Life Is A Verb
In many of my books, I explore the world of women in medicine (both historical and contemporary). "Domina," for example, deals with the barriers facing 19th century women who wished to become doctors. They were barred from medical schools, or if they somehow gained entry, were forced to sit outside classrooms and were forbidden to attend anatomy classes. Women were considered mentally too weak to grasp medicine, and certainly not mentally or emotionally strong enough to make such important decisions as diagnosis and treatment. Pioneers such as Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910) were considered "unfeminine," and faced bias not only among her peers but in the public at large as well.
But there are other women in medicine who deserve study: the female patient. The typical Victorian male physician thought of women as vain, silly and not to be taken seriously. A woman in the 1880's, who went to a male doctor, was given only a cursory exam (certainly no removal of clothing). She might be subjected to a light touch of the stethoscope, but nothing more. And then she would received this typical advice: "Lie down an hour after each meal. Engage in no more than two hours of intellectual activity daily. And never pick up pen, pencil or paintbrush." This advice was actually given to writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) when she went to a famed Philadelphia doctor with a complaint of what he described as "marital malaise," and diagnosed her as suffering from "nervous prostration," a malady brought on by overstimulation of the fragile female mind. He prescribed total rest and relaxation, and advised her to lead a passive life.
Her response was: "Life is a verb! Life consists of action!"
Flouting the narrow-minded doctor's injunction against intellectual work, Gilman moved to California and went on to become a prolific and respected author, producing such acclaimed pieces as "Women and Economics," and, "The Yellow Wallpaper."
I applaud her strength. I also raise my glass to our grandmothers and great-grandmothers who had the courage to storm the male citadel of medicine and pave the way for women to become doctors, thus opening a new world to the female patients who need serious attention and treatment other than being told to lead the passive life. Because, after all, as Charlotte Gilman said, life is a verb.
