. . .
By the end of the decade Zakrzewska had come to realize that ‘‘their cause’’
extended far beyond simply breaking down the barriers keeping women out of the medical profession. She even came to believe that linking their cause to the movement for women’s rights, however important that may be, was not enough; it had also become necessary to fight for sweeping social, political, and moral reforms. In this regard, no one influenced her more than Karl Heinzen, a German ‘‘Forty-Eighter,’’ whom she met sometime after returning to New York. Zakrzewska would end up sharing her home with Heinzen and his wife for twenty years.
The ‘‘Forty-Eighters’’ were Old World democrats who left their homeland for political reasons following the failed revolutions of 1848. Frustrated in their inability to establish a constitutional democracy in Germany and put an end to the monarchical system that denied the majority of the population any part in the political process, many turned to America as the ‘‘promised land,’’ hopeful that they could more easily work toward creating a truly democratic society here. Although they never constituted more than a small minority of the German immigrant population in the United States, their visibility and impact on American political and social life surpassed their numbers. Not surprisingly, they became defenders of individual freedoms, outspoken and sometimes mili-tant in their attack on slavery and in their battles for freedom of the press and religion and voting rights.≥≠
Heinzen had made a name for himself in Germany as a radical republican and political journalist. He had first been forced to flee his homeland in 1844
after publishing several scathing critiques of the Prussian bureaucracy. Following a long sojourn in Switzerland and a much briefer stay in the United States, he returned to Europe in March 1848 to join the revolutionary forces in Baden, the German state where the possibility of establishing a true democracy seemed most promising. When the revolution failed, he once again had to flee. Heinzen returned to the United States in the fall of 1850, this time to make it his new home. Although he would make several trips to Europe later in life, he never again set foot on his native soil.≥∞
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Zakrzewska had heard of Heinzen through her father, who had read the journalist’s banned publications on the sly.≥≤ She may thus have actively sought him out after he moved to New York in 1855. More than likely, though, she came across his name through his editorship of a politically radical German-language weekly he had founded two years earlier, Der Pionier, a paper William Lloyd Garrison once described as ‘‘the ablest, most independent and outspoken, and most uncompromising in its opposition to slavery, of all the German newspapers in this country.’’≥≥ ‘‘Uncompromising’’ was surely the best way to describe not only Heinzen’s newspaper but the man himself. As Horace Greeley once commented, no other European exile wielded ‘‘so trenchant, merciless and independent a pen as Mr. Charles Heinzen.’’ ‘‘A radical democrat,’’ he continued, ‘‘avowing his opinions on religion, literature, politics or individuals, with perfect coolness and indi√erence to the opinions of the majority, he necessarily often shocks the feelings of his readers and makes foes where he might make friends, but he also often tells the truth.’’≥∂ Heinzen’s biographer, Carl Wittke, writing almost a century later, agreed with this assessment. Heinzen, he wrote, rather unpoetically, ‘‘never pricked with a needle when he could hit over the head with a hammer.’’≥∑
In the next chapter we turn to Heinzen’s writings in greater detail; for now I wish to mention only that he was as committed to promoting materialism, atheism, and the dangers of the Roman Catholic Church as he was to the abolition of slavery and the fight for equal rights for all people, regardless of sex or race. All these political concerns eventually became Zakrzewska’s as well.
When they first met is unclear, but by the fall of 1858 they were contemplating a move to Boston together. Their friendship, as Zakrzewska once described it, was
‘‘based not simply on a≈nity, by nature, but also on principle, making the object for which we spoke, our real life’s cause, and we pledged ourselves to devote our strength and means to further our convictions & realizations.’’≥∏
In October 1858 two events came together. Heinzen decided to take Der Pionier to Boston, where he believed the community of radical German émigrés had a stronger following than in New York. He had his paper up and running in his new hometown by the beginning of the new year. By that time, he may already have known that Zakrzewska would eventually follow, since she had received a letter from the trustees of Boston’s New England Female Medical College in early October asking that she consider the directorship of a teaching hospital that they were planning to found in connection with their school.
Zakrzewska did not, however, move as quickly as Heinzen. First, she visited
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Boston in February to give a lecture and speak in person with the trustees of the school. Only after receiving a formal o√er later that month did she decide to accept the position of professor of obstetrics and diseases of women and children and resident physician in the hospital-to-be. Even then, she remained in New York a while longer, tying up loose ends. Not until early June did she finally move.≥π
In the intervening months she stayed in close touch with Heinzen, even penning two articles on women and medicine for his paper. Zakrzewska would never again be so prolific. Aside from her autobiographical sketch, which she published in 1860, she wrote only a handful of articles, three of which appeared in German in Der Pionier. She leaves us no clue as to why she published so little.
Perhaps she lost interest in writing for a German audience but lacked the confidence to communicate her ideas in English. Perhaps she simply lacked the time. Certainly, the founding of the New England Hospital for Women and Children in 1862 changed her life radically, leaving her precious little time to do much else other than care for her institution. But perhaps the question should not be why she did not continue writing but rather why she ever wrote at all.
