year in Edinburgh, one in Paris, one in London; and returning in December, 1856, located in New York. We regret that our limits forbid a more extended reference to this lady, whose abilities, attainments, and personal excellences cause her to share the respect of the public and the calls of private practice equally with her sister. It has seemed necessary to make Elizabeth Blackwell, as the elder physician, and for some reasons the more prominent, the special subject of our notice. In our further statements, however, we shall find them so thoroughly identified in their professional sphere, that they must necessarily be named together.

The "New York Infirmary for Women and Children," was the product of their united thought and effort. It was incorporated in the winter of 1853, and opened in the spring of 1854 as a dispensary, regulated and attended by Dr. Elizabeth. In 1856, on the return of Dr. Emily from Europe, they associated with them temporarily, Dr. M. E. Zakrzewska, a Polish lady, enlarged their plans, took a house, and opened it as a hospital, as well as a dispensary. The object was threefold, — a charity for the poor, a resort for respectable patients desiring special treatment, and particularly a centre to female students for practical clinical study. The Boston and Philadelphia colleges had already been chartered, and sent forth a number of graduates; but there was then no hospital which their students could freely visit, nor was there any designed exclusively for female patients. The New York Infirmary was therefore, for some years, the only woman's hospital in both these senses, and supplied an essential element in any full scheme of instruction. About thirty students have availed themselves of its advantages, by spending a year in daily attendance at its bedsides, and accompanying its visiting assistants into the homes of the poor. With an honorable list of consulting physicians, the treatment is yet entirely conducted by the Drs. Blackwell and their

female associates. Up to the present time over fifty thousand patients have received prescriptions and personal care by this means; and nearly a thousand have been inmates of its wards. Every variety of operation connected with midwifery (except the Cesarean), has there been successfully performed by Dr. Emily Blackwell, as attending surgeon. Both the sisters took an active part in the organization and work of the "Ladies Central Relief Association," during the war; and their parlor lectures to nurses about to enter the service of the army were highly valued.

In the personal qualities as well as professional methods of the Drs. Blackwell, the intellectual element decidedly predominates. Clear judgment, close analysis, and steady purpose mark their treatment of cases which come under their charge. They are strenuous advocates of thorough scientific attainments on the part of women who would engage in the profession; and enter continual protests against short courses of study, and low standards of acquirement in institutions for that purpose. On this account, they have refused to co-operate with any which have been organized, perhaps exacting too much from those which are confessedly imperfect at the beginning, and laboring under unavoidable disadvantages. Their influence, however, has thus been stimulating to all who are engaged in such efforts, "provoking them to good works." A paragraph in one of their lectures expresses their spirit. "It is observation and comprehension, not sympathy, which will discover the kind of disease. It is knowledge, not sympathy, which can administer the right medicine; and though warm sympathetic natures, with knowledge, would make the best of all physicians, without sound scientific knowledge, they would be most unreliable and dangerous guides." They are also firm in their conviction of the expediency of mingling the sexes in all scholastic training, and have very reluctantly relinquished

for the present, the hope of opening the ordinary colleges to female applicants. In their mode of practice they adopt the main features of the "regular" system, while refusing to be absolutely bound by any such limitations in their examination and use of remedies. On the whole, they furnish each as complete an instance as has come under our observation among women, of cool, dignified, self-poised character, scorning shams and artifices, resolutely, with disinterested motive, set on the attainment of worthy ends. In religious connection, they are Episcopalians, though, in theology as well as medicine, they seem to be independent searchers for truth.

MISS HARRIOT K. HUNT, M. D.

Perhaps no American woman of our time has made herself heard and felt in so many directions and amid such diverse circumstances as Harriot K. Hunt. Many have achieved more eminence in some one department, and the world of fashion or literature or art recognize them where she is unknown. But the parlor and the platform, the sick-room and the court-room, asylums and churches, wretched hovels and mansions of elegance, East and West, have been the scenes of her animated speech and determined work. By the lovers of truth and goodness, the radical philanthropists of various orders, she is widely known. Many causes have been promoted by her public advocacy. In private relations many a crushed, despairing woman has risen to new life under her stirring appeals, many a bold, profligate man has shrunk abashed before her pungent rebukes. It is difficult, therefore, to eliminate the professional part of her history from the social and reformatory, as our design obliges us to do, and to condense it into our brief limits.

She is a genuine Bostonian (a title which has significance,

both favorable and unfavorable), pedigreed, born, bred, and habituated as such. Her father, Joab Hunt, lived many years in the street in which his parents and grandparents had lived and lied. He was of a strong stock, full of vitality physical and mental. Her mother, Kezia Wentworth, was of an equally vigorous ancestry, and possessed a mind of remarkable qualities, argumentative, practical, independent, and withal abounding in tenderness and genial brightness, as did also her father, in whom humor and earnestness seem to have been happily combined. He was a shipping merchant, and through energy and prudence came into easy circumstances, amid which, Harriot and her sister Sarah, the only children, were reared. Harriot was born in 1805, the first child, fourteen years after her parents' marriage, and was joyfully welcomed and carefully trained. Her home was a happy one, and everything which affection could devise to foster her constitutional buoyancy of character was lavished upon her. Nothing occurred to shade the steady brightness of her life until 1827, when the sudden death of her father changed all her prospects. His estate was found to be encumbered and the settlement difficult. A few months previous, with some intimations of his embarrassed affairs, the sisters had opened a school, which became now the chief dependence of the family, beyond the small income from the property. It was also a means of discipline to themselves, qualifying them for their future work, brought them more into contact with the domestic lives of others, and acquainted them with those private underlying facts in regard to the condition of young girls and their home management, upon which so largely depends their health in maturer years. Harriot says of it, "My school was flourishing and I loved it. Yet I never felt it my true vocation. It seemed to be preparing me for something higher and more permanent. It was but transitional." In 1830 her sister was prostrated by severe illness. This, with

the experience of medical treatment in connection with it, formed the turning-point in the history of both. It was a distressing, complicated disease, and the prescriptions were after the severest forms of the old school of practice. After ten months' sickness without improvement, the sisters were roused to consider and study. They procured medical books and read, and arrived at the conclusion that the case had been misunderstood. Then came a change of physicians, with some advantage; but the interest awakened in the study of medicine and the conviction that much of the ordinary practice was blind and merely experimental, led them to pursue the investigation further for themselves and for the benefit of similar sufferers. In 1833, Mrs. Mott, an English woman, established herself in Boston. Her husband was a physician, but the care of female patients devolved chiefly upon her. She made extravagant claims to medical skill in the treatment of cases regarded as hopeless; yet her general success was too evident to be denied. She attracted their attention, and, in spite of friendly protests and the displeasure of former attendants, the invalid was placed under her care. The result was favorable. After more than three years' confinement, she was soon able to walk the streets and to attend church. Relations of intimacy, and affection were created between the physician and her patient's family. After a time they changed their residence, leasing their own house, and taking rooms in Mrs. Mott's. Then the school was given up, and Harriot accepted the position of secretary to Mrs. Mott, conducting an extensive correspondence with patients. She entered upon it with her usual ardor. It enlarged the sphere of her observation, intensified her sympathy especially for those afflicted with hidden ailments, and "deepened the instinct which pointed her to the medical profession.” Meanwhile she read with avidity everything which bore upon it. She was fascinated by it, eager for knowledge in each depart