WE have before us several letters from writers of influence and high consideration in different sections of our country, making inquiries respecting the progress of Female Medical Education. We cannot refuse these earnest appeals for information, and, as we trust our myriad readers will feel an interest more or less in the subject, we shall give the response to all who gather around our Table.

The third annual commencement of the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania, located in Philadelphia, was held on the 25th of February last, when the Degree of Doctor of Medicine was conferred by the President, Charles D. Cleveland, on four ladies—Elizabeth H. Bates, New York; Lucinda R. Brown, Texas; Minna Elliger, Germany; and Elizabeth G. Shattuck, Pennsylvania—the latter belonging to the Medical Missionary protÉgÉes preparing to go out to China or India, as opportunity may offer. The number of students in this college during the past session was about thirty, and the applications for admittance to the privileges of the institution for the next session, commencing October 2, are already numerous and earnest.

There is only one obstacle, viz., the want of funds. Those young women and widows wishing to enter on this study are, usually, poor. The expenses for board and books are all they can meet. If the college were endowed, so that the tuition fees for all might be reduced to the lowest sum[B] named for beneficiaries, while these last were admitted free of college charges, the school would be crowded. Are there none among the rich of this city and State who will lend a helping hand to this noble work of qualifying women to become physicians for their own sex? Fifty thousand dollars invested, so that the interest could be annually applied for the benefit of the institution, would be sufficient. There would thus be open a way by which those women who have talents for the profession might enter on the study. What a blessing this would be to them and to society! The sufferings which delicacy imposes on the sex, while compelled to submit their complaints to the knowledge of the male physician only, are shocking, and often fatal—because concealment leads to death. Such a state of ignorance in regard to all that pertains to the preservation of health and cure of diseases should no longer be permitted to prevail among those who have the direct and sole care of infancy, and are the nurses and watchers by the sick. The good results of educating women for the profession are thus truly set forth in the interesting "Valedictory Address," by Dr. Elwood Harvey, one of the Faculty of the Female Medical College:—

WHAT FEMALE PHYSICIANS CAN DO.—"No intelligent person doubts that, if we were obedient to the laws of health, so far as they are now understood, sickness and suffering would be greatly diminished. The average of human life would be prolonged, and its usefulness and happiness increased. In the earliest ages of which we have any recorded history, rules for the preservation of health, and regulations for the prevention of diseases, constitute a conspicuous part of the legal code."

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"In this country, where the people govern themselves, it is the people that must be enlightened, that they may govern themselves wisely. Though there is not a more law-abiding nation on the earth, we are blessed in having but few laws to be obeyed. There is a larger individual liberty here than elsewhere, and consequently a greater individual responsibility. It is to the people, then, that you are to convey a knowledge of the laws that govern their being. You have ample scope for usefulness in this capacity. In your own sex, you will find wives and mothers, ignorant of their own constitutions, bringing wretchedness and misery upon themselves, discomfort and suffering upon their families, and, worse than all, entailing enfeebled constitutions and diseases upon their offspring. To enlighten these, to teach them the duty they owe to themselves, to their families, to society, to posterity, and to Him who created them, and instituted the laws they violate, is your peculiar province. Do this, and the world will owe you a debt it can never repay—but you will have your reward."

FEMALE PHYSICIANS WANTED.—"Some of the obstacles that oppose the entrance of the young practitioner to a remunerative practice will offer less than their usual amount of resistance to you. It commonly happens that the young physician has to wait long years of probation, during which much work has to be done for small pay before he begins to reap the full reward of his labors. Not only is it necessary for him to acquire a reputation for skill and attention to business, but a respectable age must be attained before he can hope to be employed in some of the most profitable departments of practice. With you the case is very different; there is an existing demand for your services which none others can so well supply. Each city in this country is ready to give employment to a large number of female physicians, each lesser town and country village is waiting for one or more; numerous applications from various parts of the country have been made for female physicians. At a moderate computation, we may estimate the number now in actual demand in this country at not less than five thousand. You are wanted for a kind of practice that most male physicians would gladly relinquish to you, whenever they are convinced that you have been regularly educated, and are competent to perform the duties of the position you have assumed."

WHILE on this subject, we will give here an original article, written for our "Book" by a professor in another institution,[C] which shows that this liberal feeling towards

female practitioners is fast gaining public favor in this city:—

LADIES' MEDICAL EDUCATION.—That it would be very useful and conducive to the health and happiness of families, if the mothers of families, and women in general, were familiar with the principal doctrines of anatomy, physiology, and pathology, so as to understand, to some degree, the organization, functions, and diseases of the human system, there cannot be any doubt. But whether it be in accordance with the natural position of woman in society to take upon herself the office, labors, and responsibilities of a physician is another question, which need not here be decided. So much, however, may be said with propriety, without at all deciding the question alluded to, that such ladies as are desirous of obtaining a full medical education, and devoting themselves to the study of the medical sciences in good earnest, ought not to be refused such an education, but have as much chance given to them as the other sex enjoy. For, however we may disagree respecting the propriety of woman practising medicine as a profession, certainly her knowledge of medicine cannot be detrimental to the good of society. If a more general diffusion of medical knowledge among the ladies had no other effect than to enforce a higher standard of education among the physicians on one side, and to annihilate the greatest bane of ignorance, quackery, on the other side, this alone would be a sufficient reason for spreading "more light" among the ladies, though it be "medical."

