On the whole their reception was encouraging. The individual letters, indeed, are so favourable, that the hopes of the inexperienced young applicants must have run high. The following from Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes is typical of some half dozen at least:
“I should not only be willing, but I should be much pleased, to lecture to any number of ladies for whom we can find accommodation in the anatomical lecture room, always provided that any special subject which seemed not adapted for an audience of both sexes should be delivered to the male students alone.”
Dr. Brown-Séquard is even more emphatic in a letter to Dr. Holmes:
“My dear Professor,
Miss Blake, who will hand you this note, wishes me to say that I am strongly in favour of the admission of persons of her sex at the Medical College. As such is my decided opinion, I write very willingly.
Very faithfully yours,
C. E. Brown-Séquard[Séquard].”
The corporation of Harvard, however, exerted its power to veto any such inclinations on the part of individual professors.
S. J.-B. quotes the above and a number of similar letters in the diary, and adds the comment:
“All which ends in ... smoke!”