“Iron-Nerved Young Women” – Nellie Bly Visits Female Medical Students
Phew! But it was horrible. I mean that it was horrible to see pretty, bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked young women busily engaged in dissecting. I saw some of these young medical students at work the other day picking, picking, picking, and so learning the beginning, the end and the object of the veins, arteries, nerves and muscles, and I haven’t had much liking for my dinner since.
It came about this way. I had been told that a dissecting-room was connected with the Woman’s Medical College, at 128 Second avenue. This naturally gave me a desire to see the creatures, whom men claim faint at the sight of a mouse, engaged in dissecting. Of course I thought it over for some time, and I wondered if the students ever fainted at the sight of the work before them. More than all I wondered if I could view them at their work unmoved.
