For the edification of the next generation, to whom all this bigotry will probably appear almost incredible, I subjoin the passage alluded to in the text. I am sorry to say it is by no means the worst I might have quoted from the same paper.
“For ourselves, we hold that the admission of women into the ranks of medicine is an egregious blunder, derogatory to the status and character of the female sex, and likely to be injurious, in the highest degree, to the interests and public estimation of the profession which they seek to invade.
“By insisting on the attendance of all students at the public-class delivery of anatomical lectures, and in the public-class dissecting-room, the only possible guarantee of uniformity of teaching will be obtained, and, at the same time, a difficulty will be placed in the way of female intrusion which it will not be easy for women of character, and clearly none else are eligible, to surmount. We hope, however, that the Court of Examiners will not stop with the erection of the barrier we suggest, but that they will distinctly refuse to admit any female candidate to examination unless compelled by a legal decision from the bench; and we also hope that they will be supported in such refusal by the Master and Wardens of the Society, as well as by the profession out of doors.”
Medical Times and Gazette, Feb. 27, 1867.
[NOTE F], [p. 56].
Since the first admission of women to the University of Zurich in 1867, five women have taken degrees there in Medicine, but none at present in any other Faculty. During the present year (1872) there are at Zurich no less than 51 women studying in the Medical Faculty, and 12 in that of Arts.
[NOTE G], [p. 62].
“Now at last the vexed question of mixed classes will be solved, and there can be no doubt in the minds of those who have ever been engaged in scientific study of the favourable result to be expected. It is curious to note in the history of the present movement how, one after another, old objections have vanished, and old arguments have become no longer available. It is pretty certain that this last, and perhaps greatest, stumbling-block to the minds of many will also disappear when it is seen with what beneficial results the system of mixed education is attended. And one great advantage to be expected is the benefit that will accrue from the higher reverence for science that must necessarily result from such a system. Once admit the impropriety of teaching men and women together, and you tax science with impurity; and while such a feeling is entertained (and it surely must be lurking in the minds of those who oppose mixed classes), the study of science, if not absolutely injurious, must be robbed of great part of its power to elevate the mind and heart.... Science has had to fight many a hard battle. For a long time it was asserted that science and religion were antagonistic to each other, but a Faraday has shown us how the two may go hand in hand, each helping and supporting the other. Last April we were told that the study of science was linked with impurity of thought, and we look upon the present action of the Lecturers of Surgeons’ Hall as a result of the indignant protest which every pure-minded man of science must have longed to utter against such a wholly false and calumnious statement. It is as the champions of science rather than of medical women that these gentlemen must be regarded. In any case science would have passed through this last attack, as she has ever done through all similar attacks, victorious and unscathed and unrestrained in her power to bless and help mankind; but the lecturers of our city have the no small honour of having publicly testified their unqualified conviction of the entire purity of all scientific knowledge and research.... Now that the Lecturers of Surgeons’ Hall have come forward as a body to affirm the same principle, we may indeed hail the beginning of the end, and may trust soon to see the day when the man who condemns the teaching of science to classes of both men and women will simply stand self-convicted as wanting alike in true scientific spirit and in genuine purity of mind.”
Daily Review, July 11, 1870.
“It seems that two ladies have this week applied for admission as students to St Thomas’s Hospital in London, and a medical contemporary makes this fact the excuse for a fresh onslaught on all women who may, for the sake of a thorough medical education, wish to enter the existing schools which at present possess a legal monopoly of that education. The editorial delicacy declares—‘that any women should be found who desire such fellowship in study is to us inexplicable.’ This ill-bred sneer directed against ladies as medical students is peculiarly ill-timed at a moment when the medical profession are loudly calling on women to come to their aid in the military hospitals of the Continent, teeming, as we know them to be, with horrors which certainly far surpass any that ladies are likely to encounter in their ordinary course of study, and which must inevitably be witnessed in company ‘with persons of the opposite sex.’ Certainly no reasons of delicacy at least can justify women’s co-operation in the one case, and yet demand their exclusion in the other.
