HER MEDICAL CAREER
1894-1914
During the years from 1894 to 1914 the main stream in Elsie Inglis's
life was her medical work. This was her profession, her means of
livelihood; it was also the source from which she drew conclusions in
various directions, which influenced her conduct in after-years, and it
supplied the foundation and the scaffolding for the structure of her
achievements at home and abroad.
The pursuit of her profession for twenty years in Edinburgh brought to
her many experiences which roused new and wide interests, and which left
their impress on her mind.
One who was a fellow-student writes of her classmate: "She impressed one
immediately with her mental and physical sturdiness. She had an
extremely pleasant face, with a finely moulded forehead, soft, kind,
fearless, blue eyes, and a smile, when it came, like sunshine; with this
her mouth and chin were firm and determined."
She was a student of the School of Medicine for Women in Edinburgh of
which Dr. Jex-Blake was Dean--a fine woman of strong character, to whom,
and to a small group of fellow-workers in England, women owe the opening
of the door of the medical profession. As Dean, however, she may have
erred in attempting an undue control over the students. To Elsie Inglis
and some of her fellow-students this seemed to prejudice their liberty,
and to frustrate an aim she always had in view, the recognition by the
public of an equal footing on all grounds with men students. The
difficulties became so great that Elsie Inglis at length left the
Edinburgh school and continued her education at Glasgow, where at St.
Margaret's College classes in medicine had recently been opened. A
fellow-student writes: "Never very keenly interested in the purely
scientific side of the curriculum, she had a masterly grasp of what was
practical." She took her qualifying medical diploma in 1902.
After her return to Edinburgh she started a scheme and brought it to
fruition with that fearlessness and ability which at a later period came
to be expected from her, both by her friends and by the public. With the
help of sympathetic lecturers and friends of The Women's Movement, she
succeeded in establishing a second School of Medicine for Women in
Edinburgh, with its headquarters at Minto House, a building which had
been associated with the study of medicine since the days of Syme. It
proved a successful venture. After the close of Dr. Jex-Blake's school a
few years later, it was the only school for women students in Edinburgh,
and continued to be so till the University opened its doors to them.
It was mainly due to Dr. Inglis's exertions that The Hospice was opened
in the High Street of Edinburgh as a nursing home and maternity centre
staffed by medical women. An account of it and of Dr. Inglis's work in
connection with it is given in a later chapter.
She was appointed Joint-Surgeon to the Edinburgh Bruntsfield Hospital
and Dispensary for Women and Children, also staffed by women and one of
the fruits of Dr. Jex-Blake's exertions. Here, again, Elsie Inglis's
courage and energy made themselves felt. She desired a larger field for
the usefulness of the institution, and proposed to enlarge the hospital
to such an extent that its accommodation for patients should be doubled.
A colleague writes: "Once again the number must be doubled, always with
the same idea in view--_i.e._, to insure the possibilities for gaining
experience for women doctors. Once again the committee was carried along
on a wave of unprecedented effort to raise money. An eager band of
volunteers was organized, among them some of her own students. Bazaars
and entertainments were arranged, special appeals were issued, and the
necessary money was found, and the alterations carried out. It was
never part of Dr. Inglis's policy to wait till the money came in. She
always played a bold game, and took risks which left the average person
aghast, and in the end she invariably justified her action by
accomplishing the task which she set herself, and, at times it must be
owned, which she set an all too unwilling committee! But for that breezy
and invincible faith and optimism the Scottish Women's Hospitals would
never have taken shape in 1914."
Dr. Inglis's plea for the Units of the Scottish Women's Hospital was
always that they might be sent "where the need was greatest." In these
years of work before the war the same motive, to supply help where it
was most needed, seems to have guided her private practice, for we read:
"Dr. Inglis was perhaps seen at her best in her dispensary work, for she
was truly the friend and the champion of the working woman, and
especially of the mother in poor circumstances and struggling to bring
up a large family. Morrison Street Dispensary and St. Anne's Dispensary
were the centre of this work, and for years to come mothers will be
found in this district who will relate how Dr. Inglis put at their
service the best of her professional skill and, more than that, gave
them unstintedly of her sympathy and understanding."
