The summer of 1855 ended, however, with a personal tragedy for her. In July she heard that her mother had decided to come to the United States with the
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two youngest children to visit the rest of her family and to figure out whether there would be any opportunities for her husband should she wish to remain.
Zakrzewska later wrote to a friend of the great happiness she had felt ‘‘at the prospect of beholding again the mother whom I loved beyond all expression, and who was my friend besides.’’ But on 18 September, the Mayos received a telegram from Zakrzewska’s siblings with the message that they should ‘‘[t]ell Zakrzewska that she must calmly and quietly receive the news that our good mother sleeps at the bottom of the ocean, which serves as her monument and her grave.’’ Caroline Zakrzewski had died at sea three weeks earlier, apparently from a violent hemorrhage, and the two daughters traveling with her (Minna and Rosalia) had chosen to have her lowered to the bottom of the ocean rather than, as Zakrzewska later explained, ‘‘bring to us a corpse instead of the living.’’
When Zakrzewska received this news, she set out immediately for New York, feeling very much the need to be with her siblings during this time of mourn-
ing.∏∫ She remained there several weeks, returning once again in December, ostensibly to deliver her sister Anna of a baby boy but perhaps also to seek the comfort of her family circle.∏Ω
Unfortunately we lack letters from this time of Zakrzewska’s life that would provide more insight into her response to her mother’s death. All we have is her autobiographical sketch, written four years later, in which she tells her friend Mary (to whom she is ‘‘relaying’’ her life’s story) that ‘‘this is the most trying passage that I have to write in this sketch of my life.’’ ‘‘[Y]ou must not think me weak,’’ she went on, ‘‘that tears blot the words as I write.’’π≠ She tells us, however, little more, although that in itself may be significant. Zakrzewska was and remained an extraordinarily private individual, viewing public displays of emotion as highly distasteful. The autobiographical sketch, which was intended for publication, would consequently have been an unlikely site for expressing the depth of her distress. Besides, one of her goals in writing this ‘‘letter’’ to Mary was to paint a picture of women as anything but sentimental. Tears were thus allowed but, as she took pains to emphasize, no signs of weakness.
Thus it should come as no surprise that she turned immediately in her autobiographical sketch from her account of her mother’s death to the time she devoted while on the East Coast to expanding her professional network. Perhaps she sought solace in her work, or perhaps she wished to communicate to her readers that women should choose work over self-indulgence and self-pity.
Whatever her intent, she did meet frequently with Elizabeth Blackwell while
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she was in New York in order to plan an infirmary they hoped to establish when Zakrzewska returned from Cleveland. The small dispensary Blackwell had earlier operated was no longer in existence; she had not had the time to attend the clinics on a regular basis herself. But she now planned together with Zakrzewska the establishment of a larger institution, which Elizabeth’s sister, Emily, would also help run. Not wasting any time, the two women invited a few wealthy friends to Blackwell’s home, and they organized right then and there an association whose task it was to raise, through the holding of fairs, the ten thousand dollars they calculated they would need in order to purchase a house for their new infirmary. π∞
Before beginning her journey back to medical school, Zakrzewska took the brief excursion to Boston referred to earlier. When she returned to Cleveland, she moved in with the Vaughans, the Mayos no longer needing her help, and she set herself the task of fulfilling the obligations for the M.D.π≤ This included attending a second term of classes, studying for her examinations, and writing a thesis in English. Although Zakrzewska scarcely mentions her thesis in her autobiographical sketch, Cleveland’s medical theses are extant, and it has been possible to get a copy of her work. Interestingly, although perhaps not surprisingly given her background in midwifery, Zakrzewska chose to write on
‘‘the organ of parturition.’’ She decided, however, not simply to describe the physiology of this organ but also to challenge prevailing views on the centrality of the uterus for understanding women’s nature. One can just imagine Zakrzewska returning to Cleveland from her visit with Harriot Hunt, Sarah Grimké, Angelina Grimké, and other radical reformers, fired up over issues of women’s rights and determined to begin establishing links between her medical and scientific studies and the social reform causes to which she had become committed.
. . .
The first evidence of this commitment was a fourteen-page study that, on the surface, dealt with the similarities and di√erences between the organs of parturition in the various classes of the vegetable and animal kingdoms. Without question, though, Zakrzewska’s goal was to challenge the biological ‘‘facts’’
upon which physicians based their argument for fundamental di√erences between the sexes and thus for a division of labor between men and women. One can easily imagine Zakrzewska viewing this as an opportunity to dismantle the claims of someone like Carl Meyer, president of the Berlin Society of Obstetri-
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cians, who had denied women’s ability to think scientifically.π≥ Her barbs were, moreover, directed specifically toward those who attributed women’s alleged limited mental abilities to their possession of a womb.π∂
Understanding fully the rhetorical power of a claim to science, Zakrzewska began by placing her work within a European tradition that had long been concerned with a ‘‘science of obstetrics.’’ This she contrasted with the approach of the American medical community, which still treated the subject ‘‘too much as a mere mechanical process,’’ ignoring the use of comparative physiology and embryology to understand better the developmental history of specific structures and their functions.π∑ Zakrzewska, whose central goal was to understand the organs of parturition in ‘‘the genus man,’’ nevertheless insisted that ‘‘a correct knowledge of the human uterus, with its functions, qualities and dif-ferent relations . . . [can be] obtained only by a strict and critical comparison with creatures below the human species.’’π∏ Through such a study, she explained, one learns that there are three basic types of organs of parturition: the one found most commonly in plants, where the organ in which the ovum develops is lost when the ovum is expelled; the type more common among the lower animal forms, where the organ is retained for ‘‘future procreation’’; and the one, typical of higher animal forms, in which a separate organ, the uterus, functions as a separate repository for the fertilized ovum.
