in the admission of women to a University, and especially in them
studying in mixed classes. I believe most firmly that if, when we
first applied for admission in Edinburgh, we had simply been given
the ordinary tickets, and, if either no notice had been taken of our
entering the classes, or the other students had been invited, as
they were by Dr Alleyne Nicholson, to join in welcoming us to their
midst, no difficulties would ever have arisen at all; or at least no
difficulties but might have been most easily smoothed away by any
manly teacher with a real reverence for his subject, and a belief in
the profound purity of Science.[114] I am sure that in theory it is
both possible and right for ladies and gentlemen to study in the same
classes any and every subject which they need to learn, and I have
very little doubt that this will ultimately be the usual arrangement
as civilization advances. But I am equally certain that boys of a low
social class, of small mental calibre, and no moral training, are
utterly unfit to be admitted to a mixed class, and I confess that I
was most painfully surprised in Edinburgh to find how large a number
there are of medical students who come under this description. I had
honestly supposed, as I wrote three years ago, that ladies need fear
no discomfort in an ordinary medical class, as “the majority of the
students would always be gentlemen.”[115] I regret that on this point
I have been compelled somewhat to modify my opinion, though I would
fain hope that the circumstances which obliged me to do so were to a
great extent exceptional and local.[116] Nor do I think it possible
that a mixed class can be satisfactorily conducted by any man who is
not capable of inspiring his students with a reverence for purity,
or who does not naturally teach them alike by example and precept,
that the fear of competition is essentially low and mean, and that
the acme of degradation is reached when strength of any kind is used
for the injury or annoyance of the weaker or less protected; and,
this being so, I acquiesce very heartily in the decision that, at
present, wherever professors and students think it necessary, women
shall be taught medicine only in separate classes, though I hope, even
in my life-time, to see the day when such regulations are no longer
required, because students and teachers alike have risen to a higher
moral level.[117] In the meantime, let us but be granted permission
to acquire our knowledge in separate classes, at whatever cost, and
the authorities may be very sure that we shall not trouble them with
requests again to be subjected to the unsavoury companionship of which
we had such full experience in 1870–71.[118]
And, lastly, with regard to future legislation respecting medical
practice, I would say but one word. It is clearly right that, for the
protection of the helpless and ignorant, the State should take means
to distinguish between competent and incompetent practitioners of
medicine, and I hope that women as well as men will always be required
very thoroughly to prove their fitness for practice before they are
allowed to undertake it, at least under national sanction. But it
is not in the least for the good of the nation that any monopoly
should be encouraged, whether in matters of teaching, examination,
or practice. Is it not simply shameful that all that I have now been
relating should be _possible_ in this country, and possible because of
a law which appoints but one door to the medical profession,--that of
Registration,--limits Registration to those who have passed through
certain definite Schools, and satisfied certain definite Boards, and
yet allows those Schools and Boards absolute power to shut their
doors on one-half of the human race, and that even in the case of
Universities largely subsidised from public funds, and at a time when
the public are positively clamouring for women doctors for women? We
can see plainly enough why it is (in the lowest sense) the interest
of medical men to exclude women from their profession,--though, thank
God, there are hundreds of medical men who would scorn to put their
interests in one scale when justice weighed down the other,--but it
is _not_ the interest of the public or of the nation to sanction any
such monopoly;[119]--it is their interest to throw open the gates of
competition as widely as possible, insisting only on a uniform standard
of attainment for all, of either sex, who would enter them; for, by
thus increasing the supply of really competent doctors, they give
themselves the best possible opportunities of selection; and, as I have
pointed out elsewhere, they double the chances of growth and advance in
the fields of medical science.
When this momentous question again comes before Parliament, I trust
that the issues involved will be fully realised; and that, while
providing for the most stringent examination of every candidate, no
arbitrary barrier will be placed in the way of any, and no regulations
be allowed to stand which militate against the good old English motto
for all,--a Fair Field and no Favour!
FOOTNOTES:
[71] By this Act a Court of Examiners was appointed and declared to be
“authorised _and required_ to examine all person or persons applying to
them, for the purpose of ascertaining the skill or abilities of such
person or persons in the science of medicine, and his or their fitness
and qualification to practise as Apothecaries;”--it being, however,
stipulated that all candidates, so applying, should have gone through
certain preliminary studies and apprenticeship.