Dr. Wallace Williamson, of St. Giles's Cathedral, writing of her after
her death, is conscious also of this impulse always manifesting itself
in her to work where difficulties abounded. He points out: "Of her
strictly professional career it may be truly said that her real
attraction had been to work among the suffering poor.... She was seen at
her best in hospice and dispensary, and in homes where poverty added
keenness to pain. There she gave herself without reserve. Questions of
professional rivalry or status of women slipped away in her large
sympathy and helpfulness. Like a truly 'good physician,' she gave them
from her own courage an uplift of spirit even more valuable than
physical cure. She understood them and was their friend. To her they
were not merely patients, but fellow-women. It was one of her great
rewards that the poor folk to whom she gave of her best rose to her
faith in them, whatever their privations or temptations. Her relations
with them were remote from mere routine, and so distinctively human and
real that her name is everywhere spoken with the note of personal loss.
Had not the wider call come, this side of her work awaited the
fulfilment of ever nobler dreams."
She was loved and appreciated as a doctor not only by her poorer
patients, but by those whom she attended in all ranks of society.
Of her work as an operator and lecturer two of her colleagues say:
"It was a pleasure to see Dr. Inglis in the operating-theatre. She was
quiet, calm, and collected, and never at a loss, skilful in her
manipulations, and able to cope with any emergency."
"As a lecturer she proved herself clear and concise, and the level of
her lectures never fell below that of the best established standards.
Students were often heard to say that they owed to her a clear and a
practical grasp of a subject which is inevitably one of the most
important for women doctors."
Should it be asked what was the secret of her success in her work, the
answer would not be difficult to find. A clear brain she had, but she
had more. She had vision, for her life was based on a profound trust in
God, and her vision was that of a follower of Christ, the vision of the
kingdom of heaven upon earth. This was the true source of that
remarkable optimism which carried her over difficulties deemed by others
insurmountable. Once started in pursuit of an object, she was most
reluctant to abandon it, and her gaze was so keenly fixed on the end in
view that it must be admitted she was found by some to be "ruthless" in
the way in which she pushed on one side any who seemed to her to be
delaying or obstructing the fulfilment of her project. There was,
however, never any selfish motive prompting her; the end was always a
noble one, for she had an unselfish, generous nature. An intimate
friend, well qualified to judge, herself at first prejudiced against
her, writes:
"In everything she did that was always to me her most outstanding
characteristic, her self-effacing and abounding generosity. Indeed, it
was so characteristic of her that it was often misunderstood and her
action was imputed to a desire for self-advertisement. A fellow-doctor
told me that when she was working in one of the Edinburgh laboratories
she heard men discussing something Dr. Inglis had undertaken, and,
evidently finding her action quite incomprehensible, they concluded it
was dictated by personal ambition. My friend turned on them in the most
emphatic way: 'You were never more mistaken. The thought of self or
self-interest never even entered Elsie Inglis's mind in anything she did
or said.'" Again, another writes: "One recalls her generous appreciation
of any good work done by other women, especially by younger women. Any
attempt to strike out in a new line, any attempt to fill a post not
previously occupied by a woman, received her unstinted admiration and
warm support."
It was her delight to show hospitality to her friends, many of whom,
especially women doctors and friends made in the Suffrage movement,
stayed with her at her house in Walker Street, Edinburgh. But her
hospitality did not end there. One doctor, whom we have already quoted,
on arrival on a visit, found that only the day before Dr. Inglis had
said good-bye to a party of guests, a woman with five children, a
patient badly in need of rest, who had the misfortune to have an unhappy
home, and was without any relatives to help her. Dr. Inglis's relations
with her poor patients have been already referred to. Not only did she
give them all she could in the way of professional attention and skill,
but her generosity to them was unbounded. "I had a patient," writes a
doctor, "very ill with pulmonary tuberculosis. She was to go to a
sanatorium, and her widowed mother was quite unable to provide the
rather ample outfit demanded. Dr. Inglis gave me everything for her,
down to umbrella and goloshes."