We cannot, therefore, see any harm in the establishment of female medical schools, but would suggest the propriety of organizing them in such a manner that their teachings should not be confined to the comparatively few ladies who enter them for a full medical education; but also be made accessible to the generality of ladies, especially young ladies, who do not want a "professional" education in medicine, but who would study some branches, such as anatomy, physiology, pathology, and perhaps chemistry, natural philosophy, and botany, with much delight and profit, without asking for a diploma, but to carry the delightful satisfaction with them that they possess that which may save themselves and others around them untold disease and suffering, and protect them against all sorts of knavery and quackery, not to speak of the accomplishments and intellectual joys such studies are apt to give to ladies.

A VERY SENSIBLE DOCTOR.—Dr. J. Wilson, of Alabama, proposes, in the Southern Medical Journal, that female classes be formed in our medical colleges for instruction in anatomy—excluding the surgical and pathological—human physiology, medical chemistry, materia medica, and all female diseases. We hope those who have the direction of medical education will act on this hint. Why should woman be excluded from the study of medicine? She is the Heaven-appointed guardian of the sick and of helpless infancy; she should know how to preserve health and how to restore it.

THE PRACTICAL.—We have lately met with a rather astounding and extremely practical proposition, well suited to the genius of our nation. We, the mightiest people on the face of the globe, will not allow our scenery to remain scenery without some Barnum-like investment upon it. We do not intend that our natural curiosities shall continue natural. Jonathan must make his playthings useful, else he may as well fling them behind him. The Falls of Niagara have been too long exempt from the common lot; it is time they should be trained to propriety and productiveness. No doubt it is extremely fine to see them wandering at their own wild will, plunging madly down the precipice; but will any one pretend to say that in all this there is anything practical? The fact is, Niagara is of no use to us, and we can no longer tolerate her as a drone; she must be forced to work. Let her be made the motive power of numberless mills and manufactories. Thus would be secured a noble union of Nature and Art! How much more manly and suggestive than the common rhymes addressed to her grandeur and magnificence would be some such invocation as the following:—

We wonder what our nation would do with Mont Blanc if they had it? Place an ice-cream freezing establishment on its summit, perhaps; or tunnel it, À la Thames, and settle a Yankee colony within. We shall next expect to hear that Mammoth Cave has been partitioned off into comfortable apartments, to let to small families. Rooms containing stalactites extra charge, as in such cases clothes-pins would be unnecessary.

Imperial Rome folds her mantle grandly around her, and sits in magnificent sadness at the base of her broken statues and fallen temples—Niobe weeping for her children. Young America strides along in broadcloth and beaver, and only sees that the statue might have been a mantle-piece, or the temple a machine-shop. He forgets whence the money-changers and sellers of doves were driven, because they made the Father's house a house of merchandise. He does not see that stars burn brighter than patent oil, or that earth was intended for another purpose than a plantation. He is more eager to manufacture the napkin than to improve the talent within it. His life is practical; his body is practical; his soul is practical. He would make death and eternity practical, if he only knew how to do it.

Oh, Niagara! are the clanking of machinery and the noise of the water-wheel to be thy dirge? Shall a saw-mill be located on Goat Island, or a stove-foundry near Table Rock? Shall thy rainbow span the summit of a comb manufactory, or thy spray fall silvery on a button establishment? Shall we bewail thy beauty and grandeur forever, as we cry, "Niagara has fallen—has fallen into a mill-dam!"

THE SPRING-TIME COMETH.

HERE is a prose sketch on the same ever-fertile subject, the writer modestly styling her collection, "Shells from the Shore of Thought:"—

SPRING.—Would that thoughts on Spring would spring up in my mind radiant as the gentle flowers which the clarion voice of Spring awakens from their wintry slumber! Would that I could array these thoughts in eloquence as glorious as the vesture which she gives the lovely flowers!

She casts around them a mantle of vivid green, lifts their modest heads beneath a pearly veil of mist, and crowns them with a diadem of dew-drops, which the morning sunlight transmutes to amethysts and rubies, emeralds and diamonds.

But, sad to say, my thoughts are less like the flowers, and more like the seed of that tribe (thistle, &c.) which float through the air on a silken sail in quest of a place of repose. Some find them bright homes in lands far away, like the thoughts of the gifted, which become household words; but others, the silk of whose sail is not fine, float adrift on the waves, to be lost, like my thoughts, in the ocean of years.