[72] The classes attended by Miss Garrett, in common with the other
students, were as follows:--Chemistry, Practical Chemistry, Materia
Medica, Botany, Zoology, and Natural Philosophy.
[73] See _Note H_.
[74] “A woman must have uncommon sweetness of disposition and
manners to be _forgiven_ for possessing superior talents and
acquirements.”--Miss ELIZABETH SMITH (_Memoir, by H. M.
Bowdler_).
[75] In the year 1870 the question was formally asked of the Italian
Government whether women were legally entitled to study in the
Universities, and the answer was in the affirmative.
[76] The University Court consists of the Rector, the Principal, and
the Lord Provost of Edinburgh; with five others appointed respectively
by the Chancellor, the Rector, the Senatus, the Town-Council of
Edinburgh, and the General Council of the University.
[77] On this point I may quote the following passage from the
_Scotsman_, whose great influence has always been most nobly exerted
in this question on the side of justice and liberality, and to whose
help in arousing the moral sense of the community, we owe a debt that
we can never hope to pay. The words quoted occur in a leading article
referring to a meeting of the General Council, of which mention will
be found elsewhere:--“Even Dr Christison, who is well known to be in
truth the very soul and centre of the opposition, and whose personal
influence alone has probably prevailed to carry it on so long in the
teeth of public opinion, thought it advisable to say at the Council
meeting, that ‘if anything could be done to get the ladies out of their
difficulty, he should be glad to be one to give them assistance.’ This
expression sounds somewhat farcical to those who are aware that the
present dead-lock arises simply from the fact that the ladies’ studies
have now brought them to that point at which Dr Christison’s class
comes next in turn to be attended, and that the Professor, in spite
of his verbal gallantry, has flatly refused either to instruct them
himself or facilitate arrangements by which any one can do so in his
place.”--_Scotsman_, October 31, 1871.
[78] As some attempts have been lately made to throw doubt on the
validity of the regulations just quoted, and, in fact, on the legality
of the matriculation of women, I think it well to specify distinctly
certain of the persons who were most immediately concerned in the
University action just described. The University Court which drew up
the above regulations, contained among its members Mr Moncreiff, then
Lord Advocate of Scotland, and Mr Gordon, who had held the same office
under a previous Government, besides two other legal members. The
Chancellor who gave his express sanction to all the measures taken,
was Lord Glencorse, (Inglis,) the Lord Justice-General of Scotland. I
leave the public to judge how far it is probable that these gentlemen
conjoined to do an illegal and invalid act on behalf of the University.
[79] I fully agree in the following remarks made by a local paper when
the results of the next summer term were declared:--“The whole number
of gentlemen who appear in the prize-lists (in Botany) are 32, out of
140 competitors,--_i.e._, about 23 per cent.; of the ladies, _all_.
We believe that these results prove, not that women’s capacities are
better than those of men--a thing that few people would assert--but
that these women who are devoting themselves to obtain, in spite of
all difficulties, a thorough knowledge of their profession, are far
more thoroughly in earnest than most of the men are, and that their
ultimate success is certain in proportion. Nor would we omit the
inference that, this being so, those who wantonly throw obstacles in
the way of this gallant little band incur a proportionately heavy
responsibility, as wanting not only in the spirit of chivalry, but even
in the love of fair play, which we should be sorry to think wanting in
any Briton.”--_Daily Review_, August 5, 1870.
[80] Compare Miss Garrett’s experience, p. 78.
[81] I am told that on this occasion the obstructives of the day
actually shut the College gates on the ladies, but that the gallant old
Professor, nothing daunted, admitted them through a ground-floor window
in South College Street!
[82] See _Note I_.
[83] The following passage occurs in a leading article on the riot got
up in Philadelphia by male medical students, when in 1869 ladies were
first admitted to the Pennsylvania Hospital:--“Their riotous procedure
is just a manifestation of the same trades-union spirit that will stoop
to any meanness, join in any tyranny, be guilty of any cruelty, rather
than allow interference with what is considered as its ‘vested rights.’
