for them. The knowledge helps their self-respect. In addition, they know they will not be quite helpless if an unhappy marriage should ever leave them stranded. Co-operative housekeeping, too, has given them much additional time. They would be wretched creatures if they had nothing whatever to do. The necessity and benefit of having women in these professions is becoming more and more evident as time passes, and is increasingly acknowledged by a grateful public. It was not always so, as the pioneers amongst women can amply testify. The first women-doctors had to endure insults and outrages which it would beggar language to describe. There are at the present time four hundred women physicians in England. And the tendency will be in the direction of their increase.
It is fitting that this should be so. Far more women than men have to apply for medical aid, not because they are weaker, naturally, than men, nor because of their function of child-bearing, but because they are the sufferers from numberless so-called women’s complaints, which are the effects of some form of masculine abuse. Dr. Nicholls has said in one of his works:
