Medical Students

The workshop of a medical college I But, in place of spectacled young men with long gowns and sharp scalpels, there are a score of girls robed in protecting overalls and deftly dissecting the subjects before tlietn. That's what I saw in the preparatory school to the medical branch of the Zurich university. This year a better idea of the female medical student may be gathered than ever before, because the number is so much greater, and, as the number increases, each individual is ireer in her actions, for she feels she excites less attention. The clientèle is growing yearly. Forthis season the total of ■young ladies studying this branch in Zurich is forty-four, against thirty-three last season. Don't think this dissecting room is an absolute place of horror. The bodies are divided into their several parts before the students approach them, and each young lady has her chosen portion to opérate upon. This reduces the uncanny appearance to a considerable exterit, for no bodies entire are to be seen lying on the many slabs or tables. At one table where I stopped a delicate and spirituelle ycund lady, holding in her gloved hands a razor like knife and pair of fine pinchers, was cutting at a dismembered head, studying the organs of sight, probing into the cavities of the brain and Dluckinir useful thoughts from what to me was a ghastly trophy. And yet her delicacy of treatment, her uumistakable enthusiasm, her evident comprehension of every stroke she made, removed that feeling from me in a few moments, and I lingered, watching her quick movements as intensely as I would any ordinary scientific experiment. "Yes," she said, in reply to my question suggested in virtue of a slight acquaintance I had with her, "I make the eye my specialty, for I believe, in addition to being one of the most iuteresting points to study, it is likewise a more potent factor than is generally believed in the health of an individual. I have known pereons to suffer from severe headaches and pains in the back who have attributed the trouble entirely to spinal disorders, when, as a fact, it aróse from their eyes being out of focus. They actually could not see out of one eye, and yet they did not know it. It seems incredible, and yet any intelligent oculist will substantiate what I say. There is no doubt that persons have been the victims of nervous prostration brought on by a difficulty with the eyes of which they were ignorant, but which a very easy operation would have removed." A little farther on a disciple of this glorious art stood over a partially cut leg, from which she was stripping the skin and nesn and explaining the muscles, as they presented themselves, to the several new scholars who stood about her, iutent upon her motions. There was no hesitancy in her incisions, she cut vvith a clean stroke, and every time the blade feil just where it was intended. She was gracef ui and emphatic in her treatment of the subject, and under ready tongue the relations of the various nerves, tendons and muscles she exposed were made clear and carried their full meaning to the expectant audience about her. In a distant corner a young woman and several male students were discussing an abnormal growth discovered by one of them in the trunk of a one time sturdy Frenchman, resting upon their particular slab. There appeared to be considerable difference in opinión prevailing, and I remarked with a certain elation peculiar, perhaps, to my sex, that the young woman held her ground and her idea stubbornly, and the young men paid due and proper attention to what she frequently said. I next noticed a fashionably attired damsel, wearing a promenade dress and having every indication of being in the mode, who, protected only by a small white apron plentif ully decorated with varicolored ribbons, was cutting and scraping at an arm, baring the muscles with an ease and dexterity that were certainly natural, and could never have been wholly acquired. At firstsight I judged this apparently wordly and giddy creature was prompted by spme morbid passion to amuse herself in this manner, but when I asked the professor who accompanied me, he said she was the most skillful manipulator of the scalpel among all those then attendant, and could strip a muscle as cleanly and as beautifully as an established surgeon. On the street one would take her for the average shopping butterfly, with refined features and a rosy, semi-transparent skin. The professor further assured me that the women were particularly t&xterous in handling museles. Their small, taper fingers gave them an advantage over the males, and their eyes were quicker to detect details and nñiiutise. After once becoming accustomed to the use of the scalpel, the women are more patiënt than the men, and they prosecute their researches more persistently. It was to me very interesting to watch the girls mingling with their male colleagues and studying with them the terrible mystery of human construction. There was no jocoseness, no loud talking or unseemly mirth. A'll was quiet, orderly, strictly in the line of business. The young lady to whom I have referred was the only one who gave any suggestion of the outer world, and she was eccentric ; she was a genius and assumed the privilege of genius. Her companions were robed in al] concealine white Mother Hubbards, tight at the neck and tight at the waist, otherwise falling unbound f rom shoulders to f eet; beaeath this, clothing as little cumbrous as can be worn. The modern bustle is, of course, forbidden, and corsets are discouraged. The freest actiou is sought and anything that interferes is cast aside. The robes are made rather more clinging than loóse, so tha each student filis the smallest place she well can. Superfluous clothing, in other nords, is barely tolerated, and upon the head is worn a white turban. The male students do not hesitate to openly declare their opposition to the presence ol women in the medical profession, and yel when brought in contact with them in the operating room they treat the feraales with