MEDICAL EDUCATION OF WOMEN.“When free thoughts, like lightnings, are alive,And in each bosom of the multitude,Justice and Truth, with Custom’s hydra brood,Wage silent war.”Starting, then, with the assumption that women may, with profit to themselves and to the community, become practitioners of medicine, it is clear that they must, in the first place, secure such an education as shall make them thoroughly competent to take their share of responsibility in the care of the national health; and, secondly, that they must obtain this education in accordance with the regulations prescribed by authority, so that they may be recognised by the State as having conformed to all its legal requirements, and may practise on terms of perfect equality with other qualified practitioners.It is essential to the thorough comprehension of this last point that the laws regulating medical practice in this country should be clearly understood, as these can never be lost sight of by those who are engaged in the battle which we are now waging, and I will, before proceeding further, endeavourto state clearly the provisions of the Medical Act of 1858. For the protection of the public against ignorant and mischievous quacks, the Act provided that no person should be recognised as a legally-qualified practitioner of medicine in the United Kingdom unless registered in a Register appointed to be kept for that purpose. The Act provided that all persons possessing the degree of M.D. from any foreign or colonial University, and already practising in this country at the date of the passing of the Act, should be entitled to be so registered; but that, with this exception, (and a curious one in favour of those on whom the doctorate had been conferred by the Archbishop of Canterbury,) no medical practitioners could demand registration unless holding a licence, diploma, or degree, granted by one of the British Examining Boards specified in the schedule attached to the Act. It is, of course, self-evident that these provisions were intended solely to defend the public against incompetent practitioners, and, though it is perhaps to be regretted that the Act did not expressly require the Medical Council to examine, and, on proof of competency, to register the holders of foreign diplomas, and all others who had pursued a regular course of medical study, it could not be anticipated that any great injustice would be done by the omission of any such a clause; and still less,assuredly, was it intended by this Act to secure to one sex a monopoly of all medical practice. But, at the present moment, it is certain that great danger exists that the Act may be wrested from its original purpose and made an almost insurmountable barrier to the admission of women to the authorised practice of medicine; and this because the Act, as it at present stands, makes it obligatory on all candidates to comply with certain conditions, and yet leaves it in the power of the Medical Schools, collectively, arbitrarily to preclude women from such compliance.The following clauses of the Act of 1858 will show the absolute necessity that now exists for the registration of all practitioners of respectability:—... “After January 1, 1859, the words ‘legally qualified Medical Practitioner,’ or ‘duly qualified Medical Practitioner,’ or any words importing a Person recognised by Law as a Medical Practitioner or Member of the Medical Profession, when used in any Act of Parliament, shall be construed to mean a Person registered under this Act....“After January 1, 1859, no Person shall be entitled to recover any Charge in any Court of Law for any Medical or Surgical Advice, Attendance, or for the Performance of any Operation, or for any Medicine which he shall have both prescribed and supplied, unless he shall prove upon the Trial that he is registered under this Act....“After January 1, 1859, no Certificate required by any Act now in force, or that may hereafter be passed, from any Physician, Surgeon, Licentiate in Medicine and Surgery, or other Medical Practitioner, shall be valid unless the Person signing the same be registered under this Act.“Any Person who shall wilfully and falsely pretend to be, or take or use the Name or Title of a Physician, Doctor of Medicine, Licentiate in Medicine and Surgery, ... or any Name, Title, Addition, or Description implying that he is registered under this Act, or that he is recognised by Law as a Physician, or Surgeon, ... shall, upon a summary Conviction for any such offence, pay a sum not exceeding Twenty Pounds.”It is, then, sufficiently plain that any doctor practising in this country without the required registration, not only places himself in the position of a quack and a charlatan, but actually incurs legal penalties for assuming medical titles, however fairly they may have been won in the most eminent of foreign universities. It is therefore clear that it becomes asine quâ nonthat any women, desiring to practise medicine in this country, should obtain their education in such a way as will entitle them to demand registration.There are at this moment two Englishwomen whose names appear on the Register as legally qualified medical practitioners; and it may be necessary for me now to explain how they came respectively to attain this position, and how it happens that no more women are able to avail themselves of the means that were open to them.Though several English ladies are recorded in history as having studied medical science, I am not aware that any of our country-women ever graduated in medicine before the year 1849, when Miss Elizabeth Blackwell, after surmounting manydifficulties, obtained the degree of M.D. from a college in the State of New York. Returning subsequently to England, she took advantage of the clause in the Act of 1858, which I have already mentioned, and demanded and obtained registration in the British Register. But the clause referred to was, as I have explained, retrospective only, and no one can now obtain an American degree, and in virtue of it claim registration in this country.This being the case, when, in the year 1860, Miss Garrett resolved to begin the study of medicine, with a view to practising in England, it was necessary that she should obtain her education under the auspices of some one of the medical corporations empowered to give registrable qualifications. After trying in vain to obtain admission to one School and College after another, she finally found entrance at Apothecaries’ Hall, which was, from its charter, taken, as I suppose, in conjunction with the provisions of the Apothecaries’ Act of 1815,[71]incapable of refusing to examine any candidate who complied with its conditions of study.In order to observe the regulations of Apothecaries’ Hall, she was obliged to attend the lectures of certain specified teachers; and though she was, in some cases, admitted to the ordinary classes,[72]in others she was compelled to pay very heavy fees for separate and private tuition by the recognised lecturers. She had also considerable difficulty in obtaining adequate hospital teaching, though there was, in truth, hardly the slightest difference between the advantages she needed and those now habitually accorded to lady probationers and trained nurses, who are constantly present with the ordinary students at the bedside and in the operating theatre.[73]She obtained admission, however, to the Middlesex Hospital, and might, I suppose, have studied there as long as she pleased, had she not been unfortunate enough to acquit herself too well in some of thevivâ-voceexaminations in which she took part with the male students, thus arousing their manly wrath, which showed itself in a request that she should be required to leave the Hospital,[74]and this noble and magnanimous application was actually granted!She, however, completed her studies elsewhere, and especially at the London Hospital; being, it is to be presumed, too discreet to enter again on the field of competition. Thus, at length, she obtained her education, and, in 1865, received the licence to practise from Apothecaries’ Hall, which enabled her to place her name upon the British Register. But no sooner had she thus demonstrated the existence of at least a postern gate by which women might enter the profession, than the authorities took alarm, and, with the express object of preventing other women from following so terrible a precedent, a rule was passed, forbidding students henceforth to receive any part of their education privately, it being well known that women would be rigorously excluded from some at least of the public classes!As, then, the different doors by which the two ladies above-mentioned entered the profession of medicine were both closed after them, it is evident that, when, three years ago, I looked round for the means of obtaining medical education in this country, it was necessary that some new way should be devised. It is true that in several of the European Universities women were at that moment studying medicine;—indeed, I am not aware that any of the Italian,[75]French, or GermanUniversities have ever been closed against women who applied for admission. I might, no doubt, have obtained, at the world-renownedEcole de Médicinein Paris, a medical education at least equal, and, in some respects, probably superior, to anything that this country affords; and at the University of Zurich, also, a considerable number of women have, for some years, been receiving an excellent medical education. 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. And even if these difficulties could be overcome, another objection appeared to me absolutely insuperable. The Act of 1858 distinctly declares that only British licenses, diplomas, and degrees can now claim registration, and that without registration no practitioner can be considered as legally qualified. It is well known with what distinguished honour Miss Garrett lately passed her examinations in Paris, and with what brilliantsuccess she gained one of the most valuable medical degrees in Europe, and yet in the official British Register her name appears only and solely as that of a licentiate of Apothecaries’ Hall. As no such license was now open to me and to other women, it was clear that those of us who went abroad for education might expect, after years of severe labour, to return to England to be refused official recognition on the Register, and, in fact, in the eye of the law, to hold a position exactly analogous to that of the most ignorant quack or herbalist who might open a penny stall for the sale of worthless nostrums. As such a position was hardly to my taste, it became necessary to try other means.It seemed to me highly desirable that, if women studied medicine at all, they should at once aim at what is supposed to be a high standard of education, and that, to avoid the possibility of cavil at their attainments, they should forthwith aspire to the medical degree of a British University.I first applied to the University of London, of whose liberality one hears so much, and was told by the Registrar that the present Charter had been purposely so worded as to exclude the possibility of examining women for medical degrees, and that under that Charter nothing whatever could be done in their favour. Knowing that at Oxford and Cambridge the whole question wascomplicated with regulations respecting residence, while, indeed, neither of these Universities furnished a complete medical education, my thoughts naturally turned to Scotland, to which so much credit is always given for its enlightened views respecting education, and where the Universities boast of their freedom from ecclesiastical and other trammels. In March 1869, therefore, I made my first application to the University of Edinburgh, and I hope in the following pages to give a rapid sketch of the chief events of the subsequent three years in connexion with that University, though time and space oblige me to make the sketch so brief that I must ask the reader’s indulgence if, in some points, it is less plain and distinct than it might be if I could enter more fully into details.For the sake of clearness, let me first explain, in few words, who constitute the different bodies that take a share in the government of Edinburgh University, taken in the order in which my application was considered by them. The Medical Faculty of course consists of Medical Professors only; the Senatus comprises all the Professors of every Faculty, and also the Principal; the University Court is composed of eight members only;[76]and lastly, the General Council of the University consists of all those graduates of Edinburgh who have registered their names as members. Each of these bodies had to be consulted, as also the Chancellor, before any important change could be made.When I first went to Edinburgh, I found many most kind and liberal friends among the Professors. In the Medical Faculty itself, Sir James Simpson, Professor Hughes Bennett, and Professor Balfour, Dean of the Medical Faculty, at once espoused my cause; and I need not say that Professor Masson and other members of the non-medical Faculties were not a whit behind in kindness and help. 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.Several Professors were especially timid about the question of matriculation, and argued that,till they had some evidence of probable success, it would be premature to let women matriculate, since, by so doing, they would acquire rights and privileges of the most extensive kind. To meet this difficulty I gladly accepted a suggestion made to me privately by the Dean of the Medical Faculty, that I should, for the present, waive the question of matriculation, and should, during the summer months, attend his class in Botany and that of Professor Allman in Natural History, to see whether, as theSpectatorexpressed it, “Scotch and English students were really so much more brutal than Frenchmen and Germans,” or whether a lady could, without discomfort, attend the ordinary classes. This plan met with much approval, and some of the Professors’ wives most kindly offered to accompany me to the classes when the time should come. The Medical Faculty and Senatus successively sanctioned this tentative plan, and, after a short stay in Edinburgh, I left for England to make preparations for returning to spend the summer session as arranged.But two or three hostile Professors appealed to the University Court; some of the students also sent up a memorial against the arrangement proposed, and the question was reconsidered.I am anxious, as far as possible, to avoid personalities in this matter, and yet, I think, I cannotproperly tell my story without explaining at the outset that, in my opinion at least, the whole opposition to the medical education of women has in Edinburgh, been dictated by one man and his immediate followers. It is hardly necessary to say that that man is Sir Robert Christison,[77]whose great age and long tenure of office naturally give him unusual weight, both in the University and among the medical men of Edinburgh. Having said this, I need only remark further that Professor Christison has, ever since I came to Edinburgh, been the only professor and the only medical man who has had a seat in the University Court, and also the only person who has all along been a memberof every body, without exception, by whom our interests have had to be decided, viz., of the Medical Faculty, the Senatus, the University Court, the University Council, and the Infirmary Board.The question then was brought before the University Court in April 1869. The meetings of the Court are held in strict privacy, (against which the public and the members of the University Council have often protested,) and I can only state the result of their deliberation. On April 19th the following resolution was passed:—“The Court, considering the difficulties at present standing in the way of carrying out the resolution of the Senatus, as a temporary arrangement in the interest of one lady, and not being prepared to adjudicate finally on the question whether women should be educated, in the medical classes of the University, sustain the appeals, and recall the resolution of the Senatus.”The very palpable invitation to other ladies to come forward, which appeared on the face of this resolution, bore fruit; for, in the course of the next month, or two, four more ladies expressed their wish to be admitted as students, and certain of the University authorities held out hopes that an application forseparateclasses would be successful. Accordingly, in June 1869, I addressed a letter to the Rector of the University,who is also President of the University Court, enquiring whether the Court would “remove their present veto in case arrangements can be made for the instruction of women in separate classes; and whether, in that case, women will be allowed to matriculate in the usual way, and to undergo the ordinary Examination, with a view to obtain medical degrees in due course?”I also wrote to the Senatus asking them to recommend the matriculation of women as medical students, on the understanding that separate classes should be formed; and, moreover, addressed a letter to the Dean of the Medical Faculty, offering, on behalf of my fellow-students and myself, to guarantee whatever minimum fee the Faculty might fix as remuneration for these separate classes.On July 1st, 1869, at a meeting of the Medical Faculty of the University, it was resolved to recommend to the Senatus:—(1.) That ladies be allowed to matriculate as medical students, and to pass the usual preliminary examination for registration; (2.) That ladies be allowed to attend medical classes, and to receive certificates of attendance qualifying for examination, provided the classes are confined entirely to ladies; (3.) That the medical professors be allowed to have classes for ladies, but no professor shall be compelled to give such course of lectures; (4.) That, in conformity with the request of Miss Jex-Blake’s letter to the Dean, ladies be permitted to arrange with the Medical Faculty, or with the individual professors as to minimum fee for the classes.At a meeting of the Senatus Academicus, July2, 1869, the Report of the Medical Faculty was read, agreed to, and ordered to be transmitted to the University Court. At a meeting of the University Court, on 23d July 1869, “Mr Gordon, on behalf of the Committee appointed at last meeting to consider what course should be followed in order to give effect to the resolution of the Senatus, reported that the Committee were of opinion that the matter should be proceeded with under sectionxii.2, of the Universities Act, as an improvement in the internal arrangements of the University. Mr Gordon then moved the following resolution, which was adopted:—“The Court entertain an opinion favourable to the resolutions of the Medical Faculty in regard to the matriculation of ladies as medical students, and direct these resolutions to be laid before the General Council of the University for their consideration at next meeting.”This resolution was approved by the General Council on October 29th, 1869, and was sanctioned by the Chancellor on November 12th, 1869. The following regulations were officially issued at the same date, and inserted in the Calendar of the University:—(1.) Women shall be admitted to the study of medicine in the University; (2.) The instruction of women for the profession of medicine shall be conducted in separate classes, confined entirely to women; (3.) The Professors of the Faculty of Medicine shall, for this purpose, be permitted to have separate classes for women; (4.) Women, not intending to studymedicine professionally, may be admitted to such of these classes, or to such part of the course of instruction given in such classes, as the University Court may from time to time think fit and approve; (5.) The fee for the full course of instruction in such classes shall be four guineas; but in the event of the number of students proposing to attend any such class being too small to provide a reasonable remuneration at that rate, it shall be in the power of the professor to make arrangements for a higher fee, subject to the usual sanction of the University Court; (6.) All women attending such classes shall be subject to all the regulations now or at any future time in force in the University as to the matriculation of students, their attendance on classes, Examination, or otherwise; (7.) The above regulations shall take effect as from the commencement of session 1869–70.[78]In accordance with, the above resolutions, four other ladies and myself were, in October 1869, admitted provisionally to the usual preliminary examination in Arts, prescribed for medical students entering the University. Having duly passed, and received certificates to that effect fromthe Dean of the Medical Faculty, we, after the issue of the regulations above cited, all matriculated in the ordinary manner at the office of the Secretary of the University. We paid the usual fee, inscribed our names in the University album, with the usual particulars, including the Faculty in which we proposed to study, and received the ordinary matriculation tickets, which bore our names, and declared us to be “Cives Academiæ Edinensis.” We were at the same time registered in due course as students of medicine, by the Registrar of the Branch Council for Scotland, in the Government register kept by order of the General Council of Medical Education and Registration of the United Kingdom, such registration being obligatory on all medical students, and affording the sole legal record of the date at which they have commenced their studies.It seemed now as if smooth water had at length been reached, after seven months of almost incessant struggle. The temporary scheme first suggested had been set aside, but its place had been taken by one much more comprehensive, which had resulted from five months of consideration and consultation, and which had ultimately received the sanction of every one of the University authorities in succession. Not only were women allowed the privilege of matriculation which we had been told involved so much; butformal regulations, entitled “For the Education of Women in Medicine in the University,” had been framed, and have now for three years formed an integral part of the University Calendar.For six months our hopes seemed realised. We pursued most interesting courses of study in the University, and found nothing but kindness at the hands of our teachers, and courtesy from the male students, whenever we happened to meet them in the quadrangle or on the staircases. Even Dr Christison was reported to have said in Senatus that, as the experiment was to be tried, he for one would co-operate to give it a fair trial.Though the lectures were delivered at different hours, the instruction given to us and to the male students was identical, and, when the class examinations took place, we received and answered the same papers at the same hour and on identical conditions, having been told that marks would be awarded indifferently to “both sections of the class,”—this latter expression being, by the bye, repeatedly used during the course of the term by both the Professors who instructed us.I am obliged now to mention the results which appeared in the prize-lists, not with a view to claim any special credit for the ladies,[79](whoseefforts to obtain education might well make them more zealous than most of the ordinary students,) but because I believe that the facts I am about to mention had a real and immediate connexion with subsequent events.[80]In the class of Physiology there had been 127 male students, of whom 25 appeared in the honours list; in the Chemistry class there were 226 male students, of whom 31 obtained honours; of the 5 women, 4 were in honours in both classes. One of the ladies obtained the third place in the Chemistry prize-list; and, as the two gentlemen above her had already gone through a course of lectures on the same subject, Miss Pechey was actually first of her year. In the College calendar it was stated that “the four students who have received the highest marksare entitledto have the Hope Scholarships,”—such scholarships giving free admission to the College laboratory, and havingbeen founded by the late Professor Hope from the proceeds of lectures given to ladies some fifty years previously.[81]It had occurred to us that if any lady won this scholarship she might be debarred from making full use of it as regards the laboratory, in consequence of the prohibition against mixed classes, but as it had been distinctly ordained that we were to be subject to “all the regulations in force in the University as to examinations,” it hadnotoccurred to us as possible that the very name of Hope Scholar could be wrested from the successful candidate and given over her head to the fifth student on the list, who had the good fortune to be a man.[82]But this was actually done.At the same time that the Professor announced to us his intention of withholding the Hope Scholarship from the student who had won it, on the ground that, having studied at a different hour, she was not a member ofThe Chemistry Class, though he, at the same time, gave her a bronze medal of the University, (to which I should think her claim must have been neither greater nor less, since these medals were given to the five studentshighest on the list,) he offered us written certificates of having attended a “ladies’ class in the University,” as of course he saw that to give the ordinary certificates of attendance on “TheChemistry Class of the University” would be to destroy his own argument with reference to the Scholarship. As, however, such certificates were absolutely worthless to us as students of medicine, we declined them, and appealed to the Senatus to ordain that the ordinary certificates should be granted to us, as they alone would qualify for professional examination. At the same time Miss Pechey made an appeal to have the Hope Scholarship awarded to her in due course. It is hardly credible that (by very narrow majorities in each case) the Senatus decided that we were to have exactly the ordinary certificates, which declared us to have attendedthe Chemistry Classof the University of Edinburgh, and yet acquiesced in Miss Pechey’s being deprived of her Scholarship on the ground that she was not a member of that class!I do not wish to dwell longer on these incidents, but I have narrated them here because I believe that the above mentioned results of the class examinations aroused in our opponents a conviction that the so-called experiment was not going to fail of itself, as they had confidently hoped, but that if it was to be suppressed at all, vigorous measures must be taken for that purpose.At the previous meeting of the University Council, no Professor had stood up to oppose the admission of women, though Dr Andrew Wood had covered himself with glory by protesting that he had too many sons to provide for, to acquiesce in the education of women for the Medical Profession![83]At the next meeting, however, of the Council, in April 1870, Professor Masson moved that, in view of the success that had hitherto attended the ladies’ studies, the existing regulations should be so far relaxed as to allow of the attendance of women in the ordinary classes, where nospecial reasons existed to the contrary, that they might be spared the additional expense, inconvenience, and difficulty, attendant on the formation of separate classes in every subject. Professor Balfour, Dean of the Medical Faculty, seconded this motion, and expressed his opinion that arrangements might easily be made to carry it out. Professors Laycock and Christison, however, opposed it vigorously, and that in speeches of such a character that theTimes[84]remarked in a leading article:—“We cannot sufficiently express the indignation with which we read such language, and we must say that it is the strongest argument against the admission of young ladies to the Edinburgh medical classes that they would attend the lectures of Professors capable of talking in this strain.”[85]When the vote was taken, the motion in our favour was lost by forty-seven votes to fifty-eight, and no change was therefore made in the University regulations.The Professor of Botany kindly made arrangements for giving to us and other ladies a separate course of lectures, though he much regretted to be forced to this double, and needless, expenditure of time and trouble. Dr Allman, the Professor of Natural History, who had in the previous summer consented to my entering his ordinary class, stated that his health wouldnot allow him to undertake the labour of two classes, and, therefore, he could not teach us. We then made application for instruction to Dr Alleyne Nicholson, the extra-mural teacher of the same subject, and he at once agreed to our request. Before making any arrangements, he spoke to the members of his class at their first meeting, and, mentioning our application, he enquired whether they would unite with him in inviting us to join their class. This they unanimously did; and, as we had no objection to offer, the first “mixed class” was inaugurated, and continued throughout the summer without the slightest inconvenience.[86]In the meantime, we were anxious to make arrangements for the next winter session, and it was especially necessary that a course of instruction in Anatomy should be provided, as the subject was one of the greatest importance, and the University professor flatly refused either to instruct us himself or allow his assistant to do so in any way whatever. Under these circumstances we endeavoured to obtain a competent extra-mural teacher who should form a special class for our instruction; but I was repeatedly warned that, by this time, the medical prejudice had been so strongly aroused against us, and the medical influence was so strongly at work, that we should fail in our endeavours, as no young medical man dare run the risk of being ostracised for giving us help. The only extra-mural teacher of Anatomy who was already recognised by the University was Dr Handyside, who was one of a band of nine associated lecturers who conjointly rented a building, called Surgeons’ Hall, for their lectures. Some of these lecturers were indignant at the way in which we were treated in the University, and, in July 1870, they, by a majority, passed the following resolutions:—1. That it is expedient that lecturers in this Medical School should be free to lecture to female as well as to male students.2. That no restrictions be imposed on the lecturers as to the manner in which instruction is to be imparted to women.[87]After the passing of this regulation, we applied to Dr Handyside to know if he could make arrangements for giving us a separate class. He replied that it would be quite impossible for him to do so consistently with his duty to his other students, but that if we liked to attend his course of Anatomy in the ordinary way, he should be happy to receive us. Dr Heron Watson similarly consented to admit us, to his ordinary course of Lectures on Surgery, and so our arrangements for winter lectures were complete.The class of Practical Anatomy always meets at the beginning of October, although the lectures do not commence till the following month. The more studious and industrious students usually come up at the earlier date, but those who careless about their work seldom appear till November, as that is the beginning of the compulsory session. All through October we studied under Dr Handyside with great comfort; the students who worked with us, though in another part of the room, were never uncivil, and in fact we hardly exchanged a dozen sentences with any of them during the month. Dr Handyside and his demonstrator both told us that they had never seen so much steady, earnest work as since we joined the class, and expressed their opinion that the results were quite as valuable for the male students as for our ourselves. With November 1st the lectures began, and everything went on satisfactorily for another ten days.About this time, acting on the advice of a medical friend, we made an application for permission to study in the wards of the Royal Infirmary, and, somewhat to our surprise, were met by a curt refusal. As we knew that several of the managers were liberal-minded and just men, we felt sure that they could not have fully understood the importance to us of the concession we desired, and, on enquiry, I found this was the case. One of those who had voted against our admission confessed to me that he had, in so doing, been guided simply by the medical members of the Board, and that he was not even aware that we were matriculated students of the University, and that wecould not complete our education without attending the Infirmary, as there was no other hospital in Edinburgh of the size prescribed for “qualifying instruction.” We, therefore, drew up a memorial stating our grounds of application, and another was also sent in by our two teachers, Dr Watson and Dr Handyside, urging on the Board the great injustice that would be done by our exclusion. We also obtained and sent in a written paper from three of the medical officers of the Infirmary, promising to give us all needful instruction if we were admitted.