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To the Class of 1873-74, 
DELIVERED AT THE 
WOMAN’S MEDICAL COLLEGE OF PENNSJIVANIA, 
BY \ 
SARAH R. A. DOlILeY, M. D. 
March 5th, 187Jf. CORRESPONDENCE. 
Philadelphia, March 16th, 1874. 
Sarah R. A. Dolley, M. D., 
Dear Madam :— 
Will you grant us the favor of a copy of your 
closing lecture at the Woman’s Medical College, for publication? 
We believe it will be of service to Students in Medicine, as well as those 
just entering upon the duties and labors of the profession. 
Respectfully Yours, 
OLIVE DEWEY ALDRICH, M. D. 
JENNY R. GRANT, MARY R. HUTCHINS, M. D. 
EMILY A. TEFFT, ELLA M. RIDGWAY, M. D. 
EMILY S. BROOK, ANNE CALDWELL, M. D. 
EMMA R. OGDEN, ELIZABETH C. WARRINGTON, M. D. 
ARAMINTA V. SCOTT. MARY BRANSON, M, D. 
No. 1107 Girard Street, 
Philadelphia, Pa., March 19, 1874. 
Ladies :— 
If any word of mine can be helpful to women in any worthy achievement, 
I cheerfully give it, and so accede to your request, and with assurance of my 
continued interest in you and your success as Physicians, 
I am truly yours, 
/ . - ~ ; Sarah H. A. Dolley. LECTURE. 
Ladies :— 
There are crises in our way, toward which the labor of months or 
years has been tending, and which are at the same time sudden breaks and 
new departures, when we reach some way-mark in our pilgrimage, which, while 
it long had been the point of invitation, now becomes the present acquisition, 
and the delectable mountains are still on, far on in the distance. 
It is at such times we have an instinctive longing, not merely for a parting 
word, but for an encouraging one) something that will enlarge our vision, 
something that will be helpful, suggestive, inspiring, or talismanic; which, like 
the little resting places along the rugged mountain path, give us some refresh- 
ment from the toil of ascent, and glimpses of the hidden vista we long to reach. 
If the fullness of my heart towards you could syllable itself in speech, 
and I had wit, or words, or wisdom, or grace of utterance, my desire would find 
expression, and would quicken you into new enthusiasm for the life-work of 
your choice, and strengthen the spirit of consecration with which I trust you 
would enter the Temple of Medicine. 
Are women to be a power for good in the Medical Profession ? is becom- 
ing a question of great moment, and one that you and I will help to answer. 
It is no longer the case, as it once was, that when a lady takes her diplo- 
ma, and enters the lines of the Medical Profession, every face she meets 
demands cause why she should have usurped- the place, power and privilege of her 
father, husband, son, or brother, and implies that the great “ head and front of 
her offending’’ has been an act of impertinence. No ! with glad thankfulness 
we can say the most cultivated communities no longer regard the entrance of 
woman into the profession as an impertinence. But are our responsibilities 
lessened because of this one step in advance—of this one point gained which, 
while woman may be denied a sphere, still grants her a hemisphere? This is 
sufficient for a fulcrum, and if she can use a lever Jong enough, and strong 
enough, she will move the world. But because of this gain shall we boast of 
what we have attained, and supinely mutter the names of the honored absent 
and the honored dead, and say with enquiring challenge, “ Have we not crowned 
ones in our ranks, and shall we not be saved?” No! The way is no less 
tortuous, nor the goal less distant, because here and there an obstacle has been 
removed, for the road to achievement, to success, to victory in any way, and 
ever and always in Medicine, takes you through Doubting Castle, the Slough 
of Despond, by Giant Grim, and over the Hill Difficulty. 4 
If you need not show cause why you have gone in the face of old-time 
prejudices, and essay to enter a profession which is justly given high place, and 
held in reverence by the people, you must show a seriousness of moral purpose, 
and must bring to the Medical Profession what it has a right to expect of you, 
a moral power which, like the “ little leaven hid in three measures of meal,” 
shall “ leaven the whole lump,” and so do your part—and not an insignificant 
or minor part—to maintain the integrity, to preserve the facts and profit by the 
traditions of Medicine. 
Women have their limitations. For one I will not ignore them, and know 
no better way to abolish the difficulties that these limitations of woman may 
interpose, or difficulties of any kind, than by striving to comprehend them. 
“ To walk between lions with closed eyes is evasion, and evasion is not con- 
quest but heroism, open-eyed, acknowledges the right of every sort of oppo- 
sition to bring out its heaviest force, and then goes through scarred and 
wounded though it be, to success, or to defeat, robbed of its shame because of 
fearful odds. Ladies, if we have not ten talents we will not sit mopingly with 
our five, (which perhaps make up in quality what they lack in quantity,) and 
say to our Lord, “Thou wert a hard master, reaping where thou hast not 
sown, and gathering where thou hast not strewed, and I was afraid, and went 
and hid thy talent in the earth—lo, there thou hast that is thine.” 
No! We will put to usury what endowments we have, and honor the 
talent that has been bestowed, the privileges that have been accorded, the 
opportunities that do invite us ; and though we may not revolutionize Medicine 
with startling discoveries or brilliant inventions, that will go “ sounding 
down the centuries,” we will learn the science that is coming to be the science 
of sciences, which we revere, and we will make our hands deft and skillful in the 
art which we may now practice. 
The wish, and hope that women might become physicians, was a dream of 
my childhood, an earnest of maturity, and the fact is a present satisfaction 
greater than I can express, and I am glad this satisfaction has not been 
weakened by my acquaintance with the class before me. 
By your patient attention, you have incited me to more critical study, to 
wider range, and more thorough work, and, ladies, I feel that you have made 
me your debtor. 
My imagination goes before you to your distant homes, and my earnest 
expectation gives me cheer that you will go on, step by step, honest in all your 
enquiries, respectful towards authority, and reverential at the shrine of truth— 
with the progress of time that of the one may possibly decrease, but that of the 
other will increase. If our purpose is genuine, we will seek Truth for its own 
sake, whether for us or against us, and then be submissive to its high behests, 
and leave results to Him who is the fountain of all Truth. 5 
Allow me to call your attention to a few homely virtues, compared with 
those more brilliant, and elevated in public esteem, which should especially 
belong to Physicians, and very especially to Lady Physicians. 
Truthfulness, with patients, may be thought by some to be of little mo- 
ment, but put yourself in the place of the invalid, and see how your respect 
would be lost, and your contempt challenged, by insincerity and subterfuge, by 
the bread pill or the pretending placebo. If you would not be thus approached 
by your Physician, neither will you so do towards those who put sacred trusts 
in your hands, and you will away from you all the tricks of the charlatan. The 
relation of Physician to patient is too sacred to admit of unworthy trifling— 
better, kind but emphatic reproof of morbid imaginings, or frank disclosures 
when the case has past, peradventure, beyond human skill, than resort by the 
medical attendant to any tricks—for the trade of the trickster, while tolerated in 
the art of jugglery and necromancy, becomes despicable in that of Medicine. 
The temptation to partake of the temper of the time, is sometimes very 
great, and communities, like individuals, will have pet virtues, that may be 
cultivated at the expense of some less showy, but no less binding. 
Honesty, in an age that produces splendid falsities, still has some who are 
so fossilized as to do it reverence, and who think that to render fair equivalent 
in skill, time or service, is not beneath those who have highest place in the 
profession, and must never be forgotten. 
Physicians partake of the infirmities of human nature, and we may now 
and then find one who is mercenary ; but I know of nobody of men or women, 
so self-sacrificing, so ready to do good, regardless of reward, as Physicians. 
Professional philanthropists, who give of their abundance, are often better 
appreciated than Physicians, whose charities are not on set and stated occasions 
to be found in monthly reports or yearly summaries, where the right hand gets 
quick inkling of what the left hand is doing, but are part and parcel of the 
daily life that goes to make up the blessed ministries of the profession. 
Tenderness and Sympathy will not hinder you in being thorough in doing 
what the necessities of the sick or injured may demand—and you will not 
ignore your own quick and tender sensiblities, though you cannot be expected 
to weep daily over all that is sad and shocking in human experience which 
may be revealed to you in your professional lives. The terrible, devastating 
epidemic may sweep thousands into premature graves, but you cannot “ weep 
over a million sick any more than over a vulgar fraction.” You will meet 
the patient on a high plane of human reciprocity, and will regard her as 
something more than a static entity, or dynamic quantity, whose muscles, 
nerves and joints are not simply a bundle of levers, pulleys, and hinges, but are 
the instruments of that mysterious something which we call Life. 
Achievement! Success ! The world always has place, appreciation, and 
compensation, for professional success. It may be long coming, why should it 6 
not be if it is genuine? and, like every other rooted thing, have time for 
succulent juices to bring stem, and bud, and flower in season to maturity. 
No success is worth having which has not been preceded by a season of 
development and growth, for it is better to die without recognition than to feel 
that we have accepted what we have neither earned by patient endeavor, nor 
won by triumph of genius. There is something which the world calls success, 
which is an illusion, and, like the shifting quicksand, bears to sure and 
inevitable destruction. Invoke every failure and every triumph to contribute 
towards a worthy success—to bring moral power and moral purpose to permeate 
your whole professional life. At all cost, keep the vantage for the soul, for 
loss in this direction no intellectual attainment, however great, no triumph in 
any art or skill of hand will compensate, but only throw in bolder and more 
ugly relief, that affectation which would imitate the worst failings of men, or 
ignore the highest power of woman. 
Should you go into communities where still exists great prejudices against 
women physicians, and you should be ignored, or possibly reviled, such 
discipline might even be “something between a hindrance and a help.” 
That society may not be widely disorganized, there seems to be a feeling 
inherent in human nature, to put an innovater on trial. An ancient Locrian 
custom required that originators of new laws or propositions, should be brought 
before the assembled wisdom, with halters around their necks, ready for speedy 
execution if the innovation p roved on examination to be utterly unsound or 
puerile. 
Dr. Collyer tells how Yorkshire people say, “ When you see a stranger, 
throw a stone at him.” Why not ? Communities have rights as well as 
individuals, and you must allow time for your motives to bo understood, 
and your actions rightly interpreted. Society must act in part from habit, and 
be for a time intolerant of an individualized mind. Your principles, your 
intentions, your acquisitions, may be unknown to your assailants, and they 
would know by what right you would breathe their atmosphere, or share their 
privileges. Throw yourselves for a moment on the side of your assailants, and 
look out from the optics of your antagonists, and see if you can show cause 
why. Thus you may learn some lessons, and see some phases of human nature, 
that you could not have so readily realized from books or verbal descriptions. 
Col. Higginson, in a late address favoring a new movement, urged that 
it should have a modest start, to insure success, and says : “ For if it has an 
obviously exaggerated beginning, the community will be at once repelled, and 
ought to be.” This contains so clear and emphatic statement of a truth which 
young aspirants are in danger of forgetting, and young Doctors in danger of 
ignoring, by being forced into positions beyond the possibilities of their growth 
and development, that I call your attention to it. Position, neither earned nor 7 
won, will not be a satisfaction, but a shame; and false assumptions will be at 
once repelled, and ought to be 
Legitimate Medicine has a great history. We have aphorisms of the 
Fathers, and classic writings of the moderns, of which we would do well to know 
something: and among the standard-bearers of Medicine, have been those 
who have robbed pestilence of its terror, “ who have given the dumb lip 
utterance, the idiot clay a mind,” brought light to sightless eyes and power to 
infirm limbs, invited reason back to her throne by gentle ministrations and 
brain-compelling conditions, and by organized sanitary laws have increased the 
ratio of human life. And here in this city, where Medicine first found shelter 
and facilities for imparting instruction to the sons, and eventually to the 
daughters of our grand Republic, are the laurel-crowned—who crowd our 
memories, and whose names have gone all over the world where there have 
been ears to hear Philadelphia’s grander message of Liberty and Independence. 
Should not the great opportunities of the present, the greater hopes of the 
future, and the reminiscences of the past incite to more earnest and worthy 
effort ? Do I seem to discourage you ? Like one who would ask the young 
artist, flushed with his first triumph, to go with him to the Vatican, and 
there, in the presence of the great Masters, say : “ What are your achievements ? 
Don’t try to do more than imitate.” No! I would not say this : each age has 
its needs. 
“ New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth, 
We must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.” 
I would not humble you in the thought of your best efforts being feeble in 
comparison with the triumphs of illustrious Physicians, but remind you of our 
rich inheritance, and how jealously we should guard and add thereto, and from 
no fanatical enthusiasm, or noisy ostentation, be induced to “ exchange our 
birth-right for a mess of pottage.” 
Our movement, like every other grand one, is not endangered by open 
opposition, but by amateur doctors—by learning, falsely so-called—which 
dignifies itself by assuming the airs of science, and may be compared to a 
strong undertow, which will not knock you down like the heavy ocean-swell, 
but creeping treacherously along, takes your feet from under you, betrays you 
into some indirection, and then mocks you 
“ Things desirable must be wrung out 
by our energy, they will not spontaneously drop into our laps as we approach, 
any more than the arrow-headed inscriptions in the desert yield the ancient 
history locked up in their cyphers, to the caravans and armies that so many 
ages ignorantly traveled by them.” We must keep abreast of the knowledge 
of our day, and to those of you who may soon go out in practice, I would say, 
be careful readers of leading Medical Periodicals. Thus you will be apprized 8 
of new discoveries, and will keep yourselves in sympathy with the spirit of 
scientific research and careful observation which marks our era, and will become 
familiar with the writings and teachings of those who are laborious cultivators 
of the Science of Medicine. 
They who lightly estimate the demands on the Physician, or slightly 
appreciate the countless blessings to the human family due to Medical Science, 
cannot share in our earnest desire to exalt its usefulness, and extend its 
beneficent ministrations. 
You will not honor your calling any the less, that it makes so large 
demand upon your best powers; that it requires learning as varied, as 
thorough, and accurate, (for those who would attain any worthy place, and 
realize its high trusts and rigid requirements,) as that of any department of 
human inquiry or labor. But this conquest of knowledge can only be made by 
painstaking—unremitting, severe, and with generous purpose. 
Tf the great artists, musical and dramatic, are unwearied in keeping every 
sense attuned, and are indefatigable in effort to perfectly delineate some great 
conception, why may we not—why should we not—we who practice a Diviner 
art, keep every faculty equipped, and make every power tend to truer and 
larger attainment, and better performance. 
If we lose sight of every unworthy motive, covet the best gifts, and direct 
our lives with unswerving integrity, we shall find a true vocation, which has its 
satisfactions, its joys, and triumphs, as well as its trials, perplexities, and 
distresses. 
Y ou have made noble endeavor—you will, I am sure, go on from strength 
to strength, ever animated by L'esprit morale, as well as L'esprit scientifique.