Zakrzewska believed (mistakenly) that this comparative approach demonstrated that the uterus was nothing more than a highly developed di√erentiation of the intestines. She defended this by insisting that a rudimentary uterus in the lower animals was little more than ‘‘a mere enlargement of the oviduct’’ and that the oviduct itself was ‘‘connected with the intestinal canal,’’ even retaining a ‘‘structural analogy with the intestines’’ higher up the scale. Thus, although
‘‘in the mammalia this organ [the uterus] is very distinct and conspicuous and seems to have lost its a≈nity with the oviducts and intestines,’’ what the comparative approach demonstrates is that the pattern has just been obscured.ππ ‘‘It therefore cannot,’’ Zakrzewska went on,
be a matter of surprize [ sic] that during pregnancy the uterus not only assumes an intestinal appearance, but also through di√erent sympathetic disturbances, producing an e√ect upon the whole system, reminds us of its derivation. The shortning [ sic] of the cervix and the development of the muscular tissue, which is enlarged to produce the peristaltic motions at the time of labor—prove that pregnancy is the return of the uterine sys-
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tem, to the type of the intestinal system. And in this fact is concealed the secret of the opening of the os uterii and labor pains, which result from the peristaltic motions thus established. But labor . . . is not only the process of transformation to the intestinal but appraoches [ sic] also the type of the egg, for the pyriform shape is entirely changed to the form of an egg, the two extremities becoming more and more oval until they have assumed a similar form. At the time when the return to this type is completed, parturition takes place.π∫
It bears mention that Zakrzewska was not suggesting an evolutionary connection between the three di√erent uterine forms she described. Rather, in the years before Darwin published On the Origin of Species, most embryologists believed that such similarities revealed instead the particular plan, idea, or ‘‘type’’
that defined the parameters according to which development occurred. The
‘‘type’’ established connections or relations between di√erent classes of organisms not because they shared a common ancestor but rather because the members of a particular group shared a fundamental structural pattern unique to the members of the group. This pattern, Zakrzewska believed, was more evident among the ‘‘simpler’’ organisms, growing ever more obscure as one climbed the ladder of complexity. Thus her justification for taking a comparative approach was that by studying ‘‘a similar organ or its equivalent in the lower organism . . .
we find the functions and other qualities comparatively simple and distinct.’’πΩ
As may be evident from the passage cited above, Zakrzewska drew not only on a comparative tradition but also on arguments of analogy frequently associated more closely with German nature philosophy. Indeed, in other sections of her thesis she wrote about sensibility and irritability as ‘‘the two poles of life’’
and wondered whether the organization of higher forms could best be characterized as one of ‘‘Unity or Duality.’’∫≠ At still other times she cited Alexander von Humboldt or drew upon her knowledge of the therapeutic e√ects of certain drugs. In short, this was a highly eclectic piece, and while the level of scientific knowledge may have been modest, what Zakrzewska demonstrated was her ability to cull information from a variety of sources in order to drive home her point, to wit, that the uterus was little more than an outgrowth of the intestines.
Two aspects of Zakrzewska’s thesis deserve note. First, unlike the two other female graduates of Cleveland Medical College who had also practiced medicine before beginning their studies, Zakrzewska chose to write on a scientific rather than a clinical topic. ∫∞ More than likely this decision stemmed from
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her strong identification with the scientific tradition that had developed in Germany in the 1840s, a tradition she had embraced during her studies with Schmidt. But Zakrzewska’s thesis was more than an advertisement for European approaches to the ‘‘science of obstetrics.’’ She also seemed determined to demonstrate, by example, women’s ability to employ scientific reasoning.∫≤ As
Zakrzewska explained in her introduction, she could have written on any number of topics, all of which would have fallen under the rubric of obstetrics. That she chose to focus on ‘‘the organ of parturition’’ marked her first attack on the biological arguments used to justify women’s confinement to the home. Thus, in contrast to those who claimed that women’s mental and physical abilities were dictated by their possession of a womb, Zakrzewska denied that any meaningful sexual di√erences existed at all. Instead, she insisted that the womb be understood as part of the intestinal tract; that labor be compared to the peristaltic motions of the intestinal system; and that the relation between the uterus and the ovaries be seen as ‘‘somewhat similar to that of the bladder to the kidneys.’’∫≥
Clearly, Zakrzewska’s decision to dethrone the quintessential female organ—to challenge, in her words, one physician’s mystification of ‘‘this portion of the human frame’’ as the ‘‘Wonder of Nature’’∫∂—indicates that by 1855 she had already come to understand that her scientific and medical studies could be turned to political ends.
