“I feel I am learning a great deal from the large variety of practice here. You will see from the enclosed paper that I have the help and support of four[[137]] of the best medical men in Edinburgh, and they are all excessively kind in giving me advice and help as often as I want it. No one ever had better friends and I doubt if anyone ever liked a profession better than I like mine.
I find that each of my cases involves so much reading and thinking that I am almost anxious they should not multiply too fast.”
To Dr. (now Sir Thomas) Barlow to whom she had commended a young colleague,
“March 24th. [1879.]
Dear Sir,
I thank you very much for the kind response to my note which reached me this morning. I feel sure that you will find Miss K. grateful for your kindness and most anxious to benefit by it. I have had repeated cause myself in my own Dispensary work to be thankful for the various lessons I learned from you and Dr. Lee.
Thank you also for the kind interest you express in my personal success, which indeed is all that I could desire. I have about 25 or 30 patients at the Dispensary every day that it is opened, and I also have a much larger private practice than is usual at so early a date. I have not yet been established here in practice quite 9 months, and I find that I have already had about 400 visits to or from private patients, which I think you will allow shows the ‘demand’ is a real one.
As you refer to the ‘general question of lady doctors’ you must allow me to say that I am quite sure it would have your support, from at any rate one point of view, if you had the least idea of the amount of preventible suffering which women bear with rather than consult men in special cases....
Now I do not care for a moment to argue whether this feeling is right or wrong; ... if the feeling exists it should be distinctly recognized as an element in the question; and I am quite sure that you would be one of the very first to desire that every possible remedy should be brought to such needless suffering.
In the same way I never care to argue at all about the relative capabilities of men and women. I mean to try to do my own work up to the very best of my power, and that is all that really concerns me. I cannot imagine any work nobler or more perfectly fascinating, than that of medicine, and I am very thankful to be allowed ever so small a share in it.”