Letter from M. Carey Thomas to Mary Elizabeth Garrett, January 26, 1893

Dearest Mary, What a foolish child to telegraph - it has just come - I will not write you if you do such foolish things. You may be sure I shall let you know if I am ever really ill and I trust you to do the same instantly. Dr. Gerhard found me with considerable fever last evening and today with a pulse of 80. He says I am completely run down and I told him about symptoms that have really worried me a little since our antifebrin night at the Lafayette which were so bad Tuesday evening and night and all yesterday that I was almost alarmed - palpitations of the heart which make me feel very faint and sometimes wake me up at night. He says it is almost certain they are the effects of that 17 grains of antifebrin which really might have killed me - he says he should never never have given it without being there with restoratives and that probably it really disturbed the cardiac circulation. He has I fear destroyed all my pleasure in taking it as he wants me never to touch it again. If this tonic does not answer he will try another cardiac stimulant. There is nothing functual, or organic or anything but a purely temporary disturbance that prob would not exist if I had not been over working. I am to stay in bed all today and then get up and do as I please. Tomorrow aft. I have two engagements in Philadelphia and on Sat. I shall prob. go with Mamie for Sunday to Atlantic City. I will send you our address in case there is anything and remember if necessary I will come to Baltimore. I have been thinking of what you had better do about these requirements and I am sure the proper thing is to insist on your conditions being absolutely and literally carried out to the letter. To yield now will mean no power to insist later. If they are not carried out the money will be saved for a better object that is all. They must think you a fool to believe you, or indeed we, can be hoodwinked in that way. There seems to me no need for any excitement on your part - even being a woman you have the whip hand for once and can afford to be absolutely immovable. I fancy we had better draw up a statement with which you can tell them you will be satisfied but that your conditions will be fulfilled by nothing less definite. We are absolutely in the right, magnificently in the right - if we have in college now 170 undergraduates (girls) everyone of whom has passed (not one of whom has entered by certificate) our examination for reading French and German at sight it is folly to suppose men cannot do the same at a much more mature age. The Hopkins Med. Sch. under that statement of requirement for admission will soon be distanced by Columbia and even the Univ. of Penna I heard yesterday is agitating for a BA or BS entrance requirement. As for the building how I wish Kelly and Osler and Hurd would come on here to see Dalton lunch with me and have Osborne build the $50,000 building. Could they not petition the Trustees. But no - as you say we are not men and can do nothing. Indeed I think it is rather a lesson (to me) to have in future no great interests at stake in mens things. It canGÇÖt help being for a little while important for women to control then. Think what a nice building and school we could have if we could control things. Send on Sch. letters if you approve. And this is literally the last you hear from me till I sent statement. I wish you were here to consult but it is imp. Lovingly yours