The Mysteries of Montreal Being Recollections of a Female Physician

Excerpt

CHAPTER I.

Early Life and Professional Struggles.

My father, an officer in the Hanoverian Army, having died while I was almost a child, I found myself, at the age of 17, governess in the family of the Baron Grovestein in Hamburg, Germany, where I met my present husband, Gustav Schroeder, at that time one of the most "eligible" young gentlemen in that city.

Though not particularly handsome, Gustav was all that could be desired in other respects. He was young, well educated, and the son of wealthy parents, and of an amiable disposition. Soon after my engagement at the Baron's, young Schroeder's visits (ostensibly to the family) became so frequent, that his friends, who had divined the cause, forbade his having anything to say to me, more than cold civility demanded; and insisted that his visits to the Grovestein mansion should be discontinued. This, it may well be supposed, had quite the opposite effect, and in a short time we were engaged to be married, with the formal, if not the hearty approval of Gustav's relations, and in course of time the marriage ceremony took place, with all the paraphernalia of an Alt-Deutsch Hochzeitsfest.

Now, however, came the question: How are we to live! for my husband had no settled profession, and his parents, though wealthy, could not deprive their more obedient children of their rights to benefit the perverse Gustav. They gave him sufficient to start him in business, with the understanding that he would emigrate to America, their idea being that a German gentleman with a little capital could not fail to make a fortune among the comparatively illiterate Columbians. To New York accordingly we came, and Gustav labored assiduously to establish a business as importer of German manufactures; he soon found, however, that men who did not know Horace from Euripides could drive closer bargains, and make quicker sales than he could, and, as he was too proud to compound with his correspondents in the old country, and insisted on conscientiously paying a hundred cents for a dollar, we found ourselves in less than three years, with diminished capital in specie, and an increased one as regards future candidates for the Presidency, on our way back to our common Fatherland. Through the influence of his friends, Gustav procured a good situation in a merchant's office, but he was altogether unsuited both by temperament and education for such a position, and I soon made up my mind that I must either prepare to enter the world's great battlefield in person, or live in helpless dependence on my husband's relations.

I had often while in America wondered why the ladies of that Republic (so advanced and enlightened in everything else) should submit to a practice so revolting, so contrary to all ideas of morality and refinement as is the system of man-midwifery so widely practiced in the United States. No German lady would think of permitting the attendance of a man at her bedside on such an occasion, and though custom in England seems generally to sanction the absurd practice, yet Her Majesty Queen Victoria never allows her medical advisers to be in attendance in any other capacity than that of consulting physicians....