The Jane Edna Hunter Project

Page 55: Excerpt from A Nickel and a Prayer

the scalpel and saw as frequently as did the lecturing surgeon.  We examined every organ and part of the human anatomy, which knowledge proved a source of great help to me.  I learned the composition of the blood, as I carried it fresh from the slaughter house and whipped it, as I went along, to separate the fibrin from the serum.  Crude though the methods of instruction may seem, they must have been effective.  Before I had finished my course at Cannon Street, I was entrusted with treatments and manipulations which usually demanded the skilled hands of a surgeon.
    There were other circumstances that might have disheartened one who had less vigor and determined spirits.  Favoritism, rivalry and jealousy kept the training school in a state of feverish agitation.  Here, as elsewhere in the South, the caste system based upon color prevailed.  I witnessed an interesting instance of this species of discrimination when I attended a Negro church and found the congregation grouped chromatically--“high yellows” to the right, “chocolate browns” to the left, and genuine “ebony blacks” in the middle section!
    However scornfully I may have regarded such snobbery, I found myself profiting by it during my first year at the hospital.  I was lighter in complexion than any of the other students, and this difference of pigmentation won favors and privileges for me.  When at the end of a year, a student whose skin was a shade

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Hunter, Jane Edna. A Nickel and a Prayer. 2nd edition. Nashville: Elli Kani Publishing Co., 1941.

© 2009 Jane Edna Hunter Project