adoration. In a letter to his brother Euoptius he writes: “Salute the most honored and the most beloved of God, the Philosopher Hypatia, and that happy society, which enjoys the blessing of her divine voice.” And in a long epistle he sends her with the manuscript of a book, he asks her opinion and states his resolution not to publish the book without her approbation.
Hypatia succeeded her father in the government of the Alexandrian School, teaching from the chair where Ammonius, Hieracles, and other celebrated philosophers had taught; and this at a time, when men of immense learning abounded in Alexandria and in other parts of the Roman empire. In fact her renown was so universally acknowledged, that she had always a crowded auditorium. What a subject for an able artist, to present this beautiful woman in her chair, with the flower of all the youth of Africa, Asia and Europe sitting at her feet, eagerly imbibing knowledge from this oracle of wisdom.
Socrates states that she was consulted by the magistrates of Alexandria in all important cases. This frequently brought her among the greatest assemblages of men without causing the least censure of her manners. “Considering the confidence and authority which she had acquired by her learning,” says Socrates, “she sometimes came to the judges with singular modesty. Nor was she anything abashed to appear thus among a crowd of men; for all persons, by reason of her extraordinary discretion, did at the same time both reverence and admire her.”
Unfortunately this wonderful woman was to become a martyr of science. The population of Alexandria was split into three hostile groups—the Pagans, the Jews, and the Christians. The latter, under the leadership of the patriarch Cyril, assailed in violent zeal Jews as well as pagans, and heretics or supposed heretics alike, driving them by thousands from the city, destroying their synagogues and temples, and pillaging their houses. It was during one of these riots, that the illustrious Hypatia was attacked by a mob of vicious monks, torn from her carriage, dragged into a church, stripped naked and clubbed to death. Then the murderers in fanatic frenzy tore the body to pieces, carried the limbs to a public square and burnt them to ashes. This happened in Lent 415.
All the writings of Hypatia, among them her treatise “On the Astronomical Canon of Diophantus” and another “On the Conics of Apollonius” are lost. Most probably they too were destroyed by the fanatic Christian mobs, who, after the murder of Hypatia, extinguished the Greek School of philosophers and scientists at Alexandria.—
Astronomy, probably the most ancient of the sciences, has since early days exerted a singular attraction on women.
Herman Davis, in his essay “Women Astronomers,” published in the reports of Columbia University, New York, gives the names of a large number of women astronomers, beginning with several of classic times. Of the Egyptians he mentions =Aganice=, =Athyrta=, =Berenice=, =Hipparchia= and =Occelo=, who were connected with the Alexandrian School. Of the Greeks he names =Aristocle= and =Athenais=, and of Thessaly =Aglaonice=. But nothing definite is known about their achievement.
Davis likewise gives an account of =Hildegarde=, abbess of the monastery on Mount St. Rupert near Bingen on the Rhine. This learned woman, who lived from 1099 to 1180, wrote a book in Latin, in which some marvelous statements are claimed to have been made: 1. that the Sun is in the midst of the firmament retaining by its force the stars which move around it; 2. that when it is cold in the Northern hemisphere it is warm in the Southern, that the celestial temperature may thus be in equilibrium; 3. that the stars not only shine with unequal brilliancy but are themselves really unequal in magnitude; 4. that as blood moves in the veins and makes them pulsate, so do the stars move and send forth pulsations of light. “If even one-half of these marvelous statements are found in Hildegarde’s writings as early as the 12th Century,” says Davis, “then this woman may well be classed with the great forerunners of modern astronomy, with Copernicus, Galileo and Newton, for she was three centuries earlier than the first of them.”
The first female astronomer of whom we have more intimate information, was =Marie Cunitz=, born in 1610 as the eldest daughter of a physician in Silesia. Commanding an extraordinary general culture, her principal study was mathematics and astronomy. Her tables, published under the title “Urania Propitia, sive Tabulæ Astronomicæ,” gained for her a great reputation, and the by-name “the Silesian Pallas.” Dedicated to the Emperor Ferdinand III. the book was published in Latin and in German in 1650 and 1651.
Another noted astronomer was =Caroline Lucretia Herschel=, born in 1750 at Hanover, Germany. In 1772 she accompanied her brother William to England, and when he accepted the office of astronomer-royal, she became his constant assistant in his observations. In this capacity she succeeded in discovering independently eight comets, five of which had not been observed before. Also she discovered many of the small stellar nebulæ which were included in her brother’s catalogue. For her many contributions to astronomy in 1835 she was presented by the Astronomical Society with their gold medal, and was also elected an honorary member.
When the memoirs of Miss Herschel were published, the editor, in describing her character, said: “Great men and great causes have always some helper of whom the outside world knows but little. These helpers and sustainers have the same quality in common—absolute devotion and unwavering faith in the individual or the cause. Seeking nothing for themselves, thinking nothing of themselves, they have all the intense power of sympathy, a noble love of giving themselves for the service of others. Of this noble company of unknown helpers Caroline Herschel was one.”—
This capacity of self-denial distinguished likewise a number of other women, whose names are known in the history of astronomy, as for instance =Theresa= and =Madeline Manfredi=, the daughters of Eustachio Manfredi, from 1674 to 1739 director of the observatory of Bologna. Further, =Marie Margarethe Kirch=, who assisted her husband, the astronomer Kirch, in the upper Lausatia; Madame =Lepante=, the wife of the famous clock-maker Jean Andre Lepante; and nearer our own time, there is =Maria Mitchell=, born 1818 at Nantucket, Mass., who at an early age became the assistant of her father. Carrying on a series of independent observations, she was in 1865 appointed professor of astronomy in Vassar College.
=Emilie de Bréteuil=, =Antonie C. Asher=, =Elizabeth von Matt=, =Wilhelmine Witte= and =Agnes Mary Clerke= likewise distinguished themselves in astronomy. The last named lady published in 1885 a “History of Astronomy” and in 1890 “The System of the Stars.” These writings, conspicuous for a careful sifting and due assimilation of facts, with a happy diction that is at the same time both popular and scientific, place the author in the foremost rank of writers on astronomy.—