The few months in the spring of 1859, when Zakrzewska was ‘‘between jobs,’’
may simply have been an anomaly, a time, like no other, when she had the luxury to spend her days collecting her thoughts for publication. It is also possible that Heinzen had suggested that this would be a good way for her to make a name for herself in the community of radical German émigrés she would soon be joining in Boston.
. . .
In the spring of 1859 Zakrzewska published two articles in Der Pionier, ‘‘Weibliche Aerzte’’ (Female Physicians), which appeared on 19 March, and ‘‘Sind Hebammenschulen wünschenswerth?’’ (Are Midwifery Schools Desirable?), which appeared one month later.≥∫ In both articles Zakrzewska promoted the cause of women physicians, challenging the biological, cultural, and legal arguments that were frequently put forth to justify women’s exclusion from the medical profession. Both, moreover, continued the argument she had begun in her medical thesis, in which she had denied the existence of any significant di√erences between the sexes. But whereas in the second article Zakrzewska assumed the absence of di√erence and insisted as a result that women interested in medicine should be trained as physicians and not midwives, in the first article she tackled the question of di√erence head-on.
‘‘Weibliche Aerzte’’ was a response to the arguments of the German physi-
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cian Dr. C. Both, who had published a piece against women physicians in another New York City German-language newspaper, the Familienblätter. Dr. Both had presented arguments typical of his day, questioning whether women had the intelligence to practice medicine; whether their modesty prevented them from carrying out dissections; whether the social cost of abandoning their roles as wives and mothers was too high; whether women’s physiology, particularly menstruation and pregnancy, functioned as a deterrent; and finally whether
female physicians were necessary.≥Ω Zakrzewska did not know the author, but this did not prevent her from ridiculing his claims; indeed, it may very well have given her the desired freedom.
Herr Both, Zakrzewska told her readers, was one of those German pedants who ‘‘come limping along to lay down their veto’’ after America has decided in favor of women studying medicine. His objections, she contended, centered on two questions: ‘‘1. do women have the right, and 2. do they have the ability, to study and practice medicine.’’ To Zakrzewska, even posing the problem in this way seemed quintessentially German, for only in her native land did ‘‘the police . . . tend to assign women the ‘sphere’ of her rights as well as of her abilities.’’ In America, on the other hand (and Zakrzewska was clearly identifying with her new country), there was no need to maintain a ‘‘female ‘sphere’ ’’
because ‘‘no laws dictate what we may learn and not learn; . . . we can be educated according to our inclinations and abilities, as far as the opportunities su≈ce, without having to ask an obscure German authority for permission.’’∂≠
Turning, then, directly to the question of women’s abilities, Zakrzewska challenged the ‘‘Herr Doctor’’ to come up with proof that men and women were endowed with di√erent ‘‘intellectual tendencies and abilities’’ and ‘‘to establish these di√erences exactly and convincingly.’’ She brought up for consideration Justine Siegismundin, Madame Lachapelle, and Madame Boivin, three European women who excelled in medicine, earning national and international reputations for their skills. Sarcastically, she went on:
I do not know whether these ‘‘women doctors’’ had the necessary weight and the necessary number of meters. Herr Dr. Both shows us, through an extensive numerical proof, that, in addition to greater height, men also have greater body and brain weight than women. However, he withholds with surprising modesty the conclusions which one should draw from these di√erences in weight. Since, however, he cannot have shared all these numbers only to prove that he has the expert knowledge of transcribing them, I
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must take him by his word or by his number. I hope he will ascribe the same importance to the di√erences in weight among the men themselves as between the two sexes, and regret with me the death of the 600 pound man who died recently in New York and in whom we have certainly lost one of the greatest medical geniuses.∂∞
Having ridiculed Both’s association between body size and brain size, Zakrzewska went on to challenge his claim that female modesty made it di≈cult for women to practice medicine e√ectively. The critical problem, for Both as for many, centered on the image of women in the dissection room. Zakrzewska began by questioning the ‘‘brutal’’ nature of medicine, countering that when she had observed men and women in Germany and in America carrying out dissections, all she had recognized was ‘‘almost a solemn silence and a certain scientific dignity which, by providing enlightenment about the wonderful construction of the human body, satisfied the thirst for knowledge.’’ But Zakrzewska also challenged the pristine nature of women’s work in the home, adding that ‘‘the noble businesses of slaughtering, disemboweling and dissecting in the kitchen, which the Herr Doctor kindly designates as [our] ‘sphere,’ are more disgusting to me than the dissections in the anatomy room.’’∂≤
Zakrzewska moved on from her criticism of ‘‘kitchen duties’’ to a dismissal of Both’s concerns that women would be abandoning their social roles were they to choose a medical career over marriage and motherhood. She did not so much deny that this would occur, although she did relay the story of a friend who was managing to work as a physician and have a family. More important, she rejected Both’s assumption that marriage should be a woman’s ultimate goal. This is a theme Zakrzewska would address more fully when she sat down to write her autobiographical sketch the following year. Although her position on marriage would soften later in life, at this stage she could barely hide her disdain for the view that ‘‘woman has nothing else to study than the art of finding a man to support her. I do not know,’’ she went on in ‘‘Weibliche Aerzte,’’ ‘‘whether this concern for our happiness belongs to the male physician’s profession; I do know that this concern will not be reciprocated from our side. I do not fear that the female sex will go bankrupt if the doctors of weight and meter-long height die as bachelors.’’∂≥
