Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1889-02-13
WOMEN PHYSICIANS.
Their Struggles to Maintain Foothold in
Great Britain.

d
Great Britain.
There are just sixty women who
have taken medical diplomas emitting
them to enter their names on the Brit
tsh register of duly qualified medical
practitioners. Of these two are dead
and seventeen have gone to India,
leaving only forty-one in Great Britain.
OF the forty-one. twenty-one are en-.
gagged as lecturers Or instructors in
the London and Edinburgh medical
colleges for women or as medical
officers to hospitals, dispensaries or
other institutions. leaving only twenty
who depend solely on private practice.
These facts were brought to my notice
during an afternoon at the London
Medical College for Women, and they
! indicate that the field for the profess
siOnal woman is under less thorough
; cultivation abroad than in America.
And yet English women physicians
have taken high degrees at the univer-
stiles. Miss Ramsay's Cambridge sue
cesses made her famous but she did no
more than Miss Z eonora Fleury. who
was sent up by the London Medical
College for the medical examination OF
the Royal University Of Ireland, and
who took the highest position of I'LL
the candidates entered, no male stu
dent approaching her record to a degree
that would entitle him to be ranked
in the same class. One large hospital
| in London is under the care of women
entirely. and three other hospitals and
six dispensaries are managed wholly
or in part by women. q The granting of
the first medical pos s in the civil SER
vice to women was the work of the late
Postmaster-Ge Fawcett. broth
er-in-law of Mrs. Elizabeth Garrett
Anderson, one of the most successful
women physicians Of England, and said
to be the only woman physi clan who is
able to exact fees as high those de-
manded by the most successful men.
Mr.. Fawcett appointed DR.. Edith
Shove medical officer for the female
staff of the general post-office. and ap-
pointed three women as medical super
intendents to the London, Liverpool
and Manchester post-offices. The
North London Collegiate school for
girls has a woman as its resident ply
stefan. and so has the Girls school at
Sheffield. A woman is the medical ex-
aminer for the life insurance and an
nuity fund for the general post-office.
And yet women with whom |
talked on the subject did not
rate women's chances in medicine very
high. They said that with few
notable exceptions it was a life and
death struggle for woman to build up
practice. The bulwarks of conser-
vatism stood fast against the innova-
ton, and the younger graduates were
focking to India as medical mission
aries, superintendent of hospitals and
zenana physicians in answer to
very real demand, and aided gener-
ously by the fund established by the
Countess of Dufferin. The Lady Duff
FERN Hospital, at Calcutta; the Kama
Hospital. at Bombay; the Maternity
Hospital, at Lahore; the Medical Col
lege, at Madras; the Victoria Hospital,
at Madras the hospital at Lucknow,
dispensary at Poona, and numbers of
other colonial institutions are now
Differed, some wholly, some in part,
by women, thus affording an outlet
for the talent which England seems in
no haste to employ at home. -Phila-
delphia Times.