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Zakrzewska never considered applying to an unorthodox medical school. To understand this one must recognize that for women the decision whether to pursue an orthodox or unorthodox education carried particular meaning because they struggled with questions of legitimacy on two counts: accused of being incapable of practicing medicine because of their sex, they risked being further discredited, at least by regular physicians, should they pursue an unorthodox path.∞∑ Indeed, the fledgling American Medical Association (ama) had, at its creation in 1847, established a code of ethics forbidding regular physicians from consulting with all other practitioners. According to the ama’s founders, unorthodox practices were ‘‘based on an exclusive dogma.’’ Whether homeopaths were prescribing infinitesimally small doses of medicines, hydropaths were recommending water cures for most ailments, or Thomsonians were promoting botanical cures, all were allegedly endangering the lives of their patients by discarding therapeutic measures that had stood the test of science and had been part of the profession’s medical arsenal for centuries.∞∏ Unorthodox physicians, in response, went straight to the regular profession’s Achilles’ heel—
the high mortality rates, especially during outbreaks of epidemic diseases—and they held the harsh practices of the regular profession, foremost the excessive bleeding, purging, and puking, responsible for such poor outcomes. As for the charge that their practices lacked any scientific foundation, unorthodox physicians begged to di√er. Homeopaths in particular insisted that the laws upon which they based their practices (the laws of ‘‘like cures like’’ and of infinitesimal
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doses) had more scientific legitimation than the ‘‘heroic’’ measures so beloved by regular practitioners.∞π
Many of the battles fought among nineteenth-century medical practitioners centered on competing understandings of science, but one also cannot ignore the sheer power of the claim that one’s group alone was proceeding scientifically. Much of the tension between orthodox and unorthodox physicians at midcentury should, in fact, be seen as largely rhetorical in nature, fueled by competition and turf battles. This is not to say that there were few di√erences between the various medical philosophies. Regular medicine relied largely on depletive measures, such as bloodletting, cathartics, and purgatives, to restore the sick body to health; homeopathy, in contrast, may have sought the same goal, but it did so by administering small doses of medicines that were found to mimic the symptoms brought on by the disease; hydropathy went even further, promoting a therapeutic regimen that consisted largely of applications of cold water. To the patient certainly it mattered whether one was prescribed small pills and drops whose action on the body remained invisible or whether one was given violent purgatives and emetics. ∞∫ Still, a closer look at actual practices indicates that at the time the ama forbade consultation with unorthodox practitioners, a number of so-called homeopathic physicians used some traditional therapeutic regimens. Conversely, regular physicians sometimes prescribed homeopathic remedies. Indeed, despite the acrimony of their rhetoric, regular physicians and homeopaths often socialized together, attending the same parties and meetings and even, on occasion, referring family members to one another. The members of the ama had, in other words, made a strategic choice to highlight the di√erences between regular medicine and homeopathy rather than focus on the similarities. Accusations of being ‘‘unscientific’’ drew attention to this chosen rift. ∞Ω
It is against this background that we must understand Zakrzewska’s decision to pursue a regular medical education. There can be no question that she questioned the therapeutic e≈cacy of irregular practices, but she was also acting on her ambition to be accepted by the elite of the medical profession.≤≠ Nor
was she alone. Elizabeth Blackwell, Emily Blackwell, Ann Preston, and Mary Putnam Jacobi, among others, also believed that an orthodox education would render women better practitioners and that it would confer the desired cultural legitimacy on practitioners of their sex.≤∞ Indeed, some women, like the gynecologic surgeon Mary Dixon-Jones, who received her first degree from New
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York’s Hygeio-Therapeutic Medical College in 1862, even sought a second degree later in life from an orthodox school because of the greater prestige bestowed on a regular education. And Sarah Adamson Dolley, who graduated from an eclectic school in 1851, later turned her back on her own unorthodox education when she helped found a medical society restricted to regular women physicians in Rochester, New York.≤≤
Zakrzewska was thus among those women who cast their lot with the regular medical profession. As good fortune had it, a contact she had made earlier with the matron of a homeless shelter led her to Elizabeth Blackwell, a woman whose commitment to orthodoxy paralleled her own. The two women liked each other right away. Perhaps this stemmed from their shared European background; Blackwell was born in England and had moved with her family to the United States when she was twelve years old. ≤≥ But certainly what drew them together most was their shared determination to challenge the medical profession’s discrimination against women. Describing their first meeting in May 1854, Zakrzewska later commented that ‘‘from this call . . . I date my new life in
America.’’≤∂ As Blackwell explained to her sister, Emily, just after this meeting:
‘‘I have at last found a student in whom I can take a great deal of interest—
Marie Zackrzewska [ sic], a German, about twenty-six. Dr. Schmidt, the head of the Berlin midwifery department, discovered her talent, advised her to study, and finally appointed her as chief midwife in the hospital under him; there she taught classes of about 150 women and 50 young men, and proved herself most capable. . . . There is the true stu√ in her, and I shall do my best to bring it out.
