by personal service and pecuniary help, and by the prestige of her own character and repute. In March 1869, as I have said, application was made to the University of Edinburgh to admit a woman to medical study with a view to a medical degree. As the application was from one woman only, a tentative attendance on the classes of botany and natural history was suggested by the Dean of the Medical Faculty, the question of matriculation being postponed for the time. The assent of the two professors specially concerned was given to this plan, and it then received the formal approval of the Medical Faculty and of the Senatus; but, some dissentient professors having appealed against the proposal, the university court interposed its veto on this 'temporary arrangement in the interest of one lady.' Then four more ladies came forward to unite with Miss Jex-Blake in a renewed application to be allowed to make arrangements for separate classes, and this application found in time a favourable response; and in November 1869, with the consent of every governing body in the university, regulations were officially issued admitting women to formal matriculation, and to subsequent instruction for the profession of medicine.' In the previous month of October, the five ladies, having been admitted provisionally to the preliminary examination in arts, had passed, and were then matriculated and duly inscribed as Cives Academic Edinensis. this During the first session things went well enough, so well indeed as to arouse to an activity the reverse of creditable the hitherto latent opposition of male medical students and of medical men. Then opposition began; professors refused to teach the women, male students mobbed them, university authorities sought escape from the honourable obligations under which they had voluntarily placed themselves, by the suggestion that they had exceeded their powers. The five women tried the case in 1872 by an action of Declarator. Lord Gifford (the Lord Ordinary) gave judgment in their favour. Had the university been desirous not to fail in honour, but to fulfil their obligations if they could, they might have rested upon judicial decision. On the contrary, they appealed against it to the whole Court of Session, and in June 1873, by a bare majority of the -court, they obtained a reversal of Lord Gifford's judgment; and the ladies were mulcted in the costs of both sides in both suits. It was necessary to appeal to a yet higher tribunal. Such appeal might have been made on the question of law to the House of Lords; but that would have meant further indefinite delay and further heavy expense, and then, if the result were favourable, a probable refusal of the university to act on their ascertained powers. It was necessary to secure the admission of women to medical study and prac tice, and not merely to ascertain that one out of nineteen examining bodies could admit them if it liked. Miss Jex-Blake and her friends determined to widen their appeal, to base it on the ground of right, and to address it to Parliament and to public opinion. It has taken four years to complete the justification of that policy, but it is now complete. In 1874 a bill was brought in by Mr. Cowper-Temple, Mr. Russell Gurney, Mr. Orr Ewing, and Dr. Cameron, to remove doubts as to the powers of the universities of Scotland to admit women as students and to grant degrees to women.' The second reading of the bill having been postponed from the 24th of April at the request of the member for the university, it proved impossible to secure for it another and a later day. The bill was reintroduced in the session of 1875, and came on for second reading on the 3rd of March, but was thrown out by 196 to 153 votes. On the 22nd of March Mr. CowperTemple returned to the charge with a bill to permit the registration of the degrees of the Universities of Paris, Berlin, Leipzig, Berne, and Zurich, when such degrees should be held by women, they being debarred from the ordinary means of registration; each and all of these foreign degrees ranking constantly and indubitably higher than many of the passes of English examining bodies. But, in the absence of Government support, no day could be secured for a second reading, and the matter was again deferred. The Parliamentary case did not seem hopeful. Time is not on the side of private members and their bills; but time was everything to these five ladies who had already been spending so much of their time and their money in vain; and time, too, was a vital question in another respect, to which I will now allude. When the appeal to Parliament of Mr. Cowper-Temple's bill in 1874 failed, owing to the persistent opposition of the University of Edinburgh, it had already become evident that a wider issue must be raised than that of enabling Scotch universities to give medical instruction and to grant medical degrees to women. It was in harmony with this conviction that the idea was conceived of now founding in London a school of medicine for women. In this attempt Miss Jex-Blake succeeded in enlisting the thorough sympathy and the invaluable services of the late Dr. Anstie, to whose efforts, in large part, the establishment of the school in the autumn of 1874 was due. Very suitable premises were obtained in the neighbourhood of Brunswick Square,' and a strong staff of teachers was secured, all, with one exception, being recognised lecturers at other medical schools. It was felt that the existence of the school would be in itself an appeal to the justice of Parliament. But the school could not continue to exist if the way to examination were long barred to women, who could only be expected to avail themselves of the instruction it afforded under two conditions-viz., 1st, that the 130 Henrietta Street, Brunswick Square. instruction should suffice to entitle the students to examination, if Parliament should repudiate their supposed disability of sex; and 2nd, that Parliament should practically remove that disability. At the end of the session of 1875, the school had existed for one year; the course of study would be naturally one of three years, but nothing seemed then to point to a reasonable probability of legislation opening the way to the examining, licensing, and registration of medical women within a period of two more years. But there was another difficulty quite as serious as the difficulty of legislation. Every examining body required, and rightly required, that students presenting themselves for examination should have received practical clinical instruction in a hospital and by the bedside. Some of the examining bodies require that the hospital should have no less than 150 beds. To establish such a hospital de novo and at once was an impossible financial operation. The London School of Medicine was therefore bound to exhaust every effort in appeals to existing institutions. It applied at every hospital where there appeared to be a hope, however feeble or forlorn; it was everywhere refused. Even should Parliament open the door, the hospital difficulty-a practical and financial difficulty-remained. What chance was there of both difficulties being overcome in the course of another eighteen months or two years? Nevertheless, although it might prove too late for the fortunes of the school, progress was clearly beginning to be made. On the 16th of June, 1875, in answer to a