Zakrzewska submitted her thesis in the winter of 1855. It was, she later wrote,
‘‘considered exceptionally good, and was the cause of my not failing as a candidate for a diploma, because I received only mediocre marks in all the branches of study, even falling below the passing mark in one branch.’’∫∑ Such mediocre grades may very well have reflected her di≈culty with the English language, but Zakrzewska chose instead to attribute them to her own rebelliousness. As she later claimed, parroting the rhetoric of Prussian educational reformers like Wilhelm von Humboldt as she did so, she found most ‘‘pernicious’’ the insistence on memorizing ‘‘isolated facts and filling the brain to its fullest capacity with the names of authors and their opinions,’’ leaving no room ‘‘for individual reasoning or for the power of making original deductions and applications.’’∫∏
As we will see, Zakrzewska would make the link between independent thinking and scientific reasoning one of her central leitmotifs; she would also challenge the gender stereotypes in circulation at the time by insisting on women’s ability to engage in this form of reasoning as well.
Zakrzewska graduated from Cleveland Medical College in March 1856. She was one of four women who received the M.D. that day out of a class of forty-
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two students. The room, as Zakrzewska described it, was packed not only with friends and family but also with ‘‘a goodly number of the curious of the city who had come to get a look at the women doctors. ’’∫π To be a woman and a doctor, especially one who graduated from an orthodox medical institution, was still a novelty. Cleveland Medical College, as we have already mentioned, would not continue the experiment. Indeed, all-male orthodox institutions would not open their doors to women on a regular basis until the 1870s. As a result, until that time the vast majority of women who received an orthodox education in the third quarter of the century did so at one of four all-female medical institutions: Female Medical College of Pennsylvania (1850; in 1867 the school changed its name to the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania), Boston’s New England Female Medical College (1856), Woman’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary (1865), and Chicago’s Woman’s Hospital Medical College (1870). (A fifth institution was founded in Baltimore in 1882.) Zakrzewska was thus not only unusual among women for having studied medicine; as a graduate of a coeducational regular institution, she stood out among female doctors as well.
Immediately following graduation, Zakrzewska headed back to New York City. She wished to be with her family again, but, perhaps more important, she could not wait to join Emily and Elizabeth Blackwell and finally set in motion their plans for a hospital for women and children. Highly skilled, thoroughly committed to regular medicine, and acutely aware of the ground they were breaking as female doctors, Zakrzewska was anxious to start the next phase of her life.
The First Hospital for
Women and Children
A return to New York City meant, for Zakrzewska, a return to her family. By this time, all her siblings had immigrated to America, and while her two brothers had decided to travel west to seek their fortunes, her sisters had remained together, moving to Hoboken, New Jersey, the seat of a large German-language community. Her family circle now included her sister Anna, her brother-in-law, Albert Crouze, and their three-month-old baby; her sister Sophie, who was managing a flourishing millinery establishment; Minna, who remained at home to run the household; and Rosalia, who was still young enough to be in school.
They were, moreover, looking forward to a visit from their father, who had remarried after their mother’s death and wished to come to America to assure himself that his children were all well and comfortably settled.∞ Much, however, as Zakrzewska may have wished to re-create the living arrangement s
he had enjoyed before she left for Cleveland, she decided that she had to set up her medical practice in New York rather than in New Jersey. Thus almost immediately upon arrival, she began looking for rooms to let, only to find that the prejudice against women physicians made this an impossible task. Her one encouraging conversation led nowhere when the woman’s husband refused to have his home tainted by association with a female doctor. Zakrzewska’s response was to point out the irony of placing obstacles in the path of women whose ultimate goal was to be of service to others.≤
Unable to find her own accommodations, Zakrzewska accepted Elizabeth Blackwell’s o√er that she move in with her family, letting the back parlor for medical practice. In this way, Zakrzewska was drawn into the Blackwell family,
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repeating her experience in Cleveland as she once again became part of a reform-minded household. Elizabeth’s father, Samuel Blackwell, was an abolitionist; her brothers, Henry and Samuel, supported both the antislavery and women’s rights movements. Henry married Lucy Stone, one of the nation’s leading women’s rights advocates, and Samuel married Antoinette Brown, the first woman to be ordained as a minister in the United States. Elizabeth’s sisters, Anna and Sara Ellen, became painters, and Emily, like Elizabeth, studied medicine. ‘‘We were,’’ Zakrzewska later recalled, ‘‘a delightful family, su√ering more or less from social ostracism but happy in spirit, and feeling far above the ordinary run of mankind in the belief of our superiority in thought and aim.’’≥
Zakrzewska would remain in New York City three years. In that time she would have her first experience planning, establishing, and then helping to run a hospital by and for women. It was the first such hospital in the United States.
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