She must obtain a medical degree.’’≤∑
Blackwell, who also dreamed of founding a hospital for the medical care and training of women, had already opened a small dispensary in 1853.≤∏ Located in Kleindeutschland, the dispensary catered primarily to poor German immigrants who had not yet lived long enough in the United States to have mastered the English language. Blackwell’s excitement at meeting Zakrzewska thus also reflected her realization that the young German could help her in caring for this population. She suggested that Zakrzewska begin immediately to assist her at the dispensary. She also o√ered to tutor her young protégée twice a week in English. In the meantime, she promised to try to secure a place for Zakrzewska in a medical school. Zakrzewska, who could not ‘‘comprehend how Blackwell could ever have taken so deep an interest in me as she manifested that morning,’’ left Blackwell’s home secure that she had found a good and powerful
friend.≤π
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During the summer and fall of 1854, a number of things came together. Most important, Blackwell succeeded in getting Zakrzewska enrolled at Cleveland Medical College for the winter term. Blackwell’s sister, Emily, had just graduated from that institution; she was the second woman to receive her degree there since 1852. (All in all, six women graduated from Cleveland Medical College before it closed its doors to women in 1856.)≤∫ The timing was good for Zakrzewska because although her family had grown during the year—her sister Sophie had arrived the previous autumn, and before the year was out both Herman and her half brother had come to New York as well—one by one they were settling in. Anna was engaged to Albert Crouze, the son of a family the Zakrzewskis had known in Berlin; Sophie had set up her own millinery business; and Herman had found a position as a mechanical engineer.≤Ω Besides, Zakrzewska’s business had taken a turn for the worse. As the demand for worsted goods had declined, she had taken up the production of silk coi√ures and then the embroidering of caps, but she had not been as successful in this line of work.
Indeed, her finances had dwindled to the point that had Blackwell not arranged for the subsidy of some of her school f
ees she would not have been able to af-ford her medical education.≥≠ For Zakrzewska, the winter term could not start quickly enough.
. . .
Zakrzewska left for Cleveland almost seventeen months after her arrival in New York. She had spent that entire period living among family members in the well-marked ethnic community of Kleindeutschland. Surrounded by other Germans, speaking her native tongue at home and on the streets, and providing medical care to German immigrants whose knowledge of English was markedly worse than her own, Zakrzewska must have wondered at times whether she had ever really left home. She would not have such doubts once she arrived in Cleveland, despite the city’s well-developed German-speaking population.≥∞ Indeed, her
first experiences there were a painful reminder of her poor language skills and how little progress she had actually made during the past year and a half.
Having arrived earlier than expected, she felt reluctant to trouble the family that had agreed to be her host, and she ended up spending the first night in a hotel. Her knowledge of English was not, however, good enough to allow her to request that dinner be brought to her room, and she ended up going to bed hungry. Nor, apparently, did she know a word as simple as ‘‘breakfast,’’ for she tells an amusing story of how, in desperation, she barked out an order for a
‘‘Beefsteak’’ the following morning when she awoke, famished from the long
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hours she had gone without food. To Zakrzewska, the English language was still
‘‘like chaos.’’ It took another three months before she felt comfortable with the language and another full year before she approached anything remotely like mastery. ‘‘I am not,’’ she once claimed in a classic understatement, ‘‘a linguist by nature.’’≥≤ Indeed, like many people who learn a new language as an adult, Zakrzewska never fully lost signs of her native tongue.
Zakrzewska finally met her host, Caroline M. Severance, the following afternoon. This marked the beginning of a friendship between the two women—
Severance, who was born in 1820, was nine years older than Zakrzewska—that lasted almost fifty years. ≥≥ It also signaled Zakrzewska’s introduction to the world of American politics, for it was through the Severances that she first met many of the leaders of the antislavery and women’s rights movements, providing her with a political education that matched the medical education she received during her stay in Cleveland. Zakrzewska later described this period as the beginning of her political awakening. A ‘‘new world,’’ she wrote, appeared before her eyes as she made the acquaintance of such individuals as William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Theodore Parker, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass, Sarah and Angelina Grimké, Harriot Hunt, and Caroline Dall.≥∂
Zakrzewska had arrived in Cleveland in the midst of battles that were already threatening to divide the country. The Fugitive Slave Law was four years old, the Kansas-Nebraska Act barely five months old, and the Republican Party had only just started taking shape. ‘‘Discussions pro and con on all kinds of subjects agitated the people,’’ Zakrzewska remembered, ‘‘and more than once did I hear the ‘Boston Trio’—William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips and Theodore Parker—denounced as disturbers of Law and Order.’’≥∑ Zakrzewska would eventually find the radical views of the ‘‘Boston Trio’’ most to her liking, but during the years she spent in Cleveland, she moved comfortably among a wide variety of political groups. This was especially the case at the Independent Christian Church, a Unitarian-Universalist church that the Severances had helped establish and where Zakrzewska spent a considerable amount of time during her two years in Cleveland. ‘‘The congregation,’’ Zakrzewska later wrote, ‘‘was the most heterogeneous imaginable. Most of the people were in a transition stage from the darkest orthodoxy to atheism, neither of these extremes satisfying their ideals. There were also reformers in other directions dissatisfied with all existing codes of religion and law who sought refuge in the companionship of malcontents. Thus, we had not only Unitarians and Univer-