Zakrzewska had two more points to make. As far as women’s physiology was concerned, she declared the notion that ‘‘natural disturbances . . . make women
‘irresponsible’ ’’ to be ‘‘mere fables.’’ As she had done in her medical disserta-
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tion, she was challenging once again the claim that women’s bodies rendered them unfit or even in need of special attention. ‘‘Either a woman is healthy or she is sick,’’ Zakrzewska declared matter-of-factly. ‘‘If she is healthy, then all the functions of her body are in order without somehow taking on disease forms. If, however, symptoms indicate a diseased state, then the sick woman is merely on a par with a sick man who is likewise overcome, under such conditions, by mental disturbances.’’ For Zakrzewska, pregnancy received so much attention only ‘‘because it is the most obvious’’ disturbance, not because it is the most serious. ‘‘Even if it were true that such conditions interrupt the functions of a female physician for days or weeks, isn’t this just like what happens to male
[physicians] who are held up for weeks or months through illness, etc?’’∂∂
Zakrzewska’s denial of di√erence also shaped her response to Both’s final assertion: that women physicians were unnecessary. What sense, she asked, does it make to ask why women doctors are here or whether ‘‘our prescriptions are better and more e√ective than those that men prescribe?’’ For Zakrzewska this question was just as silly as asking whether women wrote books because their books were better and more interesting than those men authored. ‘‘I have often written prescriptions for men and women because I have won their confidence through treating their families,’’ Zakrzewska wrote in her conclusion to the article. ‘‘By this opportunity I learned that we women can have an e√ect on or through a man’s stomach in a di√erent way than through fine cooking.’’∂∑
Zakrzewska wrote this article with the confidence of a woman who harbored no doubts that her arguments would demolish those of her opponent. ‘‘The reasons of Herr Dr. Both . . . are in general those one hears in any public saloon,’’ Zakrzewska told her readers, designating his views as ‘‘low-brow’’ and, by implication, hers as educated and informed. But Zakrzewska’s views were only in part the accepted ones, even of advocates of women’s medical education. While in challenging men’s intellectual superiority she was certainly joining others who were fighting for women’s rights, her total denial of di√erence was not commonplace. Note that Zakrzewska rejected di√erences between the sexes on two grounds: she refused to attribute any significance to women’s peculiar physiological functions, and she rejected the notion that women physicians had anything special to o√er the field of medicine. This was an unusual position to defend.
At the time, most women who aspired to enter the medical field built their arguments on two central claims. The first emphasized that because of female modesty women needed practitioners of their own sex. How could one expect
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women to share their bodily and emotional troubles with men? Human decency and female delicacy worked against such confidences, with the result that many women avoided medical help until it was too late. The second claim built on woman’s special nature as sympathetic and compassionate. Women, so the argument went, had much to o√er medicine, which they defined as the caring profession par excellence, for they were uniquely positioned to combine ‘‘sympathy’’ and ‘‘science.’’ No one, in fact, was more vocal in this regard than Zakrzewska’s friend and colleague Elizabeth Blackwell, who be
lieved that the maternal instinct—potential or realized—endowed women with a natural and
singular capacity to heal.∂∏ Zakrzewska, in denying such di√erences, was distancing herself from the majority of her colleagues. Her argument for women physicians, unusual as it was, amounted to little more than the assertion that there was no justification for granting one sex privileges while denying them to the other.
Zakrzewska stood out not only because of what she was arguing but also because of her style. Thus, in contrast to her contemporary Ann Preston, the first woman to become dean of the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania, who refrained from displaying any behaviors that could be judged unfeminine, Zakrzewska engaged in a performance in which she intentionally inverted dominant gender stereotypes.∂π She did this by announcing her distaste for the preparation of food, certainly one of women’s most traditional responsibilities, and by declaring a greater a≈nity for science (as a woman) than Dr. Both possessed. Her entire essay, in fact, focused on the illogic of his assertions, thus allowing her to claim for herself, as a woman and in opposition to her male opponent, the mantle of rationality. Using ridicule while displaying a biting wit, Zakrzewska showed little anxiety about how her gender transgressions would be received; on the contrary, she was clearly having a ball.
Zakrzewska’s unusual performance does not mean that she shared nothing with her peers. Hannah Longshore, a member of the first graduating class of the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania and a successful practitioner, also claimed masculine-coded traits for herself, fashioning her autobiography around a heroic tale that highlighted her success at overcoming adversity by drawing on her own resources.∂∫ Mary Putnam Jacobi, who was certainly less brash than either Longshore or Zakrzewska, nevertheless matched Zakrzewska’s disdain for arguments based on gender di√erences and engaged in scientific research designed to demolish the grounds upon which such arguments
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