[88]When these documents were presented to the managers, a majority of those present were in favour of our immediate admission, but, on the ground of want of notice, our opponents got the matter deferred for a week. From that time the behaviour of the students changed. It is not for me to say what means were used, or what strings were pulled; but I know that the result was, that instead of being, as heretofore, silent and inoffensive, a certain proportion of the students with whom we worked became markedly offensive and insolent, and took every opportunity of practising the petty annoyances that occur to thoroughly ill-bred lads,—such as shutting doors in our faces, ostentatiously crowding into the seats we usually occupied, bursting into horse-laughs and howlswhen we approached, as if a coalition had been formed to make our position as uncomfortable as might be. At the same time a students’ petition against our admission to the Infirmary was handed about, and 500 signatures were obtained, though, if some of the reports I heard were true, but a very small number out of the 500 had even read the petition before signing it. Be this as it may, the petition was got ready for the adjourned meeting, and when that came, every opponent we had among the managers was at his place, while some of our friends were unavoidably absent, and the Lord Provost, being in the chair, was precluded from voting, so that the medical party gained an easy victory. But when I say the medical party, I ought to explain that three medical men voted on our side,—a point on which I shall have to say something subsequently.The students were naturally elated at finding so much attention paid to their petition,[89]especially as I was told that some of the medical Professors had warmly applauded them for their exertions, and I suppose the lowest section among them began to wonder whether, if they had succeeded in keeping us out of the Infirmary, they might not, by a little extra brutality, drive us away from the lecture-room. Two days later, came the second competitive examination of theterm, and on this day occurred the riot, when the gates were shut in our faces by a mob,[90]who stood within, smoking and passing about bottles of whiskey, while they abused us in the foulest possible language. It would be difficult to speak in too strong terms of the conduct of those engaged in this outrage, or of those who were morally responsible for it; but I am glad to say a word to-day about a part of the story which has not been made sufficiently public,—viz., the conduct of those of the students whose indignation against the rioters was even deeper than our own.[91]One gentleman rushed down from Surgeons’ Hall, and, at great risk to himself, forced open the gates for our admission, and a number of others made their way in after us to see that we came to no harm. When the class, which was interrupted throughout by the clamour outside, was over, Dr Handyside asked me if we would withdraw through a back door, but I said that I thought there were quite enough gentlemen in the class to protect us; and so it proved. As I spoke, a number came around us and formed a regular body-guard in front, behind, and on each side, and, encompassedby them, we passed through the still howling crowd at the gate, and reached home with no other injuries than those inflicted on our dresses by the mud hurled at us by our chivalrous foes. Nor was this all. When we arrived at the College next day, at the same hour, we found quite a formidable array of gentlemen with big sticks in their hands, who were keeping back a rabble that looked greatly disgusted, but merely vented their spite in remarkably bad language as the gentlemen referred to raised their hats as we approached, and instantly followed us in and took their seats on the back rows. After the lecture was over they formed round us, as on the evening before, escorted us home, gave us three deafening cheers, and dispersed. The explanation of all which was, that, hearing rumours of renewed rioting, a certain number of manly men among the students had resolved that the thing should not be, and for the next two or three days this same stalwart body-guard awaited and attended us daily, till the rowdies tacitly agreed to lay aside hostilities. Then I myself asked our volunteer guard to discontinue their most chivalrous escort, and quiet was restored.No further event of importance occurred during the winter, except the meetings of Infirmary contributors, at the first of which a close contest took place between managers known tobe favourable to us and those known to be unfriendly. A new Act came into operation at this date, and all the managers had to vacate their seats unless re-elected. I can give no more significant proof of the immense amount of pressure brought to bear by the medical clique than by stating that, of the three medical men who had voted for us six weeks before, it was found when the day of election came that two had turned their coats, while the one who refused to do so was unseated by the medical body that he had represented!At the Contributors’ Meeting onJan.2, 1871, at which six managers were to be elected, the Lord Provost himself proposed the election of six gentlemen known to be friendly to the admission of ladies to the Infirmary; but by the very narrow majority of 94 votes to 88, the managers previously on the Board were returned. No other question was raised, and those who voted with the Lord Provost did so simply in consequence of the importance they attached to the exclusion of the ladies by those managers who now desired re-election.[92]At a subsequent meeting, theRev.ProfessorCharteris brought forward a motion expressive of the desire of the contributors that immediate arrangements should be made for the admission of the ladies, and this motion was seconded by Sir James Coxe, M. D., but was lost by a similarly small majority. On this latter occasion, two incidents occurred that deserve notice. Firstly, a petition in favour of the ladies’ admission was presented, signed by 956 women of Edinburgh.[93]Secondly, Mrs Nichol, an elderly lady whose name is venerated throughout Edinburgh, made, in spite of ill health, the great exertion of coming forward at that public meeting, to ask one question,—“not,” as she distinctly said, “in the interests of the lady students, but on behalf of those women who looked forward to see what kind of men were they who were to be the sole medical attendants of the next generation of women, if women doctors are not allowed.” The question which she said she had been commissioned to ask by more than 1300 women, belongingto all classes and all parts of the country, was as follows:—“If the students studying at present in the Infirmary cannot contemplate with equanimity the presence of ladies as fellow-students, how is it possible that they can possess either the scientific spirit or the personal purity of mind which alone would justify their presence in the female wards during the most delicate operations on, and examinations of, female patients?”This question was received, according to the newspaper report, with “Laughter, hisses, and applause,” but no one opened his mouth to reply. Perhaps in truth no reply could have been more significant than the burst of yells and howls which greeted the question from a gallery filled by students, who indeed so conducted themselves generally as to elicit a remark to me from a learned Professor, famous for his quaint sayings: “Well! ye can say now ye’ve fought with beasts at Ephesus!”About the same time a petition, signed by twenty-three male students,[94]was presented to the Infirmary managers, praying that the lady students should no longer be excluded, but no attention was paid to the request; and when subsequently a similar application was made to the Managers by a deputation of very influential citizens,[95]they again refused, by a majority, to doanything in our behalf. Professor Balfour moved the appointment of a Committee to enquire into a scheme for the instruction of ladies proposed by certain of the medical officers of the Infirmary, but Professor Christison carried an amendment negativing even this measure; and thus another year of Hospital instruction was lost.With each succeeding Session new students joined our small class, partly in consequence of the very kind encouragement held out by Lady Amberley, Dr Garrett Anderson, and other friends, in the way of Scholarships; for, since public indignation was excited by the refusal of the Hope Scholarship to Miss Pechey, hardly a term has passed without some generous offer of valuable prizes for those ladies who needed such assistance to pursue their studies, and who, by their success in competitive examinations, showed themselves worthy of them. Such kindness is the more valuable at a time when, by incessant delays and constantly-recurring difficulties, every effort is evidently being made to exhaust alike the patience and the purses of the troublesome women who desire to complete the work they have begun.It is not necessary for me to enter into details respecting the ladies’ progress in their studies, further than to state that in every course in which they have competed for prizes, more than half of the whole class have been in the honours list, and in some cases every lady student has so appeared;[96]so that any refusal to grant them further instruction can hardly be based on the plea that they have not done their best to avail themselves of what was already afforded.During the two years, 1869–70 and 1870–71, the five original students who entered in 1869 had completed the first half of their University course, partly by attendance on separate classes in the University, and partly by means of extra-mural lectures. But at the end of these two years a dead-lock appeared imminent. The rules of the University forbid any student to take more than four classes outside the walls, and those four classes we had already taken. Professor Christison and others, whose classes came next in term, gave a curt refusal to our request for instruction, although we again offered to guarantee any fee that might be required. In this dilemma we applied for help to the Senatus, and suggested that, if no other means could be devised, the difficulty might be solved in either of two ways—(1) by appointment of special University lecturers,whose payment we would guarantee; or (2) by the relaxation in our case of the ordinary regulations, so that we might take an increased number of extra-mural classes. When these proposals came before the Senatus, it was decided to take a legal opinion as to the rights and powers of the University; and an opinion adverse to our interests having been given, the Senatus decided, on July 28, 1871, by a majority of one, that they would take no action in the matter.In these circumstances, a Committee[97]of friends which had been formed for our assistance, caused a statement of the facts to be drawn up and submitted to other Counsel, and obtained from the Lord Advocate and Sheriff Fraser an Opinion to the following effect:[98]—That it was quite competent to the University authorities to make any necessary provision for the completion of the ladies’ education; and that the Medical Faculty were bound to admit the ladies to professional examination on the subjects in which they were already qualified to pass.I must explain that the advice of counsel had been asked on this last point in consequence of a rumour that difficulties might be made respecting the examination that was now due at the end of two years of professional study. The first officialnotice on this subject was, however, received by us on Saturday, October 14, after the fees for such examination had been paid, and tickets of admission obtained; the examination itself being due on the 24th of the same month, and the ladies concerned having studied for two years with the view of passing this examination, for which they had more especially been preparing assiduously for the last six months.On the following Monday, October 16, I, moreover, received an official notice that the Dean of the Medical Faculty had been interdicted by the Faculty from giving to ladies any papers for the Preliminary Examination in Arts, which was to take placeon the following day, October 17! Three ladies had come up to Edinburgh from different parts of the country with the express object of passing these examinations, and, if prevented from doing so, they would be retarded in their studies to the extent of one year. The excessive shortness of the notice given made it impossible even to appeal to the Senatus, and the only course open to me was to submit the facts for the opinion of counsel. This was done, and we were informed that the course taken by the Medical Faculty was quite illegal,[99]while an express invitation to lady students formed part of the official calendar of the University. This opinionwas forwarded to the Dean, whose kindness to us had been invariable; and, I am sure that he was glad by it to be released from the painful necessity of obeying the Medical Faculty in this matter. The ladies were accordingly examined in the ordinary course.But the excitements of the month were not yet at an end. On applying for matriculation tickets the ladies were informed by the Clerk that the Principal, Sir Alexander Grant, had written him word that, in consequence of representations made to him by Professor Christison, he desired that no ladies should at present be allowed to matriculate. On this point, and that regarding the Professional Examination, we, of course, appealed at once to the Senatus. At the meeting at which our appeal was considered, “the Committee for securing complete Medical Education for Women in Edinburgh” also presented the opinion obtained by them from counsel, together with a letter urging that complete provision should be made for our instruction. At their meeting on October 21, the Senatus at once decided both points of appeal in our favour. The Principal’s prohibition, which had never had any legal weight, was overruled, and the permission to women to matriculate and pass the Arts Examinations was renewed, and declared to be in force so long as the present regulations stood in the calendar. The MedicalFaculty also were instructed at once to admit the ladies who were prepared for it to the Professional Examination on the following day; and I am happy to say that, in spite of the incessant worry to which they had been subjected for the past ten days, they all passed successfully. I am sure that all those who have had to prepare for severe University examinations will appreciate the difficulties under which they did so.[100]A few days later came a meeting of the University Council, when Dr Alexander Wood made a gallant attempt to get a vote passed to the effect that “the University is bound, in honour and justice, to render it possible for those women who have already commenced their studies, to complete them.”[101]TheLancetremarked, respectingthis motion:—“This is precisely the ground we have always taken up about the matter; and we hope that the General Council of the University will, by the adoption of Dr Alexander Wood’s motion, put an end to the controversy which had redounded so little to the credit of that school.”[102]A memorial in favour of the resolution was also presented, signed by more than nine thousand women, residing in all parts of the country, and representing almost every rank in society.[103]Very vigorous opposition to it was, however, made by Professors Turner, Thomson, and Christison, all of whom were members of the Medical Faculty, and ultimately an amendment, which proposed to leave the question to be settled by the Senatus and University Court, was carried by 107 votes to 97.