Sophia Jex-Blake

“ 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? ”

“ If a woman is to be applauded for facing the horrors of an army hospital when she believes that she can there do good work, why is she to be condemned as indelicate when she professes her willingness to go through an ordeal, certainly no greater, to obtain the education necessary for a medical practitioner? ”

“ The novelty, in truth, was not in the granting of the medical degree to a woman, but in its being received by an Englishwoman, for it is hardly gratifying to one’s national pride to find that England never has accorded such encouragement to female learning as was found in Italy, Germany, and France; and it is still more painful to realize that this country, almost alone, stands still aloof from the movement of liberal wisdom that has now in all these lands, as well as in Switzerland, and even in Russia, granted to woman the advantage of University education and degrees. ”

“ It only proves how much unworthy passion and prejudice the great doctors allow to intrude into their adoration of ‘pure science’ and boasted love of humanity, that, instead of being eager to enlist the feminine intuitions and investigations in this great cause, as their best chance of arriving at truth, they are actually enacting the ignoble part of churls and misers, if not of quacks. For are they not well enough aware that often their women patients are so utterly beyond them that they do not know what to do with them! ”

“ Last April we were told that the study of science was linked with impurity of thought, and we look upon the present action of the Lecturers of Surgeons’ Hall as a result of the indignant protest which every pure-minded man of science must have longed to utter against such a wholly false and calumnious statement. It is as the champions of science rather than of medical women that these gentlemen must be regarded. ”

“ That some women have succeeded in acquiring most competent medical knowledge and skill can hardly be denied, except by those who really know nothing of the facts, or are wilfully blind to them; but in almost every case they have done so at a cost of money, effort, and personal sacrifice, that can be expected only from the few. Imagine all medical students met by the difficulties which female students must encounter;—how many properly educated doctors should we have? ”

“ They talk in a vague and very offensive way about certain studies which form a necessary part of medical education, and not being themselves capable of seeing the true dignity and profound purity of all science, especially when pursued with the aim of succouring pain and combating disease, they manage too often to impress the general public with the idea that by sanctioning the joint study of medicine by men and women the said public would commit itself to some shocking impropriety, all the more awful for being quite indefinite—omne ignotum pro magnifico. ”

“ Moreover, there is reason to hope that women doctors may do even more for the health of their own sex in the way of prevention than of cure, and surely this is the very noblest province of the true physician. Already it is being proved with what eagerness women will attend lectures on physiology and hygiene when delivered to them by a woman, though perhaps not one in ten would go to the same course of lectures if given by a medical man. I look forward to the day when a competent knowledge of these subjects shall be as general among women as it now is rare ”

“ But, until last week, we were not aware that any one in the profession, or out of it, held that the mere fact of ladies wishing to be educated in common with men, in order that they might make sure of receiving the highest and most thorough scientific training, justified those who held contrary opinions in loading them with abuse and vulgar insult. It has been reserved for Dr Laycock, professor in the famous University of Edinburgh, to set an example which, we trust, even the least courteous and gentlemanly of first-year’s students will hesitate to follow.... ”

“ Are only the hot-headed youths to be blamed who hustle and hoot at ladies in the public streets, and by physical force close the College gates before them? Or are we to trace their outrageous conduct to the influence of the class room, where their respected professor meanly takes advantage of his position as their teacher to elicit their mirth and applause, to arouse their jealousy and opposition, by directing unmanly inuendoes at the lady students? ”

“ In the meantime, we congratulate the five ladies on the prompt spirit in which they have repelled the insidious attempt of a majority of the medical faculty—we believe only a very small majority—to cut their studies short. We need not urge them to persevere, for they seem to have that ‘faculty’ in predominance, but we think we can assure them that every victory that they gain, and every defeat that they suffer, adds to the number of their sympathisers, and breaks down no inconsiderable portion of the mountain of prejudice that they had to face when they commenced their career as students. ”

“ For ourselves, we hold that the admission of women into the ranks of medicine is an egregious blunder, derogatory to the status and character of the female sex, and likely to be injurious, in the highest degree, to the interests and public estimation of the profession which they seek to invade. ”

“ Now that the Lecturers of Surgeons’ Hall have come forward as a body to affirm the same principle, we may indeed hail the beginning of the end, and may trust soon to see the day when the man who condemns the teaching of science to classes of both men and women will simply stand self-convicted as wanting alike in true scientific spirit and in genuine purity of mind. ”

“ If this is true where there are at least several hundred students to be divided among the eleven existing schools, how palpably absurd it is to recommend our countrywomen to ‘have separate places of medical education and examination,’ when the whole number of ladies desiring to study medicine in England may perhaps number a score! Our own University professors tell us plainly that separate classes for half-a-dozen ladies are an impossibility, and the practical experience of Surgeons’ Hall, pointing in the same direction, evidently guided its lecturers in their recent vote. ”

“ Many persons, however, who would gladly see women engage in the practice of Medicine, yet think it undesirable that they should obtain their education in the same schools as men; and here another practical point arises for consideration. If it is indeed true that no one is fit for the profession of Medicine unless able to banish from its practice the personal idea of sex, it certainly seems as if all earnest students seeking the same knowledge for the same ends, ought to be able to pursue their studies together. ”