question of my own on the Medical Act Amendment (College of Surgeons) Bill, Lord Sandon admitted, in the name of the Government, that the subject of the medical education of women, only very lately submitted to the attention of Government, demanded their consideration; and he undertook that it should be carefully considered by the Government during the recess, so that they should be enabled to express definite views with regard to legislation upon it in the next session. And this was the first step positively gained—the admission by Government that the question was one upon which they were bound to come to an opinion, and the promise that they would do so effectively not later than the following session of 1876. In accordance with this undertaking, and in anticipation of it, a letter had been already addressed by Mr. Simon, in the name of the Lord President of the Privy Council, to the President of the General Medical Council, requesting the observations of the Medical Council on Mr. Cowper-Temple's bill; and the letter further stated that it appeared to the Lord President that the bill could hardly fail to raise in Parliament the general question of the admission of women to the medical profession, and that his grace would therefore be glad that the Council should also discuss as fully as they might see fit this wider question. The Medical Council met on the 24th of June. The discussion lasted three days; it was able, exhaustive, and full of the evidences of a marked faculty of debate; and it ended by the adoption of a report to the Privy Council that 'the Medical Council are of opinion that the study and practice of medicine and surgery, instead of affording a field of exertion well fitted for women, do, on the contrary, present special difficulties which cannot be safely disregarded; but the Council are not prepared to say that women ought to be excluded from the profession.' I will now pass to the session of 1876. Very early in the year a deputation, headed by Lord Aberdare, late Lord President, waited on the Lord President, the Duke of Richmond and Gordon, to represent to him the case of women and their claim to legislative help. The Lord President was reminded of the promise of the Vice-President that Government would be prepared with a view of their own on the question of legislation; but although the deputation was courteously received, no further or more definite statement or promise on behalf of Her Majesty's Government was forthcoming. women. In the absence of any announcement of the intentions of Government in the matter, Mr. Cowper-Temple reintroduced his bill for the registration of certain foreign medical degrees when awarded to Before the end of May 1876, Mr. Russell Gurney's bill had been introduced; its object was to enable the British examining bodies to extend their examinations to women as well as to men. It was an enabling' bill and nothing more; but it had a very wide scope, operating permissively not merely upon Scotch universities, but upon every one of the nineteen examining bodies of the United Kingdom. The Recorder's bill was also referred by the Lord President to the Medical Council, who discussed it on two occasions, and who reported generally in its favour, but suggested the addition of words to make it quite clear that the measure would be permissive only, and to prevent the conferring of medical qualifications upon women from carrying with it any right to take part in the government of the examining bodies who might have conferred them. Mr. Russell Gurney at once accepted the suggestions of the Medical Council. On the 5th of July Mr. Cowper-Temple's bill came on for second reading, but was withdrawn after debate, upon a statement from Lord Sandon that the Government were prepared to support the Recorder's bill. Even then anxiety was by no means at an end, for the Government were not prepared to make the bill their own and to find a day for it, and any persistent opposition would have been almost necessarily fatal to its passing at so late a time; but these dangers were by good fortune escaped, and before the end of the session the bill received the royal assent and became law. Those who favoured the admission of women to the medical profession were satisfied by the passing of this act. They reasoned thus de deux choses l'une;' the act will either have effect or not. If any one of the nineteen examining bodies avail itself of the act, the door will be opened, other bodies will follow suit, and it will not be possible that the door should be closed again. If, on the contrary, every one of the examining bodies should refuse to avail themselves of the powers of the bill, the case for a compulsory measure taken up by the Government of the day will have become complete. Of these two alternative possible results, the former was happily and at once realised in fact. It might be thought that the University of Edinburgh would at once have resumed the initiative in order to redeem its pledges, however late; but it set the seal on its former procedure by now again refusing all action on behalf of its own matriculated students, and the ladies were obliged to turn elsewhere. But in the month of September Miss Edith Pechey made application both to the Queen's University and to the King and Queen's College of Physicians in Ireland for admission to examination, and each of these bodies granted her request on condition of compliance with ordinary regulations. As far as the Queen's University was concerned, these regulations required attendance at four courses of lectures in one of the Queen's Colleges. The assent of four professors at Galway was obtained, but the council of the college interposed and vetoed the arrangement; and the immediate opening of the session made further action at the time impossible. On the other hand, no difficulties had to be encountered in dealing with the Royal College of Physicians; and the first fruits of the bill have been the examination and admission through that college to the Medical Register of Dr. Elizabeth Walker Dunbar, Dr. Elizabeth Hoggan, Dr. Louisa Atkins (M.D.'s of Zurich), and of Dr. Sophia Jex-Blake and Dr. Edith Pechey (M.D.'s of Berne), in the months of January, February, and May of this year. But the Women's Medical School was not yet by any means out of its difficulties. Two years had gone, and although the Recorder's bill had passed and was bearing fruit, it alone could not secure the future of the school, for every examining body required students claiming to be examined to have gone through a course of practical 'hospital instruction, and no hospital in London, as it then appeared, was likely to be persuaded to open its doors to women. Fortunately this difficulty has also been overcome. Since the autumn negotiations had been in progress with the authorities of the Royal Free Hospital in Gray's Inn Road on the part of the school. The Royal Free Hospital has no male school. It was upon this ground especially that the London School of Medicine for Women based their appeal, and not in vain. The Weekly Board of the hospital replied by a resolution that as no other metropolitan hospital appeared to be in a position to grant the required facilities, it was only just and right that the Royal Free Hospital should afford them. The General Committee of the hospital confirmed the resolution of the Weekly Board. The |