There's an old riddle about a father and son who are involved in an automobile accident. The father is killed, and the badly-injured son is rushed to the hospital. After taking one look at the kid, the surgeon on duty says, "I can't operate on this boy. He's my son." How is that possible?
Even in the 1970's that riddle stumped people. Feminists bandied it about a lot in those days to show people how bigoted they were. (If it stumps you, please call me. We need to talk.)
I was reminded of it this morning when I saw in the New York Times it was on this date in 1849 that America's first woman doctor, Elizabeth Blackwell, earned a medical degree from the Medical Institution of Geneva, N.Y.
I really shouldn't be so smug. I had a startling experience of my own when I was a student at Michigan State back in the early 80's. I had run out of a medicated shampoo that back then required a prescription. (For more on that, see my posting, "Logic and the FDA" from April 16, 2012).
Anyway, I called the university health center and told them what I needed and asked if somebody could just write me a prescription without a lot of rigmarole and recording my entire medical history and such. The woman I talked to told me to come on over. "I'll have you see Dr. Johnson," she said, "who's very good about this kind of thing."
Excellent, I thought, but all the way over there I rehearsed what I would say so that the doctor would be only too happy to write the prescription and send me on my way. When I got there and announced I was to see Dr. Johnson, a young woman left me in a little examining room, saying, "Just wait here. She'll be right with you."
WHAT? She? I had just failed Feminism 101. They said doctor, I saw a man. I was mortified. I had humiliated myself in my own eyes. Is there anything worse?
Yes. Before I was done castigating myself, Dr. Johnson came into the room. She was black.
Double whammy to my feminist/liberal consciousness. But I haven't made that mistake since.
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