[104]At a meeting of the Senatus held onOct.30th, the question of making further provision forthe instruction of women was brought forward, and a letter was received from the Committee of our friends stating that, “in the event of special lecturers being appointed by the University to give qualifying instruction to women, the Committee are willing to guarantee the payment to them of any sum that may be fixed by the Senatus for their remuneration, in case the fees of the ladies are insufficient for that purpose; and that, if necessary, they are willing further to undertake to provide such rooms and accommodation as may be required for the delivery of the said lectures, if it should be found absolutely impossible for the University to provide space for that purpose.” After a long debate the Senatus decided, by a majority, that they would not take any steps to enable us to complete our education. At a meeting a few days later the Senatus further decided, by fourteenvotes to thirteen, to recommend to the University Court that the existing regulations in favour of female students be rescinded, without prejudice, however, to the rights of those already studying. This resolution was, as I said, passed by fourteen votes to thirteen, and it may be worth while to mention that two of the fourteen votes were those of Dr Christison and Sir Alexander Grant, who were themselves members of the University Court to which the recommendation was to be made. That the proposed measure was not the wish of a real majority of the Professors was soon made abundantly clear, for a protest against it was sent up to the Court, signed by eighteen out of the thirty-five Professors of the University, while two out of the remaining seventeen were persistently neutral, never indeed having voted on the question from first to last. In the teeth of this protest it was, of course, almost impossible that the Regulations could be rescinded, and so they were once more confirmed by the University Court on January 3, 1872.The next event of importance was the annual re-election of Infirmary managers, six of whom were to be chosen at the contributors’ meeting at the beginning of January 1872. As on a former occasion, the election evidently turned wholly on our admission to, or exclusion from, the Infirmary wards. The medical party moved there-election of the former managers, and they were sure of the support of everybody who did not consider our admission a vital question. Our friends, on the contrary, brought forward a list of gentlemen, all of whom were known to be friendly to our cause. After a very warm debate the list of our friends proved to be successful, being supported by 177 votes, while 168 were recorded on the other side. Professor Masson then moved that a Statute be enacted by the Court of Contributors, giving the same educational advantages in the Infirmary to female as well as to male students. The hostile party, finding themselves in a minority, endeavoured to prevent this being put to the vote on technical grounds which were subsequently found to be of no legal importance. Failing in this, they then adopted the remarkably dignified course of decamping in a body, accompanied, I must confess, by some ironical cheers from those left behind. In the lull that succeeded Professor Masson brought forward his motion, which was seconded by theRev.Dr Guthrie, and passed without a dissentient voice. This Statute is, therefore, now actually law in the Infirmary, and considering that managers friendly to us had also been elected, it might have been thought that our difficulties there were at end. But now comes the most extraordinary part of the whole story. On a scrutiny of the votes it was foundthat with the majority had voted twenty-eight firms, thirty-one ladies, and seven doctors. On the other side were fourteen firms, two ladies, thirty-seven doctors, and three druggists. These figures may seem, indeed, to have a tolerable moral significance, but it is not with that that I am at this moment concerned. It occurred to the defeated party that here might be found a straw for them, drowning, to catch at,—that possibly a legal objection might be sustained against the votes of firms which were so largely in our favour, and that, if so, the victory might yet be secured![105]The result was, that, when the Contributors assembled at the adjourned meeting,[106]for the purpose of hearing the result of the scrutiny andthe final declaration of the election, the Lord Provost found himself served with an Interdict forbidding him to declare the new managers duly elected, on the ground that the votes of firms were incompetent, and that by means of these the majority had been obtained!Instances have occurred before now where personal feelings have triumphed over public interests, but I do not think that I ever heard of quite so reckless a course as this, by which the medical clique has plunged the great Edinburgh Hospital into litigation, and that with some of its own most generous supporters, rather than allow a dozen women to obtain in its wards the instruction that the Contributors had decreed they should receive![107]The litigation thus begun is still pending, and the incomplete Board of Managers have for all these months carried on the business of the Infirmary without any representatives at all from the Court of Contributors; and it is probable that they make the very fact of their deficient numbers the excuse for having up to this moment given no effect whatever to the Statute unanimously passed in our favour last January by the Court of Contributors. We applied immediately after the meeting for tickets of admission, but were told that the managers must first be consulted, and from that day to this no tickets havebeen issued to us, though the statute referred to legally secured that “henceforth all registered students of medicine shall be admitted to the educational advantages of the Infirmary, without distinction of sex.” The matter, however, can now be only one of time; and, since the law of the Infirmary is at length on our side, our opponents may, I think, rest assured that our patience in awaiting the end will be at least equal to theirs. In all such struggles a present triumph may be snatched by those in brief authority, but the future belongs inalienably to the cause of justice and liberality.In the meantime, I had, on behalf of my fellow-students and myself, appealed to the University Court to provide us with the means of completing our education, and our friends of the Committee also forwarded to the Court a further legal Opinion from the Lord Advocate and Sheriff Fraser, to the effect,—that the University authorities had full powers to permit the matriculation of women in 1869; that the Resolutions then passed amounted to a permission to women to “study medicine” in the University, and that therefore the women concerned were entitled to demand the means of doing so; and finally, that if such means were persistently refused, the legal mode of redress lay in an Action of Declarator.[108]On January 8th, 1872, the University Court declared that they could not make any arrangements to enable us to pursue our studies with a view to a degree, but that,if we would altogether give up the question of graduation,[109]and be content with Certificates of Proficiency, they would try to meet our views!In reply, I represented to the Court that no “Certificates” were recognised by the Medical Act, and that any such documents would therefore be perfectly useless to us. I further urged that as matriculation fees had been exacted from us, in addition to the fees for tuition, and as we had been required to pass the Preliminary Examination “for the medical degree,” and as some of our own number had moreover passed the first Professional Examination, I could not but believe that we were entitled to demand the means of completing the ordinary University education, with a view to obtaining the ordinary degree; such belief being moreover confirmed by the emphatic opinion of very distinguished counsel. On these grounds I entreated the Court to reconsidertheir decision, and made the following suggestion:—“That, as the main difficulty before your honourable Court seems to be that regarding graduation, with which we are not immediately concerned at this moment, we are quite willing to rest our claims to ultimate graduation on the facts as they stand up to the present date; and, in case your honourable Court will now make arrangements whereby we can continue our education, we will undertake not to draw any arguments in favour of our right to graduation from such future arrangements, so that they may at least be made without prejudice to the present legal position of the University.”I appeal to every intelligent man and woman to say whether these words, taken in connection with my previous argument, were in the slightest degree ambiguous, or whether any doubt could really exist that in them I was pleading for facilities for such an education as would ultimately enable us to become legal practitioners of medicine, although I was willing that the actual question of graduation should remain in abeyance for a few months, till decided by legal authority, or otherwise. The public evidently so understood my letter, which was published in the papers, for it was considered that I had substantially gained my end, when the following reply from the secretary of the Court was also published:—“I am desired to inform you that you appear to ask no more than was offered by the Court in their resolution of the 8th ultimo, in which it was stated that, while the Court were restrained by legal doubts as to the power of the University to grant degrees to women from considering ‘the expediency of taking steps to obtain, in favour of female students, an alteration of an ordinance which might be held not to apply to women,’ they were ‘at the same time desirous to remove, so far as possible, any present obstacle in the way of a complete medical education being given to women; provided always that medical instruction to women be imparted in strictly separate classes.’ On the assumption, therefore, that while you at present decline the offer made by the Court with reference to certificates of proficiency, you now ask merely that arrangements should be made for completing the medical education of yourself and the other ladies on behalf of whom you write, I am to state that the Court are quite ready to meet your views. If, therefore, the names of extra-academical teachers of the required medical subjects be submitted by yourself, or by the Senatus, the Court will be prepared to consider the respective fitness of the persons so named to be authorised to hold medical classes for women who have, in this or former sessions, been matriculated students of the University, and also the conditions and regulations under which such classes should be held. It is, however, to be distinctly understood that such arrangements are not to be founded on as implying any right in women to obtain medical degrees, or as conferring any such right upon the students referred to.”My friends, as I say, congratulated me on this apparently important concession; but to make assurance doubly sure, I resolved to have absolute official confirmation of the apparent meaning of the Resolution, and therefore addressed another letter to the Court, in which, after thanking them for their apparent good intentions, I enquired whether I was correct in understanding—“1. That, though you at present give us no pledge respecting our ultimate graduation, it is your intention to considerthe proposed extra-mural courses as ‘qualifying’ for graduation, and that you will take such measures as may be necessary to secure that they will be so accepted, if it is subsequently determined that the University has the power of granting degrees to women.“2. That we shall be admitted in due course to the ordinary Professional Examinations, on presentation of the proper certificates of attendance on the said extra-mural classes.”In reply, I was calmly informed that the Court meant nothing of the kind; that they would not agree to count any classes we might take as qualifying, and that in fact they would not stir a finger in any way whatever to enable us to become legally qualified doctors, though they might, if we spent a good many years of labour and a quite unlimited sum of money in obtaining our education, give us at the end these wonderful Certificates of Proficiency, which would be worth exactly—Nothing!What had been the meaning of the previous letter of apparent concession I confess myself quite at a loss to conceive. What advantage could accrue to us from submitting the names of extramural teachers to the Court, in which Professor Christison was the only medical man, I have never been able to guess, since the Court did not intend to take any means to make their teaching qualify for graduation, and we hardly needed its sanction in order to make private arrangements for non-qualifying instruction! Oneis inclined to wonder whether the idea was that the University Court possessed some supernatural power, analogous to that supposed by certain churches to reside in episcopal laying on of hands, which would in a miraculous way benefit those lecturers whom they might “authorise” to teach us, though such teaching was to be given in place and manner wholly unconnected with that University with which I had supposed their functions to be exclusively connected. However, I am content to leave this among the unexplained mysteries, with very hearty thankfulness that, at least, by timely enquiries, we saved ourselves from a still more hopeless waste of time and money, which indeed we were on the point of incurring, in reliance on the good faith of the Court, and the apparent meaning of its mysterious Resolution.[110]Having, however, at length arrived at a certainty that the Medical Faculty would rest with nothing short of our expulsion, if by any possibility they could attain that end; that the Senatus, though far more friendly, had not a sufficient majority of liberal votes to secure the permanent concession of our claims, however just, in the teeth of the strong medical opposition; and that the University Court would offer only such concessions as were quite valueless for our end, it becameclear that it was useless to prolong the series of supplications which had, for nearly a year, been addressed in vain to one after another of the the ruling powers of the University.
MEDICAL EDUCATION OF WOMEN.
“When free thoughts, like lightnings, are alive,And in each bosom of the multitude,Justice and Truth, with Custom’s hydra brood,Wage silent war.”
“When free thoughts, like lightnings, are alive,And in each bosom of the multitude,Justice and Truth, with Custom’s hydra brood,Wage silent war.”
“When free thoughts, like lightnings, are alive,And in each bosom of the multitude,Justice and Truth, with Custom’s hydra brood,Wage silent war.”
“When free thoughts, like lightnings, are alive,
And in each bosom of the multitude,
Justice and Truth, with Custom’s hydra brood,
Wage silent war.”
Starting, then, with the assumption that women may, with profit to themselves and to the community, become practitioners of medicine, it is clear that they must, in the first place, secure such an education as shall make them thoroughly competent to take their share of responsibility in the care of the national health; and, secondly, that they must obtain this education in accordance with the regulations prescribed by authority, so that they may be recognised by the State as having conformed to all its legal requirements, and may practise on terms of perfect equality with other qualified practitioners.
It is essential to the thorough comprehension of this last point that the laws regulating medical practice in this country should be clearly understood, as these can never be lost sight of by those who are engaged in the battle which we are now waging, and I will, before proceeding further, endeavourto state clearly the provisions of the Medical Act of 1858. For the protection of the public against ignorant and mischievous quacks, the Act provided that no person should be recognised as a legally-qualified practitioner of medicine in the United Kingdom unless registered in a Register appointed to be kept for that purpose. The Act provided that all persons possessing the degree of M.D. from any foreign or colonial University, and already practising in this country at the date of the passing of the Act, should be entitled to be so registered; but that, with this exception, (and a curious one in favour of those on whom the doctorate had been conferred by the Archbishop of Canterbury,) no medical practitioners could demand registration unless holding a licence, diploma, or degree, granted by one of the British Examining Boards specified in the schedule attached to the Act. It is, of course, self-evident that these provisions were intended solely to defend the public against incompetent practitioners, and, though it is perhaps to be regretted that the Act did not expressly require the Medical Council to examine, and, on proof of competency, to register the holders of foreign diplomas, and all others who had pursued a regular course of medical study, it could not be anticipated that any great injustice would be done by the omission of any such a clause; and still less,assuredly, was it intended by this Act to secure to one sex a monopoly of all medical practice. But, at the present moment, it is certain that great danger exists that the Act may be wrested from its original purpose and made an almost insurmountable barrier to the admission of women to the authorised practice of medicine; and this because the Act, as it at present stands, makes it obligatory on all candidates to comply with certain conditions, and yet leaves it in the power of the Medical Schools, collectively, arbitrarily to preclude women from such compliance.
