Harriot Kezia Hunt (November 9, 1805 – January 2, 1875) was an early female physician and women's rights activist.
How can the physique be braced if no fresh breath from the outer world is suffered to permeate the languid, enervating air of thedrawing-room? How can the grasp of the mind be vigorous, without action? Daughters of inherited wealth, or accumulated labor! the wide door of philanthropy is open peculiarly to you! Your life-work lies beyond your threshold: your wealth has placed you above the sorrowful struggle for daily bread which takes up the whole time of so many of your brothers and sisters. You are the almoners of God. A double accountability is yours.
In opening your doors to woman, it is mind that will enter the lecture room, it is intelligence that will ask for food; sex will never be felt where science leads for the atmosphere of thought will be around every lecture.
. . . the prevalent custom of educating young women only for marriage, and not for the duties and responsibilities consequent on marriage--only for appendages and dead weights to husbands--of bringing them up without an occupation, profession, or employment, and thus leaving them dependent on anyone but themselves--is an enormous evil, and an unpardonable sin.
Every individual, like a statue, develops in his life the laws of harmony, integrity, and freedom; or those of deformity, immorality, and bondage. Whether we wish to or not, we are all drawing our own pictures in the lives we are living.
My profession brought me in contact with various minds. Earnest, serious discussion on the condition of woman enlivened my business room; failures of banks, no dividends from railroads, defalcations of all kinds, public and private, widows and orphans and unmarried women beggared by the dishonesty, or the mismanagement of men, were fruitful sources of conversation; confidence in man as a protector was evidently losing ground, and women were beginning to see that they must protect themselves.
The physician must not only be the healer, but often the consoler.
Said an opponent to me after my last protest was sent in, what party would you vote for, if you could? Neither. I would have a moral sentiment party. I would know the private character of my candidate, would know also whether he takes care of his own property - whether he had failed in business - if so, whether he had paid back every dollar of debt as fast as he had earned them. Yes, every candidate should be examined morally, and if it be found that he has not been true to the monitions of conscience in one direction, he cannot or will not be in another.
Without infringing on the liberty we so much boast, might we not ask our professional Mayor to call upon the smokers, have them register their names in each ward, and then appoint certain thoroughfares in the city for their use, that those who feel no need of this envelopment of curling vapor, to insure protection may be relieved from a nuisance as disgusting to the olfactories as it is prejudicial to the lungs.
Medication alone is not to be relied on. In one half the cases medicine is not needed, or is worse than useless. Obedience to spiritual and physical laws--hygeine [sic] of the body, and hygeine of the spirit--is the surest warrant for health and happiness.
. . . these great improvements of modern times are blessings or curses on us, just in the same ratio as the mental, moral, and religious rule over the animal; or the animal propensities of our nature predominate over the intellectual and moral. The spider elaborates poison from the same flower, in which the bee finds materials out of which she manufactures honey.
. . . bringing up daughters for nothing but marriage, mingles poison in the cup of domestic life, is traitorous to the virtue of both sexes, for neither suffers alone--is adverse to the happiness, to the development of conscience and to religion, and introduces to the dwellings of wretchedness and despair. The result of this degradation is pride, intemperance, licentiousness--nay, every vice, misery, and degradation.
It is high time that the women of Republican America should know how much the laws that govern them are like the slave laws ofthe South.