Litchfield enquirer., 1871-05-04

WOMAN AND THE MEDICAL COLLEGES. - There are abundant signs of late of the substantial progress of Woman's Rights. Among the most promising of these is the wonderful and salutary change in the med icaf colleges. The noted school at Edin- burg, so disgraced, not long since, by vul- gar onslaughts of the male students upon the female, has sobered down to hopeful obedience to law and order, ,and the profes sors warrant the future decency of their fha fass Tb resnt end is tb9. % complished by the faculty, either. In pleasing contrast to the riotous indecency that marked the transition from the old order to the new in the Edinburg universi- ty, and in the Eclectic college at Philadel- phia, is the perfect ease with which the new system has beenr inaugurated in the medical department of the Iowa State Uni versity, at Iowa City. The graduating class there contains several women, and from the experience of other institutions, it was expected at the beginning of the session that there would be trouble. There was not ripple of disturbance, and this young college has right to feel proud, as it does, at the example it has set for older schools in the treatment of women as med- ical students. The local paper says:
 "The lectures proceeded precisely the same as 10 male class of gentlemen, and in the work of the dissecting room was wit messed a sight unique in the history of science and of the world. Ladies and gen. tlemen worked together upon the same subjects, and at the same time, and it was remarked that the dissecting room differed from that of other colleges in the quietness which reigned there and the freedom from jest and ribaldry. Ladies and gentlemen never forgot that they were ladies and gen. tlemen, and in the medical department of the Slate University of Iowa, women con- quered, as she will always and everywhere in each legitimate field"
 Yet there are plenty of strongholds of old.fogyism to storm and undermine Among those too blind to discern the signs of the times, the faculty of the Jefferson medical school of Philadelphia hold an eminence that deserves to be recognized. An item has recently been circulating in the Southern and Western papers, it seems, stating that this institution had announced that hereafter it would make no distinction of sex or color among applicants for ad- mission to it's classes. Now, the faculty are not only totally unaware that such manifesto would rebound in the highest Oegreo CO tnelE cTeOlbs put they consider IL an absolutely mortifyiDg end hurtful state ment, and accordingly they hasten to brand it, in thek catalogue for 1871, as |" mean and malicious falsehood." Very likely it was so intended, but it needs no argument to show that the meanness of it is quite paralleled in the faculty's following com
 ment, to wit, that ''the diploma of each graduate is depreciated in value in propor- ton as the above statement is believed. ," This assertion is gratuitous insult to wo- men and to colored men, and is altogether more likely than the false report they con- tradicted to lessen the value of their parch- ments, in nation advancing so rapidly as ours to the abolition of arbitrary and out worn tests.-&prinGaeld Republican. !, o