The following clauses of the Act of 1858 will show the absolute necessity that now exists for the registration of all practitioners of respectability:—
... “After January 1, 1859, the words ‘legally qualified Medical Practitioner,’ or ‘duly qualified Medical Practitioner,’ or any words importing a Person recognised by Law as a Medical Practitioner or Member of the Medical Profession, when used in any Act of Parliament, shall be construed to mean a Person registered under this Act....“After January 1, 1859, no Person shall be entitled to recover any Charge in any Court of Law for any Medical or Surgical Advice, Attendance, or for the Performance of any Operation, or for any Medicine which he shall have both prescribed and supplied, unless he shall prove upon the Trial that he is registered under this Act....“After January 1, 1859, no Certificate required by any Act now in force, or that may hereafter be passed, from any Physician, Surgeon, Licentiate in Medicine and Surgery, or other Medical Practitioner, shall be valid unless the Person signing the same be registered under this Act.“Any Person who shall wilfully and falsely pretend to be, or take or use the Name or Title of a Physician, Doctor of Medicine, Licentiate in Medicine and Surgery, ... or any Name, Title, Addition, or Description implying that he is registered under this Act, or that he is recognised by Law as a Physician, or Surgeon, ... shall, upon a summary Conviction for any such offence, pay a sum not exceeding Twenty Pounds.”
... “After January 1, 1859, the words ‘legally qualified Medical Practitioner,’ or ‘duly qualified Medical Practitioner,’ or any words importing a Person recognised by Law as a Medical Practitioner or Member of the Medical Profession, when used in any Act of Parliament, shall be construed to mean a Person registered under this Act....
“After January 1, 1859, no Person shall be entitled to recover any Charge in any Court of Law for any Medical or Surgical Advice, Attendance, or for the Performance of any Operation, or for any Medicine which he shall have both prescribed and supplied, unless he shall prove upon the Trial that he is registered under this Act....
“After January 1, 1859, no Certificate required by any Act now in force, or that may hereafter be passed, from any Physician, Surgeon, Licentiate in Medicine and Surgery, or other Medical Practitioner, shall be valid unless the Person signing the same be registered under this Act.
“Any Person who shall wilfully and falsely pretend to be, or take or use the Name or Title of a Physician, Doctor of Medicine, Licentiate in Medicine and Surgery, ... or any Name, Title, Addition, or Description implying that he is registered under this Act, or that he is recognised by Law as a Physician, or Surgeon, ... shall, upon a summary Conviction for any such offence, pay a sum not exceeding Twenty Pounds.”
It is, then, sufficiently plain that any doctor practising in this country without the required registration, not only places himself in the position of a quack and a charlatan, but actually incurs legal penalties for assuming medical titles, however fairly they may have been won in the most eminent of foreign universities. It is therefore clear that it becomes asine quâ nonthat any women, desiring to practise medicine in this country, should obtain their education in such a way as will entitle them to demand registration.
There are at this moment two Englishwomen whose names appear on the Register as legally qualified medical practitioners; and it may be necessary for me now to explain how they came respectively to attain this position, and how it happens that no more women are able to avail themselves of the means that were open to them.
Though several English ladies are recorded in history as having studied medical science, I am not aware that any of our country-women ever graduated in medicine before the year 1849, when Miss Elizabeth Blackwell, after surmounting manydifficulties, obtained the degree of M.D. from a college in the State of New York. Returning subsequently to England, she took advantage of the clause in the Act of 1858, which I have already mentioned, and demanded and obtained registration in the British Register. But the clause referred to was, as I have explained, retrospective only, and no one can now obtain an American degree, and in virtue of it claim registration in this country.
This being the case, when, in the year 1860, Miss Garrett resolved to begin the study of medicine, with a view to practising in England, it was necessary that she should obtain her education under the auspices of some one of the medical corporations empowered to give registrable qualifications. After trying in vain to obtain admission to one School and College after another, she finally found entrance at Apothecaries’ Hall, which was, from its charter, taken, as I suppose, in conjunction with the provisions of the Apothecaries’ Act of 1815,[71]incapable of refusing to examine any candidate who complied with its conditions of study.
In order to observe the regulations of Apothecaries’ Hall, she was obliged to attend the lectures of certain specified teachers; and though she was, in some cases, admitted to the ordinary classes,[72]in others she was compelled to pay very heavy fees for separate and private tuition by the recognised lecturers. She had also considerable difficulty in obtaining adequate hospital teaching, though there was, in truth, hardly the slightest difference between the advantages she needed and those now habitually accorded to lady probationers and trained nurses, who are constantly present with the ordinary students at the bedside and in the operating theatre.[73]She obtained admission, however, to the Middlesex Hospital, and might, I suppose, have studied there as long as she pleased, had she not been unfortunate enough to acquit herself too well in some of thevivâ-voceexaminations in which she took part with the male students, thus arousing their manly wrath, which showed itself in a request that she should be required to leave the Hospital,[74]and this noble and magnanimous application was actually granted!She, however, completed her studies elsewhere, and especially at the London Hospital; being, it is to be presumed, too discreet to enter again on the field of competition. Thus, at length, she obtained her education, and, in 1865, received the licence to practise from Apothecaries’ Hall, which enabled her to place her name upon the British Register. But no sooner had she thus demonstrated the existence of at least a postern gate by which women might enter the profession, than the authorities took alarm, and, with the express object of preventing other women from following so terrible a precedent, a rule was passed, forbidding students henceforth to receive any part of their education privately, it being well known that women would be rigorously excluded from some at least of the public classes!
As, then, the different doors by which the two ladies above-mentioned entered the profession of medicine were both closed after them, it is evident that, when, three years ago, I looked round for the means of obtaining medical education in this country, it was necessary that some new way should be devised. It is true that in several of the European Universities women were at that moment studying medicine;—indeed, I am not aware that any of the Italian,[75]French, or GermanUniversities have ever been closed against women who applied for admission. I might, no doubt, have obtained, at the world-renownedEcole de Médicinein Paris, a medical education at least equal, and, in some respects, probably superior, to anything that this country affords; and at the University of Zurich, also, a considerable number of women have, for some years, been receiving an excellent medical education. 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. And even if these difficulties could be overcome, another objection appeared to me absolutely insuperable. The Act of 1858 distinctly declares that only British licenses, diplomas, and degrees can now claim registration, and that without registration no practitioner can be considered as legally qualified. It is well known with what distinguished honour Miss Garrett lately passed her examinations in Paris, and with what brilliantsuccess she gained one of the most valuable medical degrees in Europe, and yet in the official British Register her name appears only and solely as that of a licentiate of Apothecaries’ Hall. As no such license was now open to me and to other women, it was clear that those of us who went abroad for education might expect, after years of severe labour, to return to England to be refused official recognition on the Register, and, in fact, in the eye of the law, to hold a position exactly analogous to that of the most ignorant quack or herbalist who might open a penny stall for the sale of worthless nostrums. As such a position was hardly to my taste, it became necessary to try other means.
It seemed to me highly desirable that, if women studied medicine at all, they should at once aim at what is supposed to be a high standard of education, and that, to avoid the possibility of cavil at their attainments, they should forthwith aspire to the medical degree of a British University.
I first applied to the University of London, of whose liberality one hears so much, and was told by the Registrar that the present Charter had been purposely so worded as to exclude the possibility of examining women for medical degrees, and that under that Charter nothing whatever could be done in their favour. Knowing that at Oxford and Cambridge the whole question wascomplicated with regulations respecting residence, while, indeed, neither of these Universities furnished a complete medical education, my thoughts naturally turned to Scotland, to which so much credit is always given for its enlightened views respecting education, and where the Universities boast of their freedom from ecclesiastical and other trammels. In March 1869, therefore, I made my first application to the University of Edinburgh, and I hope in the following pages to give a rapid sketch of the chief events of the subsequent three years in connexion with that University, though time and space oblige me to make the sketch so brief that I must ask the reader’s indulgence if, in some points, it is less plain and distinct than it might be if I could enter more fully into details.
For the sake of clearness, let me first explain, in few words, who constitute the different bodies that take a share in the government of Edinburgh University, taken in the order in which my application was considered by them. The Medical Faculty of course consists of Medical Professors only; the Senatus comprises all the Professors of every Faculty, and also the Principal; the University Court is composed of eight members only;[76]and lastly, the General Council of the University consists of all those graduates of Edinburgh who have registered their names as members. Each of these bodies had to be consulted, as also the Chancellor, before any important change could be made.
When I first went to Edinburgh, I found many most kind and liberal friends among the Professors. In the Medical Faculty itself, Sir James Simpson, Professor Hughes Bennett, and Professor Balfour, Dean of the Medical Faculty, at once espoused my cause; and I need not say that Professor Masson and other members of the non-medical Faculties were not a whit behind in kindness and help. 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.
Several Professors were especially timid about the question of matriculation, and argued that,till they had some evidence of probable success, it would be premature to let women matriculate, since, by so doing, they would acquire rights and privileges of the most extensive kind. To meet this difficulty I gladly accepted a suggestion made to me privately by the Dean of the Medical Faculty, that I should, for the present, waive the question of matriculation, and should, during the summer months, attend his class in Botany and that of Professor Allman in Natural History, to see whether, as theSpectatorexpressed it, “Scotch and English students were really so much more brutal than Frenchmen and Germans,” or whether a lady could, without discomfort, attend the ordinary classes. This plan met with much approval, and some of the Professors’ wives most kindly offered to accompany me to the classes when the time should come. The Medical Faculty and Senatus successively sanctioned this tentative plan, and, after a short stay in Edinburgh, I left for England to make preparations for returning to spend the summer session as arranged.
But two or three hostile Professors appealed to the University Court; some of the students also sent up a memorial against the arrangement proposed, and the question was reconsidered.
I am anxious, as far as possible, to avoid personalities in this matter, and yet, I think, I cannotproperly tell my story without explaining at the outset that, in my opinion at least, the whole opposition to the medical education of women has in Edinburgh, been dictated by one man and his immediate followers. It is hardly necessary to say that that man is Sir Robert Christison,[77]whose great age and long tenure of office naturally give him unusual weight, both in the University and among the medical men of Edinburgh. Having said this, I need only remark further that Professor Christison has, ever since I came to Edinburgh, been the only professor and the only medical man who has had a seat in the University Court, and also the only person who has all along been a memberof every body, without exception, by whom our interests have had to be decided, viz., of the Medical Faculty, the Senatus, the University Court, the University Council, and the Infirmary Board.
The question then was brought before the University Court in April 1869. The meetings of the Court are held in strict privacy, (against which the public and the members of the University Council have often protested,) and I can only state the result of their deliberation. On April 19th the following resolution was passed:—“The Court, considering the difficulties at present standing in the way of carrying out the resolution of the Senatus, as a temporary arrangement in the interest of one lady, and not being prepared to adjudicate finally on the question whether women should be educated, in the medical classes of the University, sustain the appeals, and recall the resolution of the Senatus.”
The very palpable invitation to other ladies to come forward, which appeared on the face of this resolution, bore fruit; for, in the course of the next month, or two, four more ladies expressed their wish to be admitted as students, and certain of the University authorities held out hopes that an application forseparateclasses would be successful. Accordingly, in June 1869, I addressed a letter to the Rector of the University,who is also President of the University Court, enquiring whether the Court would “remove their present veto in case arrangements can be made for the instruction of women in separate classes; and whether, in that case, women will be allowed to matriculate in the usual way, and to undergo the ordinary Examination, with a view to obtain medical degrees in due course?”
I also wrote to the Senatus asking them to recommend the matriculation of women as medical students, on the understanding that separate classes should be formed; and, moreover, addressed a letter to the Dean of the Medical Faculty, offering, on behalf of my fellow-students and myself, to guarantee whatever minimum fee the Faculty might fix as remuneration for these separate classes.
On July 1st, 1869, at a meeting of the Medical Faculty of the University, it was resolved to recommend to the Senatus:—
(1.) That ladies be allowed to matriculate as medical students, and to pass the usual preliminary examination for registration; (2.) That ladies be allowed to attend medical classes, and to receive certificates of attendance qualifying for examination, provided the classes are confined entirely to ladies; (3.) That the medical professors be allowed to have classes for ladies, but no professor shall be compelled to give such course of lectures; (4.) That, in conformity with the request of Miss Jex-Blake’s letter to the Dean, ladies be permitted to arrange with the Medical Faculty, or with the individual professors as to minimum fee for the classes.
(1.) That ladies be allowed to matriculate as medical students, and to pass the usual preliminary examination for registration; (2.) That ladies be allowed to attend medical classes, and to receive certificates of attendance qualifying for examination, provided the classes are confined entirely to ladies; (3.) That the medical professors be allowed to have classes for ladies, but no professor shall be compelled to give such course of lectures; (4.) That, in conformity with the request of Miss Jex-Blake’s letter to the Dean, ladies be permitted to arrange with the Medical Faculty, or with the individual professors as to minimum fee for the classes.
