action of the medical fraternity. The leading journals throughout the country advocated the right of the women to enjoy the advantages of the hospital clinics. The Press, November 22, 1869, said:
The proceedings of the meeting held by the faculties of our two leading medical schools evince the disposition which lurks at the bottom of the movement against women as physicians. The hospital managers are to be browbeaten into the stand taken by the students, and now sanctioned by the professors. If the women are to be denied the privilege of clinical lectures, why do not learned professors, or students, or both, have the manliness to suggest and advocate some means of solving the difficulty so that the rights of neither sex shall be impaired? Would any professor agree to lecture to the women separately? Would any professor favor the admission of women into the female wards of the hospitals? Would any professor agree to propose anything, or do anything that would weaken the firm stand taken against the admission of women to professional privileges? If so, why not do it at once? Nothing else will make protestations of fairness appear at all genuine. Nothing else will remove the stigma of attempting to drag the hospitals into a support of this crusade against women. *** How absurd the solemn declaration, "it cannot be assumed by any right-minded person that male patients should be subjected to inspection before a class of females, although this inspection may, without impropriety, be submitted to before those of their own sex." This cuts both ways. If it be improper for female students to be present when patients of the other sex are treated, is it proper for male students to witness the treatment of female patients?
The practical good sense shown in the following report of a committee of the Faculty of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, makes a very favorable contrast with the unreasonable remonstrances of the so-called superior sex:
Philadelphia, Nov. 15, 1869.
As the relation of students of medicine to public clinics, and the views entertained by those entitled to speak for their medical education, are now extensively discussed in the public journals, it seems necessary for us to state our position. Considering it decided that, as practitioners of medicine, the guardianship of life and health is to be placed in the keeping of women, it becomes the interest of society and the duty of those entrusted with their professional training to endeavor to provide for them all suitable means for that practical instruction which is gained at hospital clinics.
The taunt has heretofore been frequently thrown out that ladies have not attended the great clinical schools of the country, nor listened to its celebrated teachers, and that, consequently, they cannot be as well prepared as men for medical practice. We believe, as we have always done, that in all special diseases of men and women, and in all operations necessarily involving embarrassing exposure of person, it is not fitting or
