It is a fact, whatever may be its effect in law, that no University in Great Britain has ever yet granted a degree to a lady. The Medical Register of Great Britain only contains the name of two female practitioners—Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell and Dr. Garrett Anderson. Dr. Blackwell obtained her degree in America, and, being in practice in Great Britain before 1858, she obtained registration in virtue of the exception in the Act. Dr. Garrett Anderson obtained a licence from the Apothecaries’ Hall, London, and is registered as such; but, since her admission, regulations have been made which prevent any other lady from hereafter obtaining a licence from the Apothecaries’ Hall. Accordingly the course pursued by Dr. Blackwell and Dr. Anderson is not open to any of the pursuers, and their only hope of being allowed to practise medicine in Great Britain rests upon their being able to obtain a degree from one or other of the Universities.
Practically, therefore, the questions are now raised for the first time, Can a lady obtain a medical degree? and, Is any lady to be allowed to practise in Great Britain?”
The Lord Ordinary then discussed the case for the defenders, point by point: The first plea in law was the technical plea that “all parties are not called,” or, in other words, that the action should have been brought, not against the Senatus and Chancellor, but against the University as a whole.
This question, said the Lord Ordinary, should have been raised before the record was closed, and settled in limine. As a matter of fact, however, it was of little moment, as the Senatus and Chancellor were the only parties complained of,—it being assumed that the University as a whole was ready and willing to do its duty as soon as such duty was clearly defined. The Chancellor, indeed, had expressed this willingness so far as he individually was concerned, and, strictly speaking, he need not have been called as a party.
From the principle on which this preliminary plea was repelled, it followed that there was in the present action no attempt to impugn in the slightest degree the existing constitution of the University. Its existing regulations and ordinances must be taken as right, and the Senatus must simply be called upon to give effect to these as they stood.
The Lord Ordinary proceeded to make one or two observations of a general nature. He was clearly of opinion that, by the law of Scotland, there was no inherent illegality in women prosecuting the science of medicine, using the word in its largest sense, or in their engaging in the practice of medicine as a profession.... Indeed some branches of the profession were peculiarly appropriate to women and peculiarly inappropriate to men. For instance, in obstetric practice and in numerous diseases of women, a male practitioner was singularly out of place, and nothing but the deadening effect of habit would ever reconcile the community to that anomaly both in name and in reality, “a man-midwife.”
Keeping these preliminary observations in view, the Lord Ordinary proceeded to consider the constitution and regulations of the University of Edinburgh so far as they related to women:
I. It had been broadly maintained by the Counsel for the Senatus, in a very powerful and able speech, that the University of Edinburgh was founded and existed for males alone.
If this proposition were well founded, there was, of course, an end of the whole case. The Lord Ordinary, however, had felt himself quite unable to affirm this proposition, but had come ultimately, without any hesitation at all, to the conclusion that there was no foundation for this first and general contention of the defenders.
a. The charter gave no countenance to this supposition. The masculine noun or pronoun was used merely in conformity with ordinary brevity and simplicity of expression.