At a meeting of the Senatus Academicus, July2, 1869, the Report of the Medical Faculty was read, agreed to, and ordered to be transmitted to the University Court. At a meeting of the University Court, on 23d July 1869, “Mr Gordon, on behalf of the Committee appointed at last meeting to consider what course should be followed in order to give effect to the resolution of the Senatus, reported that the Committee were of opinion that the matter should be proceeded with under sectionxii.2, of the Universities Act, as an improvement in the internal arrangements of the University. Mr Gordon then moved the following resolution, which was adopted:—
“The Court entertain an opinion favourable to the resolutions of the Medical Faculty in regard to the matriculation of ladies as medical students, and direct these resolutions to be laid before the General Council of the University for their consideration at next meeting.”
“The Court entertain an opinion favourable to the resolutions of the Medical Faculty in regard to the matriculation of ladies as medical students, and direct these resolutions to be laid before the General Council of the University for their consideration at next meeting.”
This resolution was approved by the General Council on October 29th, 1869, and was sanctioned by the Chancellor on November 12th, 1869. The following regulations were officially issued at the same date, and inserted in the Calendar of the University:—
(1.) Women shall be admitted to the study of medicine in the University; (2.) The instruction of women for the profession of medicine shall be conducted in separate classes, confined entirely to women; (3.) The Professors of the Faculty of Medicine shall, for this purpose, be permitted to have separate classes for women; (4.) Women, not intending to studymedicine professionally, may be admitted to such of these classes, or to such part of the course of instruction given in such classes, as the University Court may from time to time think fit and approve; (5.) The fee for the full course of instruction in such classes shall be four guineas; but in the event of the number of students proposing to attend any such class being too small to provide a reasonable remuneration at that rate, it shall be in the power of the professor to make arrangements for a higher fee, subject to the usual sanction of the University Court; (6.) All women attending such classes shall be subject to all the regulations now or at any future time in force in the University as to the matriculation of students, their attendance on classes, Examination, or otherwise; (7.) The above regulations shall take effect as from the commencement of session 1869–70.[78]
(1.) Women shall be admitted to the study of medicine in the University; (2.) The instruction of women for the profession of medicine shall be conducted in separate classes, confined entirely to women; (3.) The Professors of the Faculty of Medicine shall, for this purpose, be permitted to have separate classes for women; (4.) Women, not intending to studymedicine professionally, may be admitted to such of these classes, or to such part of the course of instruction given in such classes, as the University Court may from time to time think fit and approve; (5.) The fee for the full course of instruction in such classes shall be four guineas; but in the event of the number of students proposing to attend any such class being too small to provide a reasonable remuneration at that rate, it shall be in the power of the professor to make arrangements for a higher fee, subject to the usual sanction of the University Court; (6.) All women attending such classes shall be subject to all the regulations now or at any future time in force in the University as to the matriculation of students, their attendance on classes, Examination, or otherwise; (7.) The above regulations shall take effect as from the commencement of session 1869–70.[78]
In accordance with, the above resolutions, four other ladies and myself were, in October 1869, admitted provisionally to the usual preliminary examination in Arts, prescribed for medical students entering the University. Having duly passed, and received certificates to that effect fromthe Dean of the Medical Faculty, we, after the issue of the regulations above cited, all matriculated in the ordinary manner at the office of the Secretary of the University. We paid the usual fee, inscribed our names in the University album, with the usual particulars, including the Faculty in which we proposed to study, and received the ordinary matriculation tickets, which bore our names, and declared us to be “Cives Academiæ Edinensis.” We were at the same time registered in due course as students of medicine, by the Registrar of the Branch Council for Scotland, in the Government register kept by order of the General Council of Medical Education and Registration of the United Kingdom, such registration being obligatory on all medical students, and affording the sole legal record of the date at which they have commenced their studies.
It seemed now as if smooth water had at length been reached, after seven months of almost incessant struggle. The temporary scheme first suggested had been set aside, but its place had been taken by one much more comprehensive, which had resulted from five months of consideration and consultation, and which had ultimately received the sanction of every one of the University authorities in succession. Not only were women allowed the privilege of matriculation which we had been told involved so much; butformal regulations, entitled “For the Education of Women in Medicine in the University,” had been framed, and have now for three years formed an integral part of the University Calendar.
For six months our hopes seemed realised. We pursued most interesting courses of study in the University, and found nothing but kindness at the hands of our teachers, and courtesy from the male students, whenever we happened to meet them in the quadrangle or on the staircases. Even Dr Christison was reported to have said in Senatus that, as the experiment was to be tried, he for one would co-operate to give it a fair trial.
Though the lectures were delivered at different hours, the instruction given to us and to the male students was identical, and, when the class examinations took place, we received and answered the same papers at the same hour and on identical conditions, having been told that marks would be awarded indifferently to “both sections of the class,”—this latter expression being, by the bye, repeatedly used during the course of the term by both the Professors who instructed us.
I am obliged now to mention the results which appeared in the prize-lists, not with a view to claim any special credit for the ladies,[79](whoseefforts to obtain education might well make them more zealous than most of the ordinary students,) but because I believe that the facts I am about to mention had a real and immediate connexion with subsequent events.[80]
In the class of Physiology there had been 127 male students, of whom 25 appeared in the honours list; in the Chemistry class there were 226 male students, of whom 31 obtained honours; of the 5 women, 4 were in honours in both classes. One of the ladies obtained the third place in the Chemistry prize-list; and, as the two gentlemen above her had already gone through a course of lectures on the same subject, Miss Pechey was actually first of her year. In the College calendar it was stated that “the four students who have received the highest marksare entitledto have the Hope Scholarships,”—such scholarships giving free admission to the College laboratory, and havingbeen founded by the late Professor Hope from the proceeds of lectures given to ladies some fifty years previously.[81]
It had occurred to us that if any lady won this scholarship she might be debarred from making full use of it as regards the laboratory, in consequence of the prohibition against mixed classes, but as it had been distinctly ordained that we were to be subject to “all the regulations in force in the University as to examinations,” it hadnotoccurred to us as possible that the very name of Hope Scholar could be wrested from the successful candidate and given over her head to the fifth student on the list, who had the good fortune to be a man.[82]
But this was actually done.
At the same time that the Professor announced to us his intention of withholding the Hope Scholarship from the student who had won it, on the ground that, having studied at a different hour, she was not a member ofThe Chemistry Class, though he, at the same time, gave her a bronze medal of the University, (to which I should think her claim must have been neither greater nor less, since these medals were given to the five studentshighest on the list,) he offered us written certificates of having attended a “ladies’ class in the University,” as of course he saw that to give the ordinary certificates of attendance on “TheChemistry Class of the University” would be to destroy his own argument with reference to the Scholarship. As, however, such certificates were absolutely worthless to us as students of medicine, we declined them, and appealed to the Senatus to ordain that the ordinary certificates should be granted to us, as they alone would qualify for professional examination. At the same time Miss Pechey made an appeal to have the Hope Scholarship awarded to her in due course. It is hardly credible that (by very narrow majorities in each case) the Senatus decided that we were to have exactly the ordinary certificates, which declared us to have attendedthe Chemistry Classof the University of Edinburgh, and yet acquiesced in Miss Pechey’s being deprived of her Scholarship on the ground that she was not a member of that class!
I do not wish to dwell longer on these incidents, but I have narrated them here because I believe that the above mentioned results of the class examinations aroused in our opponents a conviction that the so-called experiment was not going to fail of itself, as they had confidently hoped, but that if it was to be suppressed at all, vigorous measures must be taken for that purpose.
At the previous meeting of the University Council, no Professor had stood up to oppose the admission of women, though Dr Andrew Wood had covered himself with glory by protesting that he had too many sons to provide for, to acquiesce in the education of women for the Medical Profession![83]At the next meeting, however, of the Council, in April 1870, Professor Masson moved that, in view of the success that had hitherto attended the ladies’ studies, the existing regulations should be so far relaxed as to allow of the attendance of women in the ordinary classes, where nospecial reasons existed to the contrary, that they might be spared the additional expense, inconvenience, and difficulty, attendant on the formation of separate classes in every subject. Professor Balfour, Dean of the Medical Faculty, seconded this motion, and expressed his opinion that arrangements might easily be made to carry it out. Professors Laycock and Christison, however, opposed it vigorously, and that in speeches of such a character that theTimes[84]remarked in a leading article:—“We cannot sufficiently express the indignation with which we read such language, and we must say that it is the strongest argument against the admission of young ladies to the Edinburgh medical classes that they would attend the lectures of Professors capable of talking in this strain.”[85]When the vote was taken, the motion in our favour was lost by forty-seven votes to fifty-eight, and no change was therefore made in the University regulations.
The Professor of Botany kindly made arrangements for giving to us and other ladies a separate course of lectures, though he much regretted to be forced to this double, and needless, expenditure of time and trouble. Dr Allman, the Professor of Natural History, who had in the previous summer consented to my entering his ordinary class, stated that his health wouldnot allow him to undertake the labour of two classes, and, therefore, he could not teach us. We then made application for instruction to Dr Alleyne Nicholson, the extra-mural teacher of the same subject, and he at once agreed to our request. Before making any arrangements, he spoke to the members of his class at their first meeting, and, mentioning our application, he enquired whether they would unite with him in inviting us to join their class. This they unanimously did; and, as we had no objection to offer, the first “mixed class” was inaugurated, and continued throughout the summer without the slightest inconvenience.[86]
In the meantime, we were anxious to make arrangements for the next winter session, and it was especially necessary that a course of instruction in Anatomy should be provided, as the subject was one of the greatest importance, and the University professor flatly refused either to instruct us himself or allow his assistant to do so in any way whatever. Under these circumstances we endeavoured to obtain a competent extra-mural teacher who should form a special class for our instruction; but I was repeatedly warned that, by this time, the medical prejudice had been so strongly aroused against us, and the medical influence was so strongly at work, that we should fail in our endeavours, as no young medical man dare run the risk of being ostracised for giving us help. The only extra-mural teacher of Anatomy who was already recognised by the University was Dr Handyside, who was one of a band of nine associated lecturers who conjointly rented a building, called Surgeons’ Hall, for their lectures. Some of these lecturers were indignant at the way in which we were treated in the University, and, in July 1870, they, by a majority, passed the following resolutions:—
1. That it is expedient that lecturers in this Medical School should be free to lecture to female as well as to male students.2. That no restrictions be imposed on the lecturers as to the manner in which instruction is to be imparted to women.[87]
1. That it is expedient that lecturers in this Medical School should be free to lecture to female as well as to male students.
2. That no restrictions be imposed on the lecturers as to the manner in which instruction is to be imparted to women.[87]
After the passing of this regulation, we applied to Dr Handyside to know if he could make arrangements for giving us a separate class. He replied that it would be quite impossible for him to do so consistently with his duty to his other students, but that if we liked to attend his course of Anatomy in the ordinary way, he should be happy to receive us. Dr Heron Watson similarly consented to admit us, to his ordinary course of Lectures on Surgery, and so our arrangements for winter lectures were complete.
The class of Practical Anatomy always meets at the beginning of October, although the lectures do not commence till the following month. The more studious and industrious students usually come up at the earlier date, but those who careless about their work seldom appear till November, as that is the beginning of the compulsory session. All through October we studied under Dr Handyside with great comfort; the students who worked with us, though in another part of the room, were never uncivil, and in fact we hardly exchanged a dozen sentences with any of them during the month. Dr Handyside and his demonstrator both told us that they had never seen so much steady, earnest work as since we joined the class, and expressed their opinion that the results were quite as valuable for the male students as for our ourselves. With November 1st the lectures began, and everything went on satisfactorily for another ten days.