Spring is the symbol of the resurrection; flowers, of the human race. In the autumn of life, man falls asleep like the flowers; but the icy reign of the winter of death is broken by the glorious springtide of immortality, where the circling seasons are no more, where there is neither death nor tears.

MEMORY.—Pleasure paints the Present, Memory paints the Past, Hope paints the Future, and spans its shadowy portals with an arch of light, radiant as the sunbow o'er the cataract. Memory tortures the wicked and consoles the righteous. When the sunlight of Hope wanes away from the landscape of life, then the moonlight of Memory its shadowy lustre sheds o'er the scene. Memory—a stereotyped edition of the Past. Memory—as the moonlight is to sunlight, so is Memory unto Hope.

MUSIC.—Sacred music—that which on earth wakes an echo in heaven. Music, the soother of the sorrowing. Music, the praises of One who loves us; notes which dwell in the heart, like the lingering perfume of withering violets, when the voice which created the beautiful music is silent forever on earth.

LOVE.—Life is a tangled web, but through its woof there runs the golden thread of Love.

PHILADELPHIA HIGH SCHOOL FOR GIRLS.—When is this institution to be opened? The High School for Boys has been sustained in the most liberal manner many years, and now a new and costly edifice for the school is nearly prepared. Will not the men of Philadelphia add beauty as well as strength to the recent act of "Consolidation," by founding a HIGH SCHOOL FOR GIRLS?

A GREAT DUTY WHICH IS IMPOSED UPON MOTHERS.—Listen, good mothers: this is not a question of one of those idle studies, the only aim of which is to stock the memory; it concerns an important question, the most important which can be agitated on the earth; so important, that the manner in which you resolve it will decide, without appeal of your moral life and death, of the moral life and death of your children. It is not only a matter that regards yourselves, but also the flesh of your flesh, the blood of your blood; those poor little creatures, whom you have brought into this world, with passions, vices, love, hatred, pain, and death; for these are, in truth, what they have received from you with the life of the body; and these will, indeed, be miserable presents, if you do not also give them the life of the soul; that is to say, arms wherewith to fight, and a light whereby to direct themselves.

You are mothers according to the laws of our material nature, with all the love of a hen which watches over its little ones, and covers them with its wings. I come to ask you to be mothers according to the laws of our divine nature, with all the love of a soul called upon to form souls.

Assure yourselves well whether or not you owe to your children only the milk of your breasts, and the instruction of the intelligence; and if you interrogate the Gospel and nature, take heed to their answer—"Man does not live by bread alone, but by the word of truth."

Truth is that which renders man free; it is the voice which calls us to the love of God and of our neighbor, and to virtue.

Error, on the contrary, is that which renders us slaves to the passions of others and to our own; it is that which causes us to sacrifice our conscience to fortune, to honors, to glory, to vice.

Thus, virtue springs from truth; crime from error; whence we may infer that a good treatise on education can only be in the end the search after truth.

The destiny of your children depends then on the solicitude with which you engage in this search. You may open out to them the road to happiness, and precede them in it. A delightful task, which calls for all the powers of your soul, and which will place you in the presence of God, of nature, of your children, and of yourselves.

And mark well all that nature has done towards accomplishing this difficult work. In the first place, she has brought you near to the truth which is in her, by detaching your sex from almost all the ambitions which debase our own; and secondly, she has given your love to the tenderness of little children, at the same time that she has filled their hearts with innocence, and their minds with curiosity. Can you doubt the object of your mission, when you perceive the sweet harmonies which unite them to you? Nature attaches them to your bosoms, awakens them by your caresses; she wills that they should owe everything to you, so that, after having received from you life and thought, these earthly angels await your inspirations, in order to believe and to love.—L. AimÉ Martin.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.—The following articles are accepted: "And I heard a voice saying, Come up hither," "Secret Love," "The Lost Pleiad," "To a Friend on his Marriage," and "To ——." A number of long articles on hand have not been examined; will be reported next month.

The following are declined, many of them because we have not room. Our drawers are "full" of accepted articles, which may have to wait till the writers suffer greater disappointment than a rejection at first would have inflicted. So we return a number of the contributions sent us last month, as their authors request, though we do not usually comply with such conditions. Those who send articles to us should keep a copy of the MS.; we cannot answer for its safe return. We decline "Coming Events," "Her eyes are with her heart," &c., "To Ada, with a Bouquet," "Our Thoughts," "The Dying Girl's Request," "The Wail of a Broken Heart," "The Child's Wish," "Lines on the Birth of a Child," "The Deserted Lady," "Regina," "Cold Water," "Never say Die," "A Great Prize," "My Friends," and "Conversation."