Although continuing the support of such separate women’s colleges as maintained their high standards, the leading medical women and the well-informed men and women of the laity still realized that these were (and in the nature of things, must be) only the lamps which are kept trimmed and burning as additional guaranties that the sacred fire shall never be extinguished.

The main temples and the central fires are found in the large medical schools which were then monopolized by men, and the struggle must continue till these temples and fires are acknowledged to be human possessions, and hence open to women equally with men. Only then will it be possible to maintain the high standards to which both men and women physicians should be held, and which are required for the safety of the communities in which they practice.

Hence the persistence in seeking entrance to the men’s colleges. Not because they are colleges of men, no, but because this is still so largely a man’s world, with men so often holding possession of the Best.

And it is the Best in their chosen profession that medical women have always been seeking—the best teaching; the best laboratories; the best libraries; the best facilities for training all their faculties; the best clinical opportunities; the best hospital advantages.

Aside from valid reasons for not segregating women students and physicians as a separate group, all the conditions enumerated above have an economic basis. They require money as well as scholarship—and scholarship itself requires money or it will starve—and no community can afford to duplicate the expensive plants required for proper medical education, so as to have twin institutions in which medical men and medical women shall be separated.

The answer and the advice always given by the men who happen to be in possession of these legacies of the ages and of the race—for the great medical schools owe their continued existence to the money and the help of the women as well as of the men who have gone before—has always been, “No, we cannot let you enter our colleges. Build your own colleges!”

It is as though the great universities of the country should decline to admit any but their local students, telling all others to build their own universities. Do Harvard and Yale Universities refuse students outside of Cambridge and New Haven, or even outside of Massachusetts and Connecticut, saying, “No, you cannot enter here. Build Harvards and Yales for yourselves!”

Illogical as has been this advice, women have been driven by desperation to attempt to follow it for both academic and professional studies. A certain measure of success has been attained in the academic institutions, owing to the large number of women desiring education of the kind there given. In the field of medicine, as well as in that of the other technical professions, the situation is far different. The number of women desiring such education is small when compared with the number of those desiring academic education and, as has been well-established, the expense for properly equipping professional schools is much greater proportionately as the number of students is smaller.

So, in 1881, another attempt was made toward persuading Harvard to admit women to its medical department. The New England Hospital Medical Society, through a committee of which Dr. Emma L. Call was chairman, had asked the assistance of the leading medical colleges for women toward making a combined appeal for the opening to women of the medical school of Harvard University. And in September, the following communication was formally presented:

To the President and Overseers of Harvard University:

Gentlemen:

Would you accept the sum of fifty thousand dollars for the purpose of providing such medical education for women as will entitle them to the degree of Doctor of Medicine from your University?

This sum to be held by you in trust, and the interest of the same to be added to the principal, until the income of the fund can be used for such medical education of women.

If such an arrangement cannot be made within ten years, the fund to be returned to the donors.