About this time, acting on the advice of a medical friend, we made an application for permission to study in the wards of the Royal Infirmary, and, somewhat to our surprise, were met by a curt refusal. As we knew that several of the managers were liberal-minded and just men, we felt sure that they could not have fully understood the importance to us of the concession we desired, and, on enquiry, I found this was the case. One of those who had voted against our admission confessed to me that he had, in so doing, been guided simply by the medical members of the Board, and that he was not even aware that we were matriculated students of the University, and that wecould not complete our education without attending the Infirmary, as there was no other hospital in Edinburgh of the size prescribed for “qualifying instruction.” We, therefore, drew up a memorial stating our grounds of application, and another was also sent in by our two teachers, Dr Watson and Dr Handyside, urging on the Board the great injustice that would be done by our exclusion. We also obtained and sent in a written paper from three of the medical officers of the Infirmary, promising to give us all needful instruction if we were admitted.[88]When these documents were presented to the managers, a majority of those present were in favour of our immediate admission, but, on the ground of want of notice, our opponents got the matter deferred for a week. From that time the behaviour of the students changed. It is not for me to say what means were used, or what strings were pulled; but I know that the result was, that instead of being, as heretofore, silent and inoffensive, a certain proportion of the students with whom we worked became markedly offensive and insolent, and took every opportunity of practising the petty annoyances that occur to thoroughly ill-bred lads,—such as shutting doors in our faces, ostentatiously crowding into the seats we usually occupied, bursting into horse-laughs and howlswhen we approached, as if a coalition had been formed to make our position as uncomfortable as might be. At the same time a students’ petition against our admission to the Infirmary was handed about, and 500 signatures were obtained, though, if some of the reports I heard were true, but a very small number out of the 500 had even read the petition before signing it. Be this as it may, the petition was got ready for the adjourned meeting, and when that came, every opponent we had among the managers was at his place, while some of our friends were unavoidably absent, and the Lord Provost, being in the chair, was precluded from voting, so that the medical party gained an easy victory. But when I say the medical party, I ought to explain that three medical men voted on our side,—a point on which I shall have to say something subsequently.
The students were naturally elated at finding so much attention paid to their petition,[89]especially as I was told that some of the medical Professors had warmly applauded them for their exertions, and I suppose the lowest section among them began to wonder whether, if they had succeeded in keeping us out of the Infirmary, they might not, by a little extra brutality, drive us away from the lecture-room. Two days later, came the second competitive examination of theterm, and on this day occurred the riot, when the gates were shut in our faces by a mob,[90]who stood within, smoking and passing about bottles of whiskey, while they abused us in the foulest possible language. It would be difficult to speak in too strong terms of the conduct of those engaged in this outrage, or of those who were morally responsible for it; but I am glad to say a word to-day about a part of the story which has not been made sufficiently public,—viz., the conduct of those of the students whose indignation against the rioters was even deeper than our own.[91]One gentleman rushed down from Surgeons’ Hall, and, at great risk to himself, forced open the gates for our admission, and a number of others made their way in after us to see that we came to no harm. When the class, which was interrupted throughout by the clamour outside, was over, Dr Handyside asked me if we would withdraw through a back door, but I said that I thought there were quite enough gentlemen in the class to protect us; and so it proved. As I spoke, a number came around us and formed a regular body-guard in front, behind, and on each side, and, encompassedby them, we passed through the still howling crowd at the gate, and reached home with no other injuries than those inflicted on our dresses by the mud hurled at us by our chivalrous foes. Nor was this all. When we arrived at the College next day, at the same hour, we found quite a formidable array of gentlemen with big sticks in their hands, who were keeping back a rabble that looked greatly disgusted, but merely vented their spite in remarkably bad language as the gentlemen referred to raised their hats as we approached, and instantly followed us in and took their seats on the back rows. After the lecture was over they formed round us, as on the evening before, escorted us home, gave us three deafening cheers, and dispersed. The explanation of all which was, that, hearing rumours of renewed rioting, a certain number of manly men among the students had resolved that the thing should not be, and for the next two or three days this same stalwart body-guard awaited and attended us daily, till the rowdies tacitly agreed to lay aside hostilities. Then I myself asked our volunteer guard to discontinue their most chivalrous escort, and quiet was restored.
No further event of importance occurred during the winter, except the meetings of Infirmary contributors, at the first of which a close contest took place between managers known tobe favourable to us and those known to be unfriendly. A new Act came into operation at this date, and all the managers had to vacate their seats unless re-elected. I can give no more significant proof of the immense amount of pressure brought to bear by the medical clique than by stating that, of the three medical men who had voted for us six weeks before, it was found when the day of election came that two had turned their coats, while the one who refused to do so was unseated by the medical body that he had represented!
At the Contributors’ Meeting onJan.2, 1871, at which six managers were to be elected, the Lord Provost himself proposed the election of six gentlemen known to be friendly to the admission of ladies to the Infirmary; but by the very narrow majority of 94 votes to 88, the managers previously on the Board were returned. No other question was raised, and those who voted with the Lord Provost did so simply in consequence of the importance they attached to the exclusion of the ladies by those managers who now desired re-election.[92]
At a subsequent meeting, theRev.ProfessorCharteris brought forward a motion expressive of the desire of the contributors that immediate arrangements should be made for the admission of the ladies, and this motion was seconded by Sir James Coxe, M. D., but was lost by a similarly small majority. On this latter occasion, two incidents occurred that deserve notice. Firstly, a petition in favour of the ladies’ admission was presented, signed by 956 women of Edinburgh.[93]Secondly, Mrs Nichol, an elderly lady whose name is venerated throughout Edinburgh, made, in spite of ill health, the great exertion of coming forward at that public meeting, to ask one question,—“not,” as she distinctly said, “in the interests of the lady students, but on behalf of those women who looked forward to see what kind of men were they who were to be the sole medical attendants of the next generation of women, if women doctors are not allowed.” The question which she said she had been commissioned to ask by more than 1300 women, belongingto all classes and all parts of the country, was as follows:—
“If the students studying at present in the Infirmary cannot contemplate with equanimity the presence of ladies as fellow-students, how is it possible that they can possess either the scientific spirit or the personal purity of mind which alone would justify their presence in the female wards during the most delicate operations on, and examinations of, female patients?”
“If the students studying at present in the Infirmary cannot contemplate with equanimity the presence of ladies as fellow-students, how is it possible that they can possess either the scientific spirit or the personal purity of mind which alone would justify their presence in the female wards during the most delicate operations on, and examinations of, female patients?”
This question was received, according to the newspaper report, with “Laughter, hisses, and applause,” but no one opened his mouth to reply. Perhaps in truth no reply could have been more significant than the burst of yells and howls which greeted the question from a gallery filled by students, who indeed so conducted themselves generally as to elicit a remark to me from a learned Professor, famous for his quaint sayings: “Well! ye can say now ye’ve fought with beasts at Ephesus!”
About the same time a petition, signed by twenty-three male students,[94]was presented to the Infirmary managers, praying that the lady students should no longer be excluded, but no attention was paid to the request; and when subsequently a similar application was made to the Managers by a deputation of very influential citizens,[95]they again refused, by a majority, to doanything in our behalf. Professor Balfour moved the appointment of a Committee to enquire into a scheme for the instruction of ladies proposed by certain of the medical officers of the Infirmary, but Professor Christison carried an amendment negativing even this measure; and thus another year of Hospital instruction was lost.
With each succeeding Session new students joined our small class, partly in consequence of the very kind encouragement held out by Lady Amberley, Dr Garrett Anderson, and other friends, in the way of Scholarships; for, since public indignation was excited by the refusal of the Hope Scholarship to Miss Pechey, hardly a term has passed without some generous offer of valuable prizes for those ladies who needed such assistance to pursue their studies, and who, by their success in competitive examinations, showed themselves worthy of them. Such kindness is the more valuable at a time when, by incessant delays and constantly-recurring difficulties, every effort is evidently being made to exhaust alike the patience and the purses of the troublesome women who desire to complete the work they have begun.
It is not necessary for me to enter into details respecting the ladies’ progress in their studies, further than to state that in every course in which they have competed for prizes, more than half of the whole class have been in the honours list, and in some cases every lady student has so appeared;[96]so that any refusal to grant them further instruction can hardly be based on the plea that they have not done their best to avail themselves of what was already afforded.
During the two years, 1869–70 and 1870–71, the five original students who entered in 1869 had completed the first half of their University course, partly by attendance on separate classes in the University, and partly by means of extra-mural lectures. But at the end of these two years a dead-lock appeared imminent. The rules of the University forbid any student to take more than four classes outside the walls, and those four classes we had already taken. Professor Christison and others, whose classes came next in term, gave a curt refusal to our request for instruction, although we again offered to guarantee any fee that might be required. In this dilemma we applied for help to the Senatus, and suggested that, if no other means could be devised, the difficulty might be solved in either of two ways—(1) by appointment of special University lecturers,whose payment we would guarantee; or (2) by the relaxation in our case of the ordinary regulations, so that we might take an increased number of extra-mural classes. When these proposals came before the Senatus, it was decided to take a legal opinion as to the rights and powers of the University; and an opinion adverse to our interests having been given, the Senatus decided, on July 28, 1871, by a majority of one, that they would take no action in the matter.
In these circumstances, a Committee[97]of friends which had been formed for our assistance, caused a statement of the facts to be drawn up and submitted to other Counsel, and obtained from the Lord Advocate and Sheriff Fraser an Opinion to the following effect:[98]—That it was quite competent to the University authorities to make any necessary provision for the completion of the ladies’ education; and that the Medical Faculty were bound to admit the ladies to professional examination on the subjects in which they were already qualified to pass.
I must explain that the advice of counsel had been asked on this last point in consequence of a rumour that difficulties might be made respecting the examination that was now due at the end of two years of professional study. The first officialnotice on this subject was, however, received by us on Saturday, October 14, after the fees for such examination had been paid, and tickets of admission obtained; the examination itself being due on the 24th of the same month, and the ladies concerned having studied for two years with the view of passing this examination, for which they had more especially been preparing assiduously for the last six months.
On the following Monday, October 16, I, moreover, received an official notice that the Dean of the Medical Faculty had been interdicted by the Faculty from giving to ladies any papers for the Preliminary Examination in Arts, which was to take placeon the following day, October 17! Three ladies had come up to Edinburgh from different parts of the country with the express object of passing these examinations, and, if prevented from doing so, they would be retarded in their studies to the extent of one year. The excessive shortness of the notice given made it impossible even to appeal to the Senatus, and the only course open to me was to submit the facts for the opinion of counsel. This was done, and we were informed that the course taken by the Medical Faculty was quite illegal,[99]while an express invitation to lady students formed part of the official calendar of the University. This opinionwas forwarded to the Dean, whose kindness to us had been invariable; and, I am sure that he was glad by it to be released from the painful necessity of obeying the Medical Faculty in this matter. The ladies were accordingly examined in the ordinary course.
But the excitements of the month were not yet at an end. On applying for matriculation tickets the ladies were informed by the Clerk that the Principal, Sir Alexander Grant, had written him word that, in consequence of representations made to him by Professor Christison, he desired that no ladies should at present be allowed to matriculate. On this point, and that regarding the Professional Examination, we, of course, appealed at once to the Senatus. At the meeting at which our appeal was considered, “the Committee for securing complete Medical Education for Women in Edinburgh” also presented the opinion obtained by them from counsel, together with a letter urging that complete provision should be made for our instruction. At their meeting on October 21, the Senatus at once decided both points of appeal in our favour. The Principal’s prohibition, which had never had any legal weight, was overruled, and the permission to women to matriculate and pass the Arts Examinations was renewed, and declared to be in force so long as the present regulations stood in the calendar. The MedicalFaculty also were instructed at once to admit the ladies who were prepared for it to the Professional Examination on the following day; and I am happy to say that, in spite of the incessant worry to which they had been subjected for the past ten days, they all passed successfully. I am sure that all those who have had to prepare for severe University examinations will appreciate the difficulties under which they did so.[100]
A few days later came a meeting of the University Council, when Dr Alexander Wood made a gallant attempt to get a vote passed to the effect that “the University is bound, in honour and justice, to render it possible for those women who have already commenced their studies, to complete them.”[101]TheLancetremarked, respectingthis motion:—“This is precisely the ground we have always taken up about the matter; and we hope that the General Council of the University will, by the adoption of Dr Alexander Wood’s motion, put an end to the controversy which had redounded so little to the credit of that school.”[102]A memorial in favour of the resolution was also presented, signed by more than nine thousand women, residing in all parts of the country, and representing almost every rank in society.[103]Very vigorous opposition to it was, however, made by Professors Turner, Thomson, and Christison, all of whom were members of the Medical Faculty, and ultimately an amendment, which proposed to leave the question to be settled by the Senatus and University Court, was carried by 107 votes to 97.[104]
At a meeting of the Senatus held onOct.30th, the question of making further provision forthe instruction of women was brought forward, and a letter was received from the Committee of our friends stating that, “in the event of special lecturers being appointed by the University to give qualifying instruction to women, the Committee are willing to guarantee the payment to them of any sum that may be fixed by the Senatus for their remuneration, in case the fees of the ladies are insufficient for that purpose; and that, if necessary, they are willing further to undertake to provide such rooms and accommodation as may be required for the delivery of the said lectures, if it should be found absolutely impossible for the University to provide space for that purpose.” After a long debate the Senatus decided, by a majority, that they would not take any steps to enable us to complete our education. At a meeting a few days later the Senatus further decided, by fourteenvotes to thirteen, to recommend to the University Court that the existing regulations in favour of female students be rescinded, without prejudice, however, to the rights of those already studying. This resolution was, as I said, passed by fourteen votes to thirteen, and it may be worth while to mention that two of the fourteen votes were those of Dr Christison and Sir Alexander Grant, who were themselves members of the University Court to which the recommendation was to be made. That the proposed measure was not the wish of a real majority of the Professors was soon made abundantly clear, for a protest against it was sent up to the Court, signed by eighteen out of the thirty-five Professors of the University, while two out of the remaining seventeen were persistently neutral, never indeed having voted on the question from first to last. In the teeth of this protest it was, of course, almost impossible that the Regulations could be rescinded, and so they were once more confirmed by the University Court on January 3, 1872.