In last week’s _Lancet_ we find a letter from a medical man, who asks
with _naïve_ surprise whether the advocates of female physicians can
possibly be aware that there are hundreds of medical _men_ not able to
make a comfortable living! We know not which most to admire--the cool
assumption that the medical profession exists only or mainly to fill
the pockets of its members, or the serene assurance that takes it for
granted that no woman has a right to expect to be allowed the chance of
earning a living, till all male competitors are safely and sufficiently
provided for! It is rather amusing to contrast the evidently keen
dread of successful competition which degrades a man thus to plead
_in formâ pauperis_, with the voluble assurances, in this and other
medical papers, that nature has clearly interdicted to women the
practice of medicine, and that here at least they cannot but utterly
fail.”--_Scotsman_, Dec. 4, 1869.
[84] _Times_, April 25, 1870.
[85] See _Note J_.
[86] “In answer to an incorrect statement which appeared in one of the
medical papers respecting his class, Dr Alleyne Nicholson has forwarded
to its editor a letter, from which we extract the following passage:--
... “The course of lectures on Zoology, which I am now delivering to a
mixed class, is identically the same as the course which I delivered
last winter to my ordinary class of male students. I have not hitherto
emasculated my lectures in any way whatsoever, nor have I the smallest
intention of so doing. In so acting, I am guided by the firm conviction
that little stress is to be laid on the purity and modesty of those who
find themselves able to extract food for improper feelings from such
a purely scientific subject as zoology, however freely handled. ‘To
the pure all things are pure.’” In the moral courage and manly purity
of the above letter we find fresh cause to congratulate the ladies on
the teacher they have secured on a subject which might easily have
been made offensive by a man of prurient mind. As teachers of truly
scientific spirit become more common, we shall, doubtless, hear less
and less of the difficulties of giving instruction to classes composed
of medical students of both sexes.”--_Daily Review_, June 14, 1870.
[87] I am sorry to say that hardly a year later a majority of these
lecturers were so overborne by the prevailing medical influence, that
they rescinded the above regulations, merely permissive as they were,
and, in spite of the remonstrances of the gentlemen whose classes
we had attended, passed a resolution forbidding any of their number
to instruct lady students, either in mixed or separate classes,
in Surgeons’ Hall. That no doubt whatever might remain as to the
_animus_ which dictated this resolution, they distinctly confined the
prohibition to the case of ladies _who were registered students of
medicine_,--expressly allowing the continued instruction of midwives!
I wish that space would permit of my quoting the remarks made on this
occasion by the _Scotsman_ of July 19, 1871, and by other papers.
[88] See _Note K_.
[89] See _Note L_.
[90] This mob was not wholly or mainly composed of our fellow-students
at Surgeons’ Hall, though a few of them were present. The larger
number, however, belonged to the lowest class of University students,
who had been summoned together by an anonymous missive circulated in
the class-rooms the same morning.
[91] See _Note M_.
[92] It is worth remark that, for the first time within memory, lady
contributors used their right of voting on this occasion, and it is
tolerably significant that more than a dozen voted on our behalf, and
not one against us. The number of doctors who voted for us was three or
four; against us, more than twenty.
[93] The text of the petition was as follows:--
“_To the Court of Contributors to the Royal Infirmary._
“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--We, the undersigned Women of
Edinburgh, not being able to attend the Meeting at which the admission
of Female Medical Students to the Infirmary will be discussed, desire
hereby to express our great interest in the issues involved, and
our earnest hope that full facilities for Hospital study will be
afforded by the Managers to all women who desire to enter the Medical
Profession.”
[94] See _Note N_.
[95] Several of the principal citizens, including the senior member
for Edinburgh, had spoken strongly on our behalf at the meetings just
mentioned; indeed it has been remarkable throughout how strongly the
municipal element has been on our side, while the leaders of the
opposition have, with hardly an exception, been medical men, and their
immediate friends and followers.
[96] See _Note O_.
[97] See _Note P_.
[98] See _Note Q_.
[99] See _Note R_.
