Yours very faithfully,
J. Lorimer.”
In a later letter Professor Lorimer says:
“There is one point on which I find I am with you against many of my colleagues—even those who are guided by reason and not by tradition, viz. as to whether Medicine ought to be taught to ladies separately, or in the open classes along with the male students. As regards the question of delicacy, I am clearly and strongly of opinion that in holding the latter view your female instincts have guided you right. The root of indelicacy is immodesty, and the root of immodesty is immorality, and the arrangement that would in my opinion be immodest, and might be immoral, would be that such subjects should be taught by one man to one woman. The farther you recede from that arrangement, the more you separate yourself from the circumstances in which according to a well-known legal brocard, ‘charity ceases.’
The opposite pole as it seems to me, is the teaching of science publicly in an open class, irrespective of the sex, age, or other peculiarities of the audience; and mindful only of truth.
I am aware, however, that there are other considerations which influence Sir Alexander Grant, and other members of Senatus who would probably agree with me on this point. If young men and women were thrown together daily, they say, imprudent marriages and the like would come of it. Even here, however, I think the balance of evil is on the existing arrangement, and not on that which you propose to substitute for it. I have not seen Mr. Mill’s ‘Subjection of Women’ and I don’t go in much for that sort of thing, but I cannot see why greater harm should come of men and women meeting at their occupations than at their amusements; and I think imprudent marriages are just as likely to come of croquet parties and riding-lessons as of medical lectures.
As in later life one is sometimes apt to be deceived as to one’s earlier feelings, I asked a young bachelor whom most Edinburgh Mamas would not consider ‘an imprudent marriage’ what his feelings were on the subject; and his reply was ‘Anything rather than those dreary balls and idiotic evening parties which at present afford the only occasions on which men who go in for work in the early part of the day can make the acquaintance of persons of the other sex.’
It can scarcely be doubted that by working together men and women would learn to know each other better, and that many mistakes that are now committed, would be avoided.
With kind regards from Mrs. Lorimer, believe me.
Yours very truly,