Naturally her devotion was returned, though in one case which is
recorded Dr. Inglis's care met with resentment at first. A woman who was
expecting a baby--her ninth--applied at a dispensary where Dr. Inglis
happened to be in charge. Her advice was distasteful to the patient, who
tried another dispensary, only to meet again with the same advice, again
from a woman member of the profession. A third dispensary brought her
the same fortune! Eventually, when the need for professional skill came,
she was attended by the two latter doctors she had seen, for the case
proved to be a difficult one. Requiring the aid of greater
experience--for they were juniors--they sent for Dr. Inglis, with whose
help the lives of mother and child were saved. Thus the patient was
attended in the end by all the three women physicians whose advice she
had scorned. The child was the first boy in the large family, and the
mother's gratitude and delight after her recovery knew no bounds. It
found, however, Scotch expression, shall we say? in her tribute, "Weel,
I've had the hale three o' ye efter a', and ye canna say I hae'na likit
ye--_at the hinder en' at ony rate_!" "That woman kept us busy with
patients for many a day," writes one of the three. The bulky
mother-in-law of one patient expressed her admiration of the doctor and
her lack of faith in the justice of things by saying: "It's no fair Dr.
Inglis is a woman; if she'd been a man, she'd ha' been a millionaire!"
The doctor in whose memory these incidents live says of her friend: "No
item was too trivial, no trouble too great to take, if she could help a
human being, or if she could push forward or help a younger doctor."
If Elsie Inglis's intrepidity, determination, and invincible optimism
were well known to the public, the circle of her friends was warmed by
the truly loving heart with which they came in contact.
The following incident may show in some degree what a tender heart it
was. A friend whose brother died, after an operation, in a nursing home
in Edinburgh was staying at Dr. Inglis's house when the death occurred.
The body had to be taken to the Highland home in the North. The sister
writes: "My younger brother called for me in the early morning, as we
had to leave by the 3 a.m. train to accompany the body to Inverness.
When Dr. Inglis had said good-bye to us and we drove away in the cab, my
brother--he is just an ordinary keen business man--turned to me with his
eyes filled with tears, and said: 'I should have liked to kiss her like
my mother.' (We had never known our mother.)"
In the fourteenth century, in that wonderful and most lovable woman,
Catherine of Siena, we find the same union of strength and tenderness
which was so noticeable in Dr. Inglis. In the _Life_ of St. Catherine it
is said: "Everybody loves Catherine Benincasa because she was always and
everywhere a woman in every fibre of her being. By nature and
temperament she was fitted to be what she succeeded in remaining to the
end--a strong, noble woman, whose greatest strength lay in her
tenderness, and whose nobility sprung from her tender femininity."
In her political sagacity, her optimism, and cheerfulness also, she
reminds us of Elsie Inglis. During St. Catherine's Mission to Tuscany
the following story is told of her by her biographer: "The other case"
(of healing) "was that of Messer Matteo, her friend, the Rector of
Misericordia, who had been one of the most active of the heretic priests
in Siena. To this good man, lying _in extremis_ after terrible agony,
Catherine entered, crying cheerfully: 'Rise up, rise up, Ser Matteo!
This is not the time to be taking your ease in bed!' Immediately the
disease left him, and he, who could so ill be spared at such a time,
arose whole and sound to minister to others."[10]
We smile as we read of Catherine's "cheerful" entrance into this
sick-chamber, and those who knew Dr. Inglis can recall many such a
breezy entrance into the depressing atmosphere of some of her patients'
sickrooms.
FOOTNOTE:
[10] _Catherine of Siena_, by C. M. Antony.