[100] On a subsequent very similar occasion the _Scotsman_
remarked:--“It may be noticed that this is the third time that
startling announcements have been fired at the lady students on the
very eve of important examinations, possibly with the professional view
of testing the soundness of their nerves.”--_Scotsman_, March 21, 1872.
[101] The text of the resolution was as follows:--“That in the opinion
of this Council, the University authorities have, by published
resolutions, induced women to commence the study of medicine at the
University; that these women, having prosecuted their studies to
a certain length, are prevented from completing them from want of
adequate provision being made for their instruction; that this Council,
without again pronouncing any opinion on the advisability of women
studying medicine, do represent to the University Court that, after
what the Senatus and Court have already done, they are at least bound
in honour and justice, to render it possible for those women who have
already commenced their studies to complete them.”
[102] _Lancet_, October 28, 1871.
[103] I am assured by Mrs Henry Kingsley, who kindly acted as _Hon.
Sec._ to this memorial, that the signatures might have been multiplied
tenfold, had any organized effort been made to obtain them by means of
paid agents taking the papers from house to house.
[104] “The Edinburgh school has come badly out of its imbroglio with
the lady students. The motion of Dr Alexander Wood, to which we made
reference last week, was negatived by a majority of ten. As we then
pointed out, the issue before the General Council was neither more
nor less than this--to keep faith with the female students whom
the University had allowed to proceed two years in their medical
curriculum. The Council was not asked to commit itself in the slightest
degree to any opinion, favourable or unfavourable, to the admission
of ladies to a medical career. It had only to concede, in common
courtesy, not to say common fairness, the right to which the best legal
advice had clearly shown the female students to be entitled,--the
right to carry on the studies they had been allowed to prosecute half
way towards graduation. Will it be believed? An amendment postponing
the settlement of the difficulty till it had been duly considered by
the authorities of the University was put and carried; as if there
was any more room for “consideration” in the matter! Thus Edinburgh
stands convicted of having acted unfairly towards seven ladies whom
she first accepted as pupils, and then stopped half-way in their
career.”--_Lancet_, Nov. 4, 1871.
[105] “It mattered nothing that firms had voted ever since the
Infirmary was founded; that contributors qualified only as members of
firms had, as has now been ascertained, sat over and over again on
the Board of Management, and on the Committee of Contributors. It was
of equally slight importance that the firms whom it was now sought to
disqualify had been among the most generous benefactors of the charity,
and that, with the imminent prospect before them of great pecuniary
necessity, it would probably be impossible, without their aid, to carry
out even the plans for the new building. The firms had voted in favour
of the ladies, and the firms must go, if, at least, the law would
(as it probably will not) bear out the medical men in their reckless
endeavour to expel them.”--_Scotsman_, January 29, 1872.
[106] At this meeting a Committee of Contributors, previously
appointed, reported in favour of the admission of lady students, and
against the exclusion of the votes of firms, and this Report was
approved by 232 votes to 227. On this occasion there voted for the
approval of the Report 41 ladies and 10 doctors; against it, 6 ladies,
44 doctors, and 5 druggists.
[107] See _Note S_.
[108] See _Note Q_.
[109] In support of this suggestion the Court remarked that the
question had been needlessly “complicated by the introduction of the
subject of graduation, which is not essential to the completion of a
medical or other education.” They _forgot_, however, to mention that
though a degree is “not essential” to a medical education, it _is_
absolutely indispensable to any practical use of it,--that is to say,
to any lawful practice of the medical profession.
[110] The correspondence above referred to is given in _Note T_.
[111] _Scotsman_, March 25, 1872.
[112] _Scotsman_, May 7, 1872.
[113] Though a majority of the Senatus did decide to defend the action,
I believe that it is understood that such decision did not imply, on
the part of all who acquiesced in it, any moral conviction that we are
not entitled to obtain the desired Declarator, since several other
Professors appear to have agreed in feeling with the six dissentients,
but to have acquiesced in the defence of the action for the sake of
having a formal legal decision given on one side or the other.
