Mountain Home bulletin. (Mountain Home, Idaho) 1888-1889, 1889-03-23
WOMEN PHvs s,cIANs.
Their Struggles to Maintain FoothOid In
Great Britain.

Great Britaln.
There are just sixty women who
have taken medical diplomas emitting
them to enter their names on the Brit
ish register OF duly qualified medical
practitioners. or 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 ut 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 W omen physicians
have taken high degrees at the univer-
stiles. Miss Ramsay's Cambridge sue
cesses made her famo as but she did no
more than Miss E 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 all
the candidates entere I'd, no male stu
dent approaching her record to 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 ere managed wholly
or in part by women. The granting OF
the first medical posts in the civil SER
vice to women was tn work OF the late
Postmaster-General Fawcett. a broth.
er-in-law Of Mrs. Elizabeth Garrett
Anderson, one Of the most successf Il
women physicians Of England, and said
to be the only woman ply Isl clan who IL
able to exact fees as high those de-
manded by the most successful men,
MIR. Fawcett appointed DIR. Edith
Shove medical officer for the female
staff of the general post-office, and ap
pointed three women as medical super
intendents to the L bndon, Liverpoo
and Manchester post-offices The
North London Collegiate school fOl
girls has a woman al its resident ply
sician. and so has the Girls school a
Sheffield. A woman is the medical ex
aminer for the life insurance and an
nuity fund for the general post-otiice
And yet women with whom
talked on the subject did no
rate women's chances in medicine ver,
high. They said that with a few
notable exceptions it was a life an,
death struggle for a woman to build VI
a practice. The bulwarks of conser
vatism stood fast against the innova
ton, and the young ger graduates wer
focking to India as medical mission
aries, superintendent of hospitals an,
zenana physicians. in answer to ,
very real demand. and aided gener
ously by the fund established by tn
Countess of Dufferin. The Lady Dul
ferin Hospital. at Calcutta; the Kan
Hospital. at Bombay; the Maternit
Hospital, at Lahore; the Medical Col
. lege, at Madras; tho Victoria Hospital
at Madl as; the hospital at Lucknow,
| dispensary at Poona. and numbers {
other colonial institutions are no,
, officered, some wholly, some in part
l by women. thus affording an outle
Z for the talent which England seems i
} no haste to employ at home. .-Philt
i, delDhia Times