Page:Pioneer work in opening the medical profession to women - autobiographical sketches (IA b28145227).pdf/249

This page needs to be proofread.

of women, and would, I think, have been just the encouragement needed by girls when they leave school to keep them interested in their studies and out of the merely fashionable or domestic life they are so liable to fall into. It would also have been a great encouragement to parents, and would have made them more willing to let their daughters have time and opportunity for culture after they leave the schoolroom. These advantages would have been widely felt, and for professional women, whether governesses or physicians, the opportunity of being able to take a degree would have been invaluable. However, it is not to be had now; perhaps, when they are having another charter eight or ten years hence, we may try again and succeed. I do not imagine there is much chance of being able to do more at any other university in the United Kingdom than we can do here, so that I fear the possibility of ever obtaining an English degree as M.D. is a very remote one.

My notion now is to try to get into a school and obtain the Apothecaries' Hall licence. If this should prove possible, it would occupy between three and four years from next October. I should then wish to come to America and obtain the M.D. there, and then spend a year in Paris. I should be glad to know if you think I ought to make a point of getting the best M.D. diploma I can, either in America or on the Continent, if it should prove impossible to obtain one here, and if I can get the Apothecaries' licence. My own feeling is