[114] “I am bold enough to say that there is nothing in the art of
healing which may not fitly be spoken of before an audience of both
sexes, provided there be a generally good tone prevailing among them,
and the lecturer be of a pure and manly spirit. Indeed, I will go
farther, and say that his example in treating subjects of the kind
incidental to his work with equal purity and courage will be far
from the least valuable part of his teaching. It will bring home to
the hearts of his hearers, with more force than any other argument,
the truth that every creature, every ordinance of God, is good and
pure.”--_Medical Women_, by Rev. THOMAS MARKBY. London:
Harrison.
Compare with the above the following statement made by an Edinburgh
medical student in the columns of the _Scotsman_:--“I beg leave to
relate what I myself listened to in a lecture-room of the University,
during the last summer session. On the occasion to which I refer,
the Professor went a long way beyond the requirements of scientific
teaching--into the regions of “spicy” but indelicate narrative--in
order that he might appropriately introduce remarks to the following
effect:--“There, gentlemen, I have minutely described to you those
interesting incidents which it would have been impossible for me to
notice if women were present; and I hope that we may be long spared the
annoyance which their presence here would inflict upon us.” The tempest
of applause that followed showed only too well the harmony which
existed between teacher and pupils on points that would have been far
better left unnoticed.”--_Scotsman_, December 26, 1870.
[115] See “_Medicine as a Profession for Women_,” p. 62.
[116] “The truth is, a class of young men, inferior socially to
their predecessors of ten years ago, now resort to the Edinburgh
School, which has lost much of its attractiveness now that London
and other seats of learning are so well appointed and so efficiently
worked.”--_Lancet_, February 17, 1872.
[117] “_Mundis omnia munda!_ Neither ladies nor lecturers are conscious
of ‘indelicacy’ or ‘breach of decorum.’ Can it be that the unruly
students are ‘nice’ only upon Dean Swift’s principle, because they are
‘nasty?’”--_Globe_, Dec. 10, 1870.
[118] See _Note U_.
[119] “The wrong done to individuals by denying them the training
necessary to the pursuit of a branch of knowledge, and the practice of
an art for which they may have a special taste and capacity, is very
great; and it involves a wrong not less signal to society, in limiting
the sources whence good may come to it.”
_Daily News_, Nov. 1, 1871.
NOTES.
NOTE A, p. 11.
The following are a few only out of many indications of the existence
of the painful feeling alluded to in the text. The reader will hardly
need to be reminded that this is especially a subject respecting which
a maximum of feeling may well exist with a minimum of expression, for
hardly anything but a sense of duty would make a woman write on such a
question to the newspapers.
... “But there remains to be considered the modesty and delicacy of
the patients,--a question hardly yet mooted; these poor women having,
I suppose, too much of the reality to raise the point. It cannot be
denied that at least one-half of the patients of medical men are
women, or that usually (from natural causes) they require medical
services more certainly and frequently than men; and operations
delicate or indelicate, so called, must be performed, questions,
delicate or indelicate, must be asked, and answered too, if not by the
patient herself, by the nurse, who, I believe, is usually a woman.
“There is much reason to believe that many women, either owing to the
nature of their malady, or from constitutional nervousness or reserve,
never avail themselves of the services of a medical man without
reluctance. To them it is always a painful effort--the twentieth time
as much as the first. It would, I think, be odd if something of this
kind were not felt very strongly by every woman on some occasions,
and I have seen very experienced mothers quite distressed, if by any
chance, they were deprived of the assistance of ‘the doctor they
were used to.’ The wives of medical men have told me that it was
their one comfort to feel that in their hour of suffering only their
own husband and a good nurse need be with them. I think this is not
unnatural.”--Letter by “MEDICUS,”
_Pall Mall Gazette_, May 11, 1870.
“I happened to be speaking to a young shopwoman--a total stranger to
me--and in the course of conversation advised her to seek medical
advice, when she replied, with a sudden gush of tears in her eyes,
that she _had_ been in the Infirmary, in Dr Matthews Duncan’s wards
for a fortnight, and had during that time suffered so much from the
constant presence of crowds of male students during certain inevitable
but most unpleasant examinations of her person, that, as she herself
forcibly expressed it, ‘it almost drove me mad.’”
_Daily Review_, Nov. 18, 1870.