‘Run the straight race through God’s good grace,
Lift up thine eyes and seek His face;
Life with its way before us lies,
Christ is the path, and Christ the prize.’
‘Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.’
Elsie Inglis took up practice in Edinburgh, and worked in a happy partnership with the late Dr. Jessie MacGregor, until the latter left Scotland for work in America.
When the University of Edinburgh admitted women to the examinations for degrees in medicine, Dr. Inglis graduated M.B., C.M. in 1899. From that date onwards her practice, her political and suffrage work, and the founding of the Hospice in the High Street of Edinburgh, as a nursing home and maternity centre staffed by medical women, occupied a life which grew and strengthened amid so many and varied experiences.
Her father’s death deprived her of what had been the very centre and mainspring of her existence. As she records the story of his passing on, she says that she cannot imagine life without him, and that he had been so glad to see her begin her professional career. She was not one to lose her place in the stream of life from any morbid inaction or useless repining. She shared the spirit of the race from which she had sprung, a reaching forward to obtain the prize of life fulfilled with service, and she had inherited the childlike faith and confidence which inspired their belief in the Father of Spirits.
Elsie lost in her father the one who had made her the centre of his thoughts and of his most loving watchfulness. From the day that her home with him was left unto her desolate, she was to become a centre to many of her father’s wide household, and, even as she had learnt from him, she became a stay and support to many of his children’s children.
The two doctors started practice in Atholl Place, and later on they moved into 8 Walker Street, an abode which will always be associated with the name of Dr. Elsie Inglis.