“The truth is, that of course a certain conventional standard of propriety exists, which it is well and desirable to maintain under ordinary circumstances, as between persons of opposite sexes; and this rule forbids the casual discussion of most medical and some scientific subjects in chance audiences composed of ladies and gentlemen. But a higher law remains behind—Salus populi suprema Lex. If perishing humanity cries aloud for help, as during the present fearful struggle, we should think little of the pretended delicacy which could hinder either men or women from flocking to the rescue, and bid them pause, ‘in the name of modesty,’ to consider whether, under these circumstances, drawing-room proprieties would always be observed. So, too, when the question really at stake is whether all women are to be deprived of the medical services of their own sex, for fear some men’s ‘delicacy’ should be shocked by the idea of their studying in the ordinary class-rooms, it is time to protest that, true science being of necessity impersonal, is absolutely pure. We remember that, when an attack was made on Dr Alleyne Nicholson a month or two ago, for admitting women to his classes, he replied in a letter to one of the medical papers, that he laid ‘small stress on the purity or modesty of those who find themselves able to extract food for improper feelings from a purely scientific subject,’ and we confess that we are inclined to share his opinion, which we suspect will be that of all the noblest and most enlightened men of science.
“A great deal of nonsense has been talked with reference to ‘mixed classes,’ and as it is probable that the subject may come up again in a practical shape before long, it is as well to say a few plain words about the question at issue. First of all, let it be clearly established that medicine cannot be taught advantageously, nor indeed legally, in holes and corners to half-a-dozen or even a dozen students. In the very paper in which appeared the offensive paragraph to which we have alluded, we find a plea for the consolidation of the London Medical Schools into a smaller number, because ‘there are not students enough’ to support them all in perfection, and because two or three well-paid lecturers with abundant apparatus could teach to far greater advantage than twice or thrice that number under present circumstances. If this is true where there are at least several hundred students to be divided among the eleven existing schools, how palpably absurd it is to recommend our countrywomen to ‘have separate places of medical education and examination,’ when the whole number of ladies desiring to study medicine in England may perhaps number a score! Our own University professors tell us plainly that separate classes for half-a-dozen ladies are an impossibility, and the practical experience of Surgeons’ Hall, pointing in the same direction, evidently guided its lecturers in their recent vote. The broad fact, therefore, must be accepted, that either the door must be shut in the face of all women, and that at a moment when some of them are proving to a demonstration their remarkable fitness to enter it, or they must be allowed, as they long ago requested, to enter quietly and without remark, and take their places with other students, to learn the common lessons equally necessary for all.
“And, after all, what are the arguments on the other side? We are told oracularly that what is proposed is contra bonos mores, and are warned with equal solemnity of the imminent downfall of any school that dares to break loose from the bondage of Medical Trades-Unionism and afford to women exactly the same advantages as to other students. We do not wish to speak solely, or even chiefly, in the interests of women; we wish to look at the question broadly and with a view to the possible moral results to the public at large; and from this point of view we cannot but feel that the more general association of the sexes in earnest labour, and especially in scientific and medical study, may be of the greatest importance to the community. Though the traditions of the Bob Sawyer period are happily passing away, there yet seems to linger an idea that medical students as a rule adopt a lower moral standard and are of a more generally reckless character than those studying for other professions. If this is so, may not the explanation be found in the sort of half-expressed idea that seems prevalent in so many people’s minds that there is in medical study something which, if not actually improper and indelicate, certainly tends that way, and had better be ignored as much as possible—something at least which the average public would probably sum up as ‘rather nasty.’ We believe that it is on this popular idea—which every true physician would indignantly disclaim—that the opponents of women’s education trade when they try to enlist public feeling against mixed classes. They talk in a vague and very offensive way about certain studies which form a necessary part of medical education, and not being themselves capable of seeing the true dignity and profound purity of all science, especially when pursued with the aim of succouring pain and combating disease, they manage too often to impress the general public with the idea that by sanctioning the joint study of medicine by men and women the said public would commit itself to some shocking impropriety, all the more awful for being quite indefinite—omne ignotum pro magnifico. It is probable that this sort of vague terror is, in fact, the best weapon yet forged against women students, but, like many another terror, it is one that vanishes in the clear daylight. Let it once be broadly understood that science has no hidden horrors, that the study of God’s works can never be otherwise than healthful and beautiful to every student who brings to their contemplation a clear eye and a clean hand, and this weapon of darkness will be shivered for ever. We believe, indeed, that nothing could be more desirable for the average young medical student than to find himself associated in daily study with women whom he cannot but respect; nothing more calculated to give him an earnest sense alike of the dignity and of the purity of his vocation than to labour in it side by side with ladies whose character and whose motives are to him a daily reminder that he and they alike are set apart both as the votaries of science and the ministers of suffering humanity.”
Daily Review, October 11, 1870.