A petition was read, signed by 956 women of Edinburgh, expressing “our great interest in the issues involved, and our earnest hope that full facilities for hospital study will be afforded by the Managers to all women who desire to enter the Medical Profession.”
More important still was the appearance of Mrs. Nichol, a well-known and most gracious elderly lady, endowed with the very fragrance of early Victorian womanhood, who came forward to ask a question,—“not,” she 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, if women doctors were not allowed.”
“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 could justify their presence in the female wards during the most delicate operations on, and examinations of, female patients.”
Yes, there were very brave people in Edinburgh besides the women students.
This question was received with “laughter, hisses and applause,” and no one ventured on a reply. No one except the rougher of the students who were assembled in the gallery on the look-out for a lark. They howled their appreciation of the question; but it was only when S. J.-B. rose to speak—and of course she had to pay the penalty of having rashly described them as “puppets”—that they really let themselves go,—shouting and yelling and pelting her with peas.
“Well,” said Professor Blackie, “ye can now say ye’ve fought with beasts at Ephesus.”
As a matter of fact she had not meant to speak again, but one of the professors had left her no alternative. In the course of a long speech he had asserted that, in consequence of mixed education, a college in America “had become so degraded that a woman who respected herself shrank from the contamination, and preferred to renounce the benefit of years of study rather than don the academic robe of one of its graduates.”
“Name the college,” said S. J.-B., and other voices took up the cry of “Name!”
“He spoke on authority.” (A voice—“What authority?”) “On the authority of Miss Blake herself, who ... when asked why she had not pursued her studies instead of coming here, told him that the character of female medical students in America had so deteriorated that she could not consent to stay.”
It cannot be easy to speak when one has awaited one’s opportunity through a storm of hooting and pea-throwing; but now indeed S. J.-B.’s fine courage and truthfulness shone out like the sun: