3. From the Medical Faculty of the Senatus (probably identical with 2).
4. From the University of Glasgow.
The second reading of the Bill was fixed for April 24th, but at the urgent request of Dr. Lyon Playfair, member for the University of Edinburgh, it was postponed to a later date (“in order that his University might have time to consider the subject”!) when the pressure of business made it impossible to secure any day: or, as Miss M‘Laren had predicted, it failed to “get through.” And so the whole question was practically shelved for another year.
There was an interesting debate on the motion, however, on June 12th, 1874, when able speeches were made by Mr. Cowper Temple, Mr. Stansfeld and others,—the two members for Edinburgh (Town and Gown) providing an almost dramatic contrast.
Mr. M‘Laren (Town), hard-headed, shrewd man of business, bluntly declared that “if it were a question to be decided by the intelligent inhabitants of Edinburgh, nine-tenths would vote in its favour.... If two or three of the professors would only take a voyage round the world, the whole question would be satisfactorily settled before they returned. (Laughter.) Where the male students paid three or four guineas for each class, the ladies paid eight or ten guineas, so that money was no obstacle. There was no difficulty, in fact, except want of will, and that arose from medical prejudice,—at least that was the opinion of the great majority of the people in Edinburgh.”
Dr. Lyon Playfair (Gown), scholar, courtier, man-of-the-world, had a harder task. Even Punch was moved to sympathy with him “as one in a perplexity between his constituents and his convictions.”
In any case the whole question had entered on a new phase, there was fresh enthusiasm for the cause, and, on the other hand, those who had looked upon the idea of women doctors as an amusing absurdity, were roused to perturbation and alarm.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE LONDON SCHOOL OF MEDICINE FOR WOMEN
It is a terrible thing for a hasty, impulsive, faulty human being to be placed as S. J.-B. was at this time, in a difficult position—on a slippery ridge, as it were—in the eye of the whole world. It has been said before that few people ventured to “lecture” her: she liked to hear the truth, and, when her friends were prepared to risk all, she took their faithful dealing magnanimously, often nobly: but somehow she made adverse criticism very difficult. It was said of her that she would have made an excellent advocate,—she had so keen an eye for the strong points of her own position and the weak points of those of her adversaries; and it is only fair to say that, in conversation with her, many people might well be simply carried away. In a sort of esprit d’escalier—or jugement d’escalier—they might see the other side of the question, and sometimes they wrote a qualifying letter to say so; but we know how few people are prepared in life to take that amount of trouble in a matter that does not intimately concern themselves. It is so much easier to sympathize with those who confide to us their troubles and difficulties, and then to vent our jugement d’escalier on the man we meet in the street below. In the course of her life S. J.-B. got more than her share of that kind of sympathy.