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    318 MEDIdAL EDUCATION FOR LADIES,

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    I Hate Read With Ditlcii Pleasure A Pape...

    " As for securing to the public a set of competent surgeons , the colldoes not do thatthere is no more connection between merit" "

    and ege the diploma of that , body , than between Genghis Khan and the French Revolution . 66

    Taking the lowest possible ground is not the worst , the grossest ignorance may really infest the man whose tongue is glibbest . As

    for diagnosticating the simplest surgical ease , there is not a particle of proof in anything produced at the college examination that the

    candidate is competent to do it . "We complain that the college first reduces surgery to a mere artand then fails to test the artistic

    , competency of its alumni . "—Lancet , August 29 th , 185 7 . The article quoted asserts , and truly , that no knowledge of

    diseases or remedies is required by the college . In another number it is stated that it is the boast of a celebrated grinder that in two

    months he can successfully prepare any candidate for the examination of the College of Surgeons .

    It is hence argued that the curriculum which enjoins three or four ( i The years veriest ' study idler is a at mere the pretext schools and the smoking sham . , lounging ,

    billiardplaying candidate , scrambles throug , h the examination with the same ease as the most accomplished and highly informed of his fellows . "

    —Id ., November , 1857 . It forms no part of the college requirements that the candidate

    should be able to prescribe , understand diagnosis , physiology , or materia medicafar less chemistryor general pathology . In point

    of factthis and , most other colleges , have all the faults and vices of , corporate bodies , which it has been well said _" have no souls . "

    Their diplomas are taken by the public to imply that the possessors are really qualified to practise the art of healing , and this

    delusion , so profitable to those bodies , is tacitly cherished and encouraged . No individual member of the respective councils

    would be guilty of so gross a fraud ; and no one we believe could conscientiously deny that they are thus fairly chargeable with

    complicity in a system as injurious to the public as the whole host of those honored with the name of Quacks . What if a vigorous

    movement to qualify ladies for the practice of the art of healing , should awaken these institutions to a juster sense of their duties and

    responsibilities ? Having , I trust , disposed of the idea that ladies must resort to

    the ordinary medical schools and obtain diplomas and titles , and shown it to be inadmissible and useless , I will proceed to sketch

    an outline of a plan practicable and efficient to qualify them for the duties of attending on the sick and practising the art of

    healing . Surgery I conceive lies out of the province of the sex . the In the art practice of healing of — what it is is obvious technicall that y it c would alled and " Medicine must be , "— confined id est _,

    to the cases of women , and children ; but I am wholly mistaken and

    at fault in all my reason ami experience , if in those cases well in-

    318 Medidal Education For Ladies,

    318 _MEDIdAL EDUCATION FOR LADIES ,

• Citation
  • English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), July 1, 1860, page 318, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01071860/page/30/