is now open to women, but the story of the forcing open of that door is one which, for its cruelties, would appear incredible, if similar cruelties were not being practised against women reformers at the present time. When Elizabeth Blackwell was refused admission to the British Medical Schools, she went to America, and there took her degree as Doctor of Medicine. When a register of medical practitioners was prepared in 1858, it became necessary to include her name.
In 1865 Elizabeth Garrett applied for admission to the medical schools, and, being refused, passed the examination of the Society of Apothecaries. She had secured her training privately and by acting as a nurse in the hospitals—all this at considerable expense to herself; but having made herself competent she tried and passed. The rules of the Society of Apothecaries did not definitely provide for the exclusion of women who passed the tests they themselves had fixed, but this was a defect they speedily remedied. Dr Garrett thus became the first woman physician to practise in this country.
In 1869 Miss Jex-Blake endeavoured to obtain a doctor's degree at Edinburgh University. She along with others asked to be admitted to the medical schools there. It passes the wit of modern man to understand how there could possibly be any objection
