Note 83 — II. Medical Education of Women, THE SUBSTANCE OF A LECTURE DELIVERED ON APRIL 26TH, 1872, IN ST GEORGE’S HALL, LONDON, THE RIGHT HON. THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY IN THE CHAIR.

The following passage occurs in a leading article on the riot got up in Philadelphia by male medical students, when in 1869 ladies were first admitted to the Pennsylvania Hospital:—“Their riotous procedure is just a manifestation of the same trades-union spirit that will stoop to any meanness, join in any tyranny, be guilty of any cruelty, rather than allow interference with what is considered as its ‘vested rights.’ In last week’s Lancet we find a letter from a medical man, who asks with naïve surprise whether the advocates of female physicians can possibly be aware that there are hundreds of medical men not able to make a comfortable living! We know not which most to admire—the cool assumption that the medical profession exists only or mainly to fill the pockets of its members, or the serene assurance that takes it for granted that no woman has a right to expect to be allowed the chance of earning a living, till all male competitors are safely and sufficiently provided for! It is rather amusing to contrast the evidently keen dread of successful competition which degrades a man thus to plead in formâ pauperis, with the voluble assurances, in this and other medical papers, that nature has clearly interdicted to women the practice of medicine, and that here at least they cannot but utterly fail.”—Scotsman, Dec. 4, 1869.