County.”
“As what? I would be put to work doing nursing and scut work, and we both know that, dear, sweet Christian.”
He stared into her knowing eyes.
“Don’t look that way at me. You know it’s true. You, sir . . . you live in a world of your own making, but the rest of us . . . we live in
“In the end, we all of us create our own reality. You’re foolish to’ve created yours as Tewes!”
CITY FOR RANSOM
127
“You say that . . . that it is up to me, yet you know why I had to leave Chicago, and why I had to return as Tewes.”
“A woman asking for a look at a private collection of medical books to fulfill her dissertation so she might graduate on to medical school, yes.”
“And I was turned down.”
“You ought to’ve fought them!”
“With what?”
“With the strength your father instilled in you!”
“You sound like my Gabrielle.”
“Your girl . . . now in medical school?”
“Yes, and she is such a dreamer.”
“Dreamers are needed in this life.”
“Perhaps . . . but my dreams were done in by reality.”
“But reality is what
“You and Gabby will love one another.”
“You . . . daughter.”
“Sadly, the young man murdered at the train station was seeing Gabrielle, and God forgive me, I’d forbidden their seeing one another, and now this.”
“Poor child.”
“She can’t be distracted from her studies—not by anyone or anything, not if she’s to succeed.”
“Succeed like her mother or like Dr. Tewes?”
She bridled at this. “We’ve had disagreements . . . over not allowing anything to distract her from her goals.”
“Her goals?”
“Yes, her goals.”
“Well, Jane . . . I am an outsider here, but—”
“The young man who was killed, he’d walked her home from the fair. It was to be the last time she’d see him! That’s what I told her . . . and prophetically and sadly . . .”
“And how is she taking it?”
“Too calmly . . . too well. Going about . . . my God, as if nothing of the sort could possibly’ve happened.”
“A holding pattern; in order to deal with it. Grief must 128
ROBERT W. WALKER
manifest itself in some form or other. Keep her close; keep a watch on your daughter, Jane.”
“I have.”
“To lose someone close is difficult enough, but to lose someone to this madman afoot in Chicago?” Dr. Fenger looked profoundly sad for Gabrielle.
“Yes, so here again is reality. Like a hurdle everywhere.”
“Still . . . inside here,” he said, pointing to his head, “you can and will one day turn a corner, and when you do, you’ll be living your dream, as Dr. Jane Francis.”
“Discouraged, disillusioned, hurt. How do I ever dream again?”
“You find a way.”
“Hell, Christian, you’ve heard the views held by Dr.
McKinnette and the great Dr. Banefield Jones and Dr. Stille.
That women haven’t the disposition or the stomach for medicine, and especially surgery.”
“They harp the belief of the general population.”
“Fools all!”
“Unfortunately, yes, but Jane, that was years ago, my dear.”
“Not for me, sir. For any woman in medicine, that is today.”
They sat silent, each thinking of the vile words of McKinnette, Jones, and Dr. Alfred Stille, that day at the sympo-sium; words leveled at the few women in the room, including Emily Blackwell, sister to Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell.
“Rush Medical College refused Emily Blackwell permission to allow her to finish her medical studies. Rush— your medical school—in 1852, and why? The Illinois State Medical Society censured the school for admitting a woman!” “That was 1852. This is 1893, Jane.”
“And the problem of training women in medicine continues unabated. My Gabrielle faces it every day at Northwestern, the same narrow-minded pig-swallop that constitutes the average doctor’s attitude toward us, that we are as mentally unfit as we are physically unfit for—” “You needn’t recount—”
CITY FOR RANSOM
129
“—for even a business profession.”
“I know. I know all this.”
“But you left the room when Dr. Stille finished his remarks during his presidential address to the American Medical Association.”
“You’ve read the minutes, and I suppose you’re right to condemn me, but I was only eighteen. Have you carried Stille’s words with you since?”
“I have, yes. Shall I recite?”
“Please don’t.”
She did. “ ‘All experience teaches that woman is characterized by a striking uncertainty of rational judgment, capri-ciousness of sentiment, fickleness of purpose, and indecision of action—which makes her totally unfit for professional pursuits.’ ” Fenger knew the truth of it. What women in medicine faced. Prejudice, backward beliefs, amazingly parochial attitudes. Not only were women, in the eyes of most medical professionals, mentally unsuited for professional study, but in the case of medicine, there were additional “reasons” to bar them. These had to do with modesty and morality that caused awkwardness during physiological discussions and in dissections—both of which felt like venues no
Bill Byford at Chicago Medical solicited and accepted young women to—”
“Yes and again the male students petitioned at close of term that women be removed!”
“Making idiotic charges against Byford and other faculty as I recall.”
“Claimed they’d prudishly omitted a number of observations and clinical techniques due to the presence of women.”
Jane paused. “Damn, some of the leading physicians of Chicago are
“I remember when Nathan Smith Davis advocated sepa
130
ROBERT W. WALKER
rate female colleges for medicine, and for halting women from gaining a foothold in the American Medical Association,” said Fenger. He laughed.
“What?”
