LADIES IN THE MEDICAL PROFESSION. SPIRITUALISM demonstrates that no immediate im provement is made in the moral or mental condition of any human being, after passing through the process called “ death.” Hence, everything done on this earth to improve human bodies and human minds, causes a higher class of spirits to enter the next world. Such facts have a very useful and beautiful practical teach ing, for they let us know that to raise the present average condition of this world and the next, we must begin by doing everything possible to improve the bodies and souls of man and woman-kind. Why should women be in a worse condition upon earth than men, and be cut off so much from freedom of action, as well as from facilities to earn an independent liveli hood? Why should they not have equal opportunities with men to gain a good education, when any of them desire so to do? The sight of the advertisement about the Female Medical Society, printed on the last page of this journal, led us to make a few inquiries about this new opening for female industry, and the remainder of this article is a summary of the information received upon the subject. During the last few weeks the University of Edin burgh has opened its doors to ladies who wish to study medicine, on the sole condition that they comply with the same regulations, and undergo the same graduated examinations, as the students of the other sex. The classes, however, are to be kept separate, each of the university professors having a second-class for women only, so that the sexes do not attend in mixed classes. The women students, while so few in number, will have to subscribe a large quota of the expenses of the course in order to furnish a reasonable honorarium to the respective teachers, and on that point the students wil have to arrange for themselves with the professors. But the class-rooms, the museums, and the thousand other standing accessories associated with the great school of Edinburgh, are now as freely at the disposal of women as of men. The professors have promised to give separate courses of lectures, for a mere nominal acknowledgment in the shape of fee, in some cases indeed allowing the women simply to pay the same small fees as are paid by the men students in their very large classes. Five women have already presented themselves in the medical matriculation examination, two of whom were “ honours students ” at the Obstet rical College of the Female Medical Society in Fitzroy square, London—Mrs. Isabel Thorne and Miss Matilda Chaplin—one was a lady from America—Miss J. Blake and the two other ladies were Miss Peachey and Mrs. Evans. The ladies came out almost at the top of the lists, and one of the past students of the Female Medical Society obtained special commendation. On the bare question of right it has been a monstrous violation of equity that women have been so long ex cluded by technical means, from disposing of themselves and their abilities as they choose, and as they can get the public to employ them. The Female Medical So ciety, a semi-benevolent society, founded on a purely public basis, has not contemplated eleemosynary help to ladies desiring to practice as physicians, or as general practitioners, but seems to have thought that ladies of that rank of ability were quite able to help themselves and that the proper way would be for them to gain that access to the existing medical schools which has now been gained at the Universities of Edinburgh, Paris, Zurich, and some other places. Similar facilities must ere long be given by all the medical colleges. A very valuable and practically useful auxiliary college has, however, been kept in operation for now five years by the Female Medical Society, in order to teach for a small fee the theory and practice of midwifery and the accessory branches of medical science, to educated women. When it is considered that more than a million births occur every year in this country, and that probably more than half-a-million sterling is paid annually for professional attendances in that respect, which could be infinitely better rendered by women than by men, manifestly this branch of medical practice would be a most valuable addition to the now narrow and over crowded fields of usefulness which are open to women. Of late years women have been artificially excluded from the practice of midwifery, because they have had no proper aids to study, and have had access to no public examinations which would enable skilled women