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salists to meet, but also Spiritualists, Magnetists, Fourierists, Freelovers, Women’s Rights advocates, Abolitionists—in fact, followers of all kinds of isms then existing.’’≥∏
Zakrzewska’s attraction to this group had much to do with its roots in a liberal religious movement dating from the eighteenth century. Universalist and Unitarian churches in particular had long rejected religious orthodoxy (particularly the Trinity), as well as religious enthusiasm, church hierarchies, and the harsh and judgmental God of New England Calvinism. Their emphases were, instead, on reason in religious a√airs and free and independent inquiry; moreover, they held firmly to a belief in a benevolent deity who endowed individuals with an innate moral sense meant to guide them in their actions and help them to create a humane and just society.≥π It had been exactly this innate moral sense that had directed the Severances to leave the Presbyterian Church in the early 1840s and help form a church organized largely around the antislavery movement. Thus when Zakrzewska joined the Severances’ household in October 1854, she entered the heart of this small community of social and political reformers. Her ties to this group were strengthened when she moved in with the family of the church’s new pastor, Amory Dwight Mayo, in April 1855.
Zakrzewska never mentioned whether she temporarily embraced Unitarian doctrine, but there can be no doubt that she felt comfortable with the philosophy, if not the theology, of this religious community. Although she would eventually become an avowed atheist, she maintained close relations throughout her life with several of the more radical Unitarian ministers, predominantly Theodore Parker and James Freeman Clarke.≥∫
The members of this congregation also publicly supported the movement for women’s rights. Among them, Caroline Severance may very well have been the most directly involved. As early as 1851, at the second statewide convention for women’s rights in Ohio, she had been a commanding figure. The following year she was elected to the vice presidency of the newly formed Ohio Woman’s Rights Association and a year later to the vice presidency of the National Woman’s Rights Convention; by 1854, the year Zakrzewska moved into her home, she was addressing the state legislature on behalf of ‘‘su√rage and such amendments to the state laws of Ohio, as should place woman on a civil equality with man.’’≥Ω Like other members of the more radical wing, Severance was throwing her weight not only behind the struggle for married women’s rights to own property, have joint guardianship of their children, and control their own earnings but also behind the more controversial demand for su√rage.
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Severance thus introduced Zakrzewska both to antislavery issues and to the battle for women’s rights. Zakrzewska later claimed that she initially had had a more di≈cult time understanding the need for the latter. ‘‘I was shocked,’’
she wrote, ‘‘that Mrs. Wright and others had demanded the emancipation of women. That a Woman’s Rights Convention was held in New York State seemed to me so ridiculous.’’∂≠ This may seem a surprising comment for someone who had been fighting for her own rights for years, but Zakrzewska does not appear to have appreciated at first the broader context of the battles in which she was engaged. Perhaps this is because in Berlin she had not fought to enter a male domain; rather, she had aspired to the position of head midwife, which had always gone to a woman. It is true that Schmidt had wished to increase the power of the head midwife, but the resistance he encountered, and Zakrzewska experienced, may not have been strong enough to push her toward a deeper analysis of her problems. Besides, an experience of discrimination does not always lead one to an understanding of how power operates. ∂∞
However ‘‘shocked’’ Zakrzewska may have felt when she first heard about the women’s rights movement, she soon came to a deeper understanding of the politics of discrimination. No one seems to have been more
influential here than Harriot Kezia Hunt, whom Zakrzewska met at the Severances shortly after she arrived in Cleveland.∂≤ One of the best-known women’s physicians in Boston at the time, Hunt had been practicing medicine since 1835, although she had never been formally trained. She, like Blackwell, had tried to gain acceptance to an orthodox medical school in the late 1840s, but her decision to apply only to Harvard (which did not admit women until 1945) suggests that she was most interested in making a political statement.
Hunt, like Severance (and many other women’s rights advocates at the time), had strong ties to both the antislavery and women’s rights movements. In attendance at an antislavery meeting in Boston in 1850, she had been one of ten women who had called for, planned, and then spoken at the first National Woman’s Rights Convention later the same year. Hunt’s engagement with these issues also led her to issue a formal protest to the Boston city authorities in 1852, and to continue registering this complaint year after year, against ‘‘taxation without representation.’’ She resented, as she explained to the treasurer of the city, ‘‘the injustice and inequality of levying taxes upon women, and at the same time refusing them any voice or vote in the imposition and expenditure of the same.’’ Yet, she went on, ‘‘[e]ven drunkards, felons, idiots, or lunatics of men, may still enjoy that right of voting, to which no woman—however large the
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