... “After January 1, 1859, the words ‘legally qualified Medical Practitioner,’ or ‘duly qualified Medical Practitioner,’ or any words importing a Person recognised by Law as a Medical Practitioner or Member of the Medical Profession, when used in any Act of Parliament, shall be construed to mean a Person registered under this Act....
“After January 1, 1859, no Person shall be entitled to recover any Charge in any Court of Law for any Medical or Surgical Advice, Attendance, or for the Performance of any Operation, or for any Medicine which he shall have both prescribed and supplied, unless he shall prove upon the Trial that he is registered under this Act....
“After January 1, 1859, no Certificate required by any Act now in force, or that may hereafter be passed, from any Physician, Surgeon, Licentiate in Medicine and Surgery, or other Medical Practitioner, shall be valid unless the Person signing the same be registered under this Act.
“Any Person who shall wilfully and falsely pretend to be, or take or use the Name or Title of a Physician, Doctor of Medicine, Licentiate in Medicine and Surgery, ... or any Name, Title, Addition, or Description implying that he is registered under this Act, or that he is recognised by Law as a Physician, or Surgeon, ... shall, upon a summary Conviction for any such offence, pay a sum not exceeding Twenty Pounds.”
It is, then, sufficiently plain that any doctor practising in this country without the required registration, not only places himself in the position of a quack and a charlatan, but actually incurs legal penalties for assuming medical titles, however fairly they may have been won in the most eminent of foreign universities. It is therefore clear that it becomes a sine quâ non that any women, desiring to practise medicine in this country, should obtain their education in such a way as will entitle them to demand registration.
There are at this moment two Englishwomen whose names appear on the Register as legally qualified medical practitioners; and it may be necessary for me now to explain how they came respectively to attain this position, and how it happens that no more women are able to avail themselves of the means that were open to them.
Though several English ladies are recorded in history as having studied medical science, I am not aware that any of our country-women ever graduated in medicine before the year 1849, when Miss Elizabeth Blackwell, after surmounting many difficulties, obtained the degree of M.D. from a college in the State of New York. Returning subsequently to England, she took advantage of the clause in the Act of 1858, which I have already mentioned, and demanded and obtained registration in the British Register. But the clause referred to was, as I have explained, retrospective only, and no one can now obtain an American degree, and in virtue of it claim registration in this country.
This being the case, when, in the year 1860, Miss Garrett resolved to begin the study of medicine, with a view to practising in England, it was necessary that she should obtain her education under the auspices of some one of the medical corporations empowered to give registrable qualifications. After trying in vain to obtain admission to one School and College after another, she finally found entrance at Apothecaries’ Hall, which was, from its charter, taken, as I suppose, in conjunction with the provisions of the Apothecaries’ Act of 1815,[71] incapable of refusing to examine any candidate who complied with its conditions of study.
In order to observe the regulations of Apothecaries’ Hall, she was obliged to attend the lectures of certain specified teachers; and though she was, in some cases, admitted to the ordinary classes,[72] in others she was compelled to pay very heavy fees for separate and private tuition by the recognised lecturers. She had also considerable difficulty in obtaining adequate hospital teaching, though there was, in truth, hardly the slightest difference between the advantages she needed and those now habitually accorded to lady probationers and trained nurses, who are constantly present with the ordinary students at the bedside and in the operating theatre.[73] She obtained admission, however, to the Middlesex Hospital, and might, I suppose, have studied there as long as she pleased, had she not been unfortunate enough to acquit herself too well in some of the vivâ-voce examinations in which she took part with the male students, thus arousing their manly wrath, which showed itself in a request that she should be required to leave the Hospital,[74] and this noble and magnanimous application was actually granted! She, however, completed her studies elsewhere, and especially at the London Hospital; being, it is to be presumed, too discreet to enter again on the field of competition. Thus, at length, she obtained her education, and, in 1865, received the licence to practise from Apothecaries’ Hall, which enabled her to place her name upon the British Register. But no sooner had she thus demonstrated the existence of at least a postern gate by which women might enter the profession, than the authorities took alarm, and, with the express object of preventing other women from following so terrible a precedent, a rule was passed, forbidding students henceforth to receive any part of their education privately, it being well known that women would be rigorously excluded from some at least of the public classes!
As, then, the different doors by which the two ladies above-mentioned entered the profession of medicine were both closed after them, it is evident that, when, three years ago, I looked round for the means of obtaining medical education in this country, it was necessary that some new way should be devised. It is true that in several of the European Universities women were at that moment studying medicine;—indeed, I am not aware that any of the Italian,[75] French, or German Universities have ever been closed against women who applied for admission. I might, no doubt, have obtained, at the world-renowned Ecole de Médicine in Paris, a medical education at least equal, and, in some respects, probably superior, to anything that this country affords; and at the University of Zurich, also, a considerable number of women have, for some years, been receiving an excellent medical education. But it seemed to me radically unjust, and most discreditable to Great Britain, that all her daughters who desired a University education should be driven abroad to seek it; only a small number of women could be expected thus to expatriate themselves, and those who did so would have to incur the great additional difficulty and disadvantage of studying all the departments of medical science in a foreign language, and under teachers whose experience had been acquired in a different climate and under different social conditions from our own. And even if these difficulties could be overcome, another objection appeared to me absolutely insuperable. The Act of 1858 distinctly declares that only British licenses, diplomas, and degrees can now claim registration, and that without registration no practitioner can be considered as legally qualified. It is well known with what distinguished honour Miss Garrett lately passed her examinations in Paris, and with what brilliant success she gained one of the most valuable medical degrees in Europe, and yet in the official British Register her name appears only and solely as that of a licentiate of Apothecaries’ Hall. As no such license was now open to me and to other women, it was clear that those of us who went abroad for education might expect, after years of severe labour, to return to England to be refused official recognition on the Register, and, in fact, in the eye of the law, to hold a position exactly analogous to that of the most ignorant quack or herbalist who might open a penny stall for the sale of worthless nostrums. As such a position was hardly to my taste, it became necessary to try other means.
It seemed to me highly desirable that, if women studied medicine at all, they should at once aim at what is supposed to be a high standard of education, and that, to avoid the possibility of cavil at their attainments, they should forthwith aspire to the medical degree of a British University.
I first applied to the University of London, of whose liberality one hears so much, and was told by the Registrar that the present Charter had been purposely so worded as to exclude the possibility of examining women for medical degrees, and that under that Charter nothing whatever could be done in their favour. Knowing that at Oxford and Cambridge the whole question was complicated with regulations respecting residence, while, indeed, neither of these Universities furnished a complete medical education, my thoughts naturally turned to Scotland, to which so much credit is always given for its enlightened views respecting education, and where the Universities boast of their freedom from ecclesiastical and other trammels. In March 1869, therefore, I made my first application to the University of Edinburgh, and I hope in the following pages to give a rapid sketch of the chief events of the subsequent three years in connexion with that University, though time and space oblige me to make the sketch so brief that I must ask the reader’s indulgence if, in some points, it is less plain and distinct than it might be if I could enter more fully into details.