Note 70 — I. Medicine as a Profession for Women. REPRINTED, WITH LARGE ADDITIONS, FROM “WOMAN’S WORK AND WOMAN’S CULTURE.”

It would have been perfectly easy in Edinburgh, during 1871–72, to make complete arrangements for instruction, partly inside and partly outside the walls of the University, if only the authorities would have authorised the lady students to organize the necessary classes for themselves at their own expense. But the obstructive party took refuge behind the traditional non-possumus, and could not be driven from their position, though the Lord Advocate of Scotland gave a distinct opinion to the effect that any needful arrangements might legally be made, and though the more far-sighted Professors strongly deprecated such an abnegation of University power for the purpose of subserving a merely temporary object. In point of fact, the whole history of this struggle is one long illustration of the good old proverb,—“Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”