Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Olde Cambridge

[96] address, on woman as a nurse, he said, “I have always felt that this was rather the vocation of woman than general medical, and especially surgical, practice.” This was received with loud applause from the conservative side, then prevailing. He quietly went on, “Yet I myself followed the course of lectures given by the young Madame Lachapelle in Paris; and if here and there an intrepid woman insists on taking by storm the fortress of medical education, I would have the gate flung open to her, as if it were that of the citadel of Orleans and she Joan of Arc returning from the field of victory.” Professor Dwight, who was present, adds: “The enthusiasm which this sentiment called forth was so overwhelming, that those of us who had led the first applause felt, perhaps looked, rather foolish. I have since suspected that Dr. Holmes, who always knew his audience, had kept back the real climax to lure us to our destruction.” ¹

His theological heresies, as they were once considered, were really the outcome of the scientific habit of his mind; and perhaps partly