“ It is, I think, inconceivable that any one who considers the study of natural science to be but another word for earnest and reverent inquiry into the works of God, and who believes that, in David’s words, these are to be “sought out of all them that have pleasure therein,” can imagine that any such study can be otherwise than elevating and helpful to the moral, as well to the mental nature of every student who pursues it in a right spirit. ”

“ To this the answer must be, that the wisest thinkers teach us to believe that each human being must be “a law unto himself,” and must decide what is and what is not suitable for his needs, what will and what will not contribute to his own development, and fit him best to fulfil the life-work most congenial to his tastes. If women claim that they do need and can appreciate instruction in any or all sciences, I do not know who has the right to deny the assertion. ”

“ Even if I am wholly mistaken, and if all that needs doing can in England be effectually done by men, we have still, I think, no reason for the exclusion of women from the medical profession;—there is still no ground on which it can be right to refuse to every patient the power of election between a physician of her own sex and of the other, when women as well as men are desirous of qualifying themselves for this work, seeing that it will after all be always a matter of choice ”

“ Suppose now that society suddenly awoke to the great want so long unnoticed, that it was recognized by all that a scientific knowledge of the human frame in health and in disease, and a study of the remedies of various kinds which might be employed as curative agents, would greatly lessen human suffering, and that it was therefore resolved at once to set apart some persons who should acquire such knowledge, and devote their lives to using it for the benefit of the rest of the race. ”

“ I found, on the other hand, a few determined enemies who would listen to nothing I could urge on the ground of either justice or mercy, and one or two who seemed to think that the fact of a woman’s wishing to study medicine at all quite exempted them from the necessity of treating her even with ordinary courtesy. The majority, however, occupied a somewhat neutral position;—they did not wish arbitrarily to stretch their power to exclude women from education, and yet they were alarmed at what seemed to them the magnitude and novelty of the change proposed. ”

“ Indeed, common delicacy would seem to demand that all the special diseases of women should be treated principally by women; but this aside, and speaking from common sense only, men may be as scientific as they please,—it is plain that thoroughly to know the women’s organism, what is good for it and what evil, and how it can best be cured when it is disordered, one must be one’s self a woman. ”

“ Again, imagine if you can that the world has reached its present standing point, that society exists as now in every respect but this,—that the art of healing has never been conceived as a separate profession, that no persons have been set apart to receive special education for it, and that in fact empirical “domestic medicine,” in the strictest sense, is the only thing of the kind existing. ”

“ Be this as it may, it is not easy to exaggerate the damaging effect that a story of this kind is likely to have on the minds of the public. That such a line of conduct could be planned and carried out by a body of men claiming the name of gentlemen, and belonging to a profession that calls itself ‘liberal’ and ‘learned,’ is perhaps as striking a proof as could be given of the fatally blinding influence of professional prejudice and unreasoning trades-unionism. ”

“ How many women cannot overcome their repugnance, and die with their special ailments unsuspected, or discovered too late? On the other hand, how many women are at great pains to conceal the shrinking which they feel when exposing their peculiar ailments to even a long-known and valued medical man? Why should we have these added to our other unavoidable sufferings? The reality of these feelings is, I am certain, within the personal knowledge of every one of your female readers. No one wishes to deny modesty to the stronger sex ”

“ But it seemed to me radically unjust, and most discreditable to Great Britain, that all her daughters who desired a University education should be driven abroad to seek it; only a small number of women could be expected thus to expatriate themselves, and those who did so would have to incur the great additional difficulty and disadvantage of studying all the departments of medical science in a foreign language, and under teachers whose experience had been acquired in a different climate and under different social conditions from our own. ”

“ In my own experience as a medical student, I have had far too much reason to acknowledge the honour and delicacy of feeling habitually shown by the gentlemen of the medical profession, not to protest warmly against any such injurious imputation. ”

“ If it be argued that the study of Natural Science may injure a woman’s character, I would answer, in the words of one of the purest-minded women I know, that “if a woman’s womanliness is not deep enough in her nature to bear the brunt of any needful education, it is not worth guarding.” ”

“ And one great advantage to be expected is the benefit that will accrue from the higher reverence for science that must necessarily result from such a system. Once admit the impropriety of teaching men and women together, and you tax science with impurity; and while such a feeling is entertained (and it surely must be lurking in the minds of those who oppose mixed classes) , the study of science, if not absolutely injurious, must be robbed of great part of its power to elevate the mind and heart.... Science has had to fight many a hard battle. ”

“ If this is so, may not the explanation be found in the sort of half-expressed idea that seems prevalent in so many people’s minds that there is in medical study something which, if not actually improper and indelicate, certainly tends that way, and had better be ignored as much as possible—something at least which the average public would probably sum up as ‘rather nasty.’ We believe that it is on this popular idea—which every true physician would indignantly disclaim—that the opponents of women’s education trade when they try to enlist public feeling against mixed classes. ”

“ Whatever may be our views regarding the advisability of ladies studying medicine, the University of Edinburgh professed to open its gates to them on equal terms with the other students; and unless some better excuse be forthcoming in explanation of the decision of the Senatus, we cannot help thinking that the University has done no less an injustice to itself than to one of its most distinguished students. ”