pathology. Mr. Paget spoke to the students before I joined the class. When I entered and bowed, I received a round of applause. My seat is always reserved for me, and I have no trouble. There are, I think, about sixty students, the most gentlemanly class I have ever seen. I have been here about ten days. There are so many physicians and surgeons, so many wards, and all so exceedingly busy, that I have not yet got the run of the place; but the medical wards are thrown open unreservedly to me, either to follow the physician's visits or for private study; later, I shall attend the surgical wards. At first no one knew how to regard me. Some thought I must be an extraordinary intellect overflowing with knowledge; others, a queer, eccentric woman; and none seemed to understand that I was a quiet, sensible person who had acquired a small amount of medical knowledge, and who wished by patient observation and study to acquire considerably more. One of the old physicians takes much interest in the strange little doctor, and has given me valuable hints from his own experience; but I confess that this system of practice is both difficult and repellent to me; I shall, however, study it diligently. Mr. Paget, who is very cordial, tells me that I shall have to encounter much more prejudice from ladies than from gentlemen in my course. I am prepared for this. Prejudice is more violent the blinder it is, and I think that Englishwomen seem wonderfully shut up in their habitual views. But a work of the ages cannot be hindered by individual feeling. A hundred years hence women will not be what they are now.
The growing perplexity of the conscientious
student awakening to the uncertainty of the art of
medicine is now apparent in letters written at this
time.