The next event of importance was the annual re-election of Infirmary managers, six of whom were to be chosen at the contributors’ meeting at the beginning of January 1872. As on a former occasion, the election evidently turned wholly on our admission to, or exclusion from, the Infirmary wards. The medical party moved there-election of the former managers, and they were sure of the support of everybody who did not consider our admission a vital question. Our friends, on the contrary, brought forward a list of gentlemen, all of whom were known to be friendly to our cause. After a very warm debate the list of our friends proved to be successful, being supported by 177 votes, while 168 were recorded on the other side. Professor Masson then moved that a Statute be enacted by the Court of Contributors, giving the same educational advantages in the Infirmary to female as well as to male students. The hostile party, finding themselves in a minority, endeavoured to prevent this being put to the vote on technical grounds which were subsequently found to be of no legal importance. Failing in this, they then adopted the remarkably dignified course of decamping in a body, accompanied, I must confess, by some ironical cheers from those left behind. In the lull that succeeded Professor Masson brought forward his motion, which was seconded by theRev.Dr Guthrie, and passed without a dissentient voice. This Statute is, therefore, now actually law in the Infirmary, and considering that managers friendly to us had also been elected, it might have been thought that our difficulties there were at end. But now comes the most extraordinary part of the whole story. On a scrutiny of the votes it was foundthat with the majority had voted twenty-eight firms, thirty-one ladies, and seven doctors. On the other side were fourteen firms, two ladies, thirty-seven doctors, and three druggists. These figures may seem, indeed, to have a tolerable moral significance, but it is not with that that I am at this moment concerned. It occurred to the defeated party that here might be found a straw for them, drowning, to catch at,—that possibly a legal objection might be sustained against the votes of firms which were so largely in our favour, and that, if so, the victory might yet be secured![105]The result was, that, when the Contributors assembled at the adjourned meeting,[106]for the purpose of hearing the result of the scrutiny andthe final declaration of the election, the Lord Provost found himself served with an Interdict forbidding him to declare the new managers duly elected, on the ground that the votes of firms were incompetent, and that by means of these the majority had been obtained!
Instances have occurred before now where personal feelings have triumphed over public interests, but I do not think that I ever heard of quite so reckless a course as this, by which the medical clique has plunged the great Edinburgh Hospital into litigation, and that with some of its own most generous supporters, rather than allow a dozen women to obtain in its wards the instruction that the Contributors had decreed they should receive![107]
The litigation thus begun is still pending, and the incomplete Board of Managers have for all these months carried on the business of the Infirmary without any representatives at all from the Court of Contributors; and it is probable that they make the very fact of their deficient numbers the excuse for having up to this moment given no effect whatever to the Statute unanimously passed in our favour last January by the Court of Contributors. We applied immediately after the meeting for tickets of admission, but were told that the managers must first be consulted, and from that day to this no tickets havebeen issued to us, though the statute referred to legally secured that “henceforth all registered students of medicine shall be admitted to the educational advantages of the Infirmary, without distinction of sex.” The matter, however, can now be only one of time; and, since the law of the Infirmary is at length on our side, our opponents may, I think, rest assured that our patience in awaiting the end will be at least equal to theirs. In all such struggles a present triumph may be snatched by those in brief authority, but the future belongs inalienably to the cause of justice and liberality.
In the meantime, I had, on behalf of my fellow-students and myself, appealed to the University Court to provide us with the means of completing our education, and our friends of the Committee also forwarded to the Court a further legal Opinion from the Lord Advocate and Sheriff Fraser, to the effect,—that the University authorities had full powers to permit the matriculation of women in 1869; that the Resolutions then passed amounted to a permission to women to “study medicine” in the University, and that therefore the women concerned were entitled to demand the means of doing so; and finally, that if such means were persistently refused, the legal mode of redress lay in an Action of Declarator.[108]
On January 8th, 1872, the University Court declared that they could not make any arrangements to enable us to pursue our studies with a view to a degree, but that,if we would altogether give up the question of graduation,[109]and be content with Certificates of Proficiency, they would try to meet our views!
In reply, I represented to the Court that no “Certificates” were recognised by the Medical Act, and that any such documents would therefore be perfectly useless to us. I further urged that as matriculation fees had been exacted from us, in addition to the fees for tuition, and as we had been required to pass the Preliminary Examination “for the medical degree,” and as some of our own number had moreover passed the first Professional Examination, I could not but believe that we were entitled to demand the means of completing the ordinary University education, with a view to obtaining the ordinary degree; such belief being moreover confirmed by the emphatic opinion of very distinguished counsel. On these grounds I entreated the Court to reconsidertheir decision, and made the following suggestion:—
“That, as the main difficulty before your honourable Court seems to be that regarding graduation, with which we are not immediately concerned at this moment, we are quite willing to rest our claims to ultimate graduation on the facts as they stand up to the present date; and, in case your honourable Court will now make arrangements whereby we can continue our education, we will undertake not to draw any arguments in favour of our right to graduation from such future arrangements, so that they may at least be made without prejudice to the present legal position of the University.”
“That, as the main difficulty before your honourable Court seems to be that regarding graduation, with which we are not immediately concerned at this moment, we are quite willing to rest our claims to ultimate graduation on the facts as they stand up to the present date; and, in case your honourable Court will now make arrangements whereby we can continue our education, we will undertake not to draw any arguments in favour of our right to graduation from such future arrangements, so that they may at least be made without prejudice to the present legal position of the University.”
I appeal to every intelligent man and woman to say whether these words, taken in connection with my previous argument, were in the slightest degree ambiguous, or whether any doubt could really exist that in them I was pleading for facilities for such an education as would ultimately enable us to become legal practitioners of medicine, although I was willing that the actual question of graduation should remain in abeyance for a few months, till decided by legal authority, or otherwise. The public evidently so understood my letter, which was published in the papers, for it was considered that I had substantially gained my end, when the following reply from the secretary of the Court was also published:—
“I am desired to inform you that you appear to ask no more than was offered by the Court in their resolution of the 8th ultimo, in which it was stated that, while the Court were restrained by legal doubts as to the power of the University to grant degrees to women from considering ‘the expediency of taking steps to obtain, in favour of female students, an alteration of an ordinance which might be held not to apply to women,’ they were ‘at the same time desirous to remove, so far as possible, any present obstacle in the way of a complete medical education being given to women; provided always that medical instruction to women be imparted in strictly separate classes.’ On the assumption, therefore, that while you at present decline the offer made by the Court with reference to certificates of proficiency, you now ask merely that arrangements should be made for completing the medical education of yourself and the other ladies on behalf of whom you write, I am to state that the Court are quite ready to meet your views. If, therefore, the names of extra-academical teachers of the required medical subjects be submitted by yourself, or by the Senatus, the Court will be prepared to consider the respective fitness of the persons so named to be authorised to hold medical classes for women who have, in this or former sessions, been matriculated students of the University, and also the conditions and regulations under which such classes should be held. It is, however, to be distinctly understood that such arrangements are not to be founded on as implying any right in women to obtain medical degrees, or as conferring any such right upon the students referred to.”
“I am desired to inform you that you appear to ask no more than was offered by the Court in their resolution of the 8th ultimo, in which it was stated that, while the Court were restrained by legal doubts as to the power of the University to grant degrees to women from considering ‘the expediency of taking steps to obtain, in favour of female students, an alteration of an ordinance which might be held not to apply to women,’ they were ‘at the same time desirous to remove, so far as possible, any present obstacle in the way of a complete medical education being given to women; provided always that medical instruction to women be imparted in strictly separate classes.’ On the assumption, therefore, that while you at present decline the offer made by the Court with reference to certificates of proficiency, you now ask merely that arrangements should be made for completing the medical education of yourself and the other ladies on behalf of whom you write, I am to state that the Court are quite ready to meet your views. If, therefore, the names of extra-academical teachers of the required medical subjects be submitted by yourself, or by the Senatus, the Court will be prepared to consider the respective fitness of the persons so named to be authorised to hold medical classes for women who have, in this or former sessions, been matriculated students of the University, and also the conditions and regulations under which such classes should be held. It is, however, to be distinctly understood that such arrangements are not to be founded on as implying any right in women to obtain medical degrees, or as conferring any such right upon the students referred to.”
My friends, as I say, congratulated me on this apparently important concession; but to make assurance doubly sure, I resolved to have absolute official confirmation of the apparent meaning of the Resolution, and therefore addressed another letter to the Court, in which, after thanking them for their apparent good intentions, I enquired whether I was correct in understanding—
“1. That, though you at present give us no pledge respecting our ultimate graduation, it is your intention to considerthe proposed extra-mural courses as ‘qualifying’ for graduation, and that you will take such measures as may be necessary to secure that they will be so accepted, if it is subsequently determined that the University has the power of granting degrees to women.“2. That we shall be admitted in due course to the ordinary Professional Examinations, on presentation of the proper certificates of attendance on the said extra-mural classes.”
“1. That, though you at present give us no pledge respecting our ultimate graduation, it is your intention to considerthe proposed extra-mural courses as ‘qualifying’ for graduation, and that you will take such measures as may be necessary to secure that they will be so accepted, if it is subsequently determined that the University has the power of granting degrees to women.
“2. That we shall be admitted in due course to the ordinary Professional Examinations, on presentation of the proper certificates of attendance on the said extra-mural classes.”
In reply, I was calmly informed that the Court meant nothing of the kind; that they would not agree to count any classes we might take as qualifying, and that in fact they would not stir a finger in any way whatever to enable us to become legally qualified doctors, though they might, if we spent a good many years of labour and a quite unlimited sum of money in obtaining our education, give us at the end these wonderful Certificates of Proficiency, which would be worth exactly—Nothing!
What had been the meaning of the previous letter of apparent concession I confess myself quite at a loss to conceive. What advantage could accrue to us from submitting the names of extramural teachers to the Court, in which Professor Christison was the only medical man, I have never been able to guess, since the Court did not intend to take any means to make their teaching qualify for graduation, and we hardly needed its sanction in order to make private arrangements for non-qualifying instruction! Oneis inclined to wonder whether the idea was that the University Court possessed some supernatural power, analogous to that supposed by certain churches to reside in episcopal laying on of hands, which would in a miraculous way benefit those lecturers whom they might “authorise” to teach us, though such teaching was to be given in place and manner wholly unconnected with that University with which I had supposed their functions to be exclusively connected. However, I am content to leave this among the unexplained mysteries, with very hearty thankfulness that, at least, by timely enquiries, we saved ourselves from a still more hopeless waste of time and money, which indeed we were on the point of incurring, in reliance on the good faith of the Court, and the apparent meaning of its mysterious Resolution.[110]
Having, however, at length arrived at a certainty that the Medical Faculty would rest with nothing short of our expulsion, if by any possibility they could attain that end; that the Senatus, though far more friendly, had not a sufficient majority of liberal votes to secure the permanent concession of our claims, however just, in the teeth of the strong medical opposition; and that the University Court would offer only such concessions as were quite valueless for our end, it becameclear that it was useless to prolong the series of supplications which had, for nearly a year, been addressed in vain to one after another of the the ruling powers of the University.