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9. Combat Zones
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Mitchell’s sensitivity to criticism did not inhibit his aggressive engagement in debate and controversy, especially as he grew older. In fact, he believed that it was his duty as a famous neurologist and prominent citizen to pilot the ship and maintain the correct course. Given his status as a “professional giant,” he felt obliged to do so and became even more absolute and self-righteous about his beliefs. He fortified his war of words with his reputation as the great nerve doctor and his popularity as a fiction writer.For various audiences,whether New Women, anti-vivisectionists, or alienists, he was able to take advantage of his skill as a writer,employing a number of rhetorical weapons and tactics to contend with his adversaries. Some of the battles were more heated than others, and some he ultimately lost. When William Osler left for Baltimore in 1889, there was no medical school at Johns Hopkins University. Although the university opened in 1876 and its hospital was completed in 1889, there had been difficulty raising the funds for a medical school. Even after Hopkins president Daniel Coit Gilman made a formal appeal, stating,“Only a man of large means and of large views will be likely to appreciate the situation,” no such man responded. Instead, a group of women,realizing a rare opportunity,did respond.M.Carey Thomas,Mary Garrett , Mamie Gwinn, and Bessie King organized the Women’s Medical School Fund in order to raise the money. All four women had fathers who were or had been Hopkins trustees.More importantly,Garrett’s father, John Work Garrett , was the head of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and when he died, she inherited a huge fortune. 9 combat zones e 09 Chapter 9_Cervetti 6/27/2012 1:59 PM Page 176 As the group’s spokesperson,M.Carey Thomas approached President Gilman and told him that the Women’s Medical School Fund (also known as the Women’s Fund Committee) would contribute $100,000 to the Johns Hopkins Medical School if it would admit women on an equal basis with men. Although almost seven hundred people had contributed, Garrett’s contribution would be close to half the total. In 1890 the Hopkins board accepted the $100,000, but stated that the school could not open until an endowment of $500,000 was raised. The Nation immediately criticized the board’s decision to admit women.As a response to The Nation’s criticism,in February 1891 the Century published “Open Letters: On the Opening of the Johns Hopkins Medical School to Women,”including letters from Mary Putnam Jacobi,Carey Thomas, and Osler in support of the decision. Then, in 1892 Garrett offered to donate an additional $300,000 with the stipulation that the medical school would be a graduate school with high admission standards and that it be open to men and women.1 Carey Thomas served as the chief negotiator in bringing about this thorny and complicated end, often traveling from Bryn Mawr to Baltimore and staying up all night to prepare for the difficult meetings.These were not“cool business arrangements between rational intelligences,”according to Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, but more like “a performance of Italian opera at its most fevered.”2 Thomas wrote that many of the trustees and especially President Gilman preferred never to have a medical school than to have one that admitted women. But rather than fight in the open, they fought “in the dark with treachery and false reasons. Trustees, doctors, professors (Mr. Gwinn and Father leading our forces) became involved in a tangle of hatred, malice, detraction that beggars description.”3 The movement to allow women to attend Johns Hopkins Medical School involved more than a few women and their fathers on the East Coast, however. There was much more at stake, certainly, and committees of the Women’s Medical School Fund emerged in fifteen cities, including Chicago, San Francisco, St. Louis, and New Orleans. Mitchell,as Osler’s close friend and a faithful reader of both The Nation and The Century, watched this drama unfold with great interest. Along with many others, he did not want women admitted to Johns Hopkins Medical School. Given the difficulty of raising the money and the uproar over theWomen’s Medical School Fund, he hoped to lure Osler back to Philadelphia. But this time, rather than using an article, a public address, or a public letter, Mitchell used a novel—serialized right...