working life of women seventeenth century - School of Economics ...

288 PROFESSIONSextent they were when the greater part of humanlife was included within the family circle, the psychicand emotional female development appears to makewomen more fitted than men to deal with preventiveand remedial medicine. The explanation ofthis fact offers a fascinating field for speculation,but involves too wide a digression for discussion here,and in its support we will only point out the factthat in the old days, when no professional. serviceswere available, it was to the women of the family,rather than to the men, that the sick and woundedturned for medicine and healing. Yet in spite of thisnatural affinity for the care of suffering humanity,women were excluded from the sources of learningwhich were being slowly organised outside the familycircle, and were thus unable to remain in professionsfor which they were so eminently suited.The suspicion that the inferior position which womenoccupied in the teaching profession and their exclusionfrom the medical profession, was caused rather by theabsence of educational opportunities than by a physiologicalincapacity for the practice of these arts, isstrengthened by the remarkable history of Midwifery ;which from being reserved exclusively for women andpractised by them on a professional basis from timeimmemorial, passed in its more lucrative branches intothe hands of men, when sources of instruction wereopened to them which were closed to women. Justas the amateur woman teacher was less competentthan the man who had made art or the learned languageshis profession, so did the woman who treatedher family and neighbours by rule of thumb, appear lessskilful than the professional doctor, and the uneducatedmidwives brought their professioninto disrepute.The exclusion of women from all the sources ofspecialised training was bound to re-act unfavourablyupon their characters, because as family lifedepended more and more upon professional sepvicesforPROFESSIONSeducation and medical assistance, fewer opportunitieswere offered to women for exerting their facultieswithin the domestic sphere and the general incompetenceof upper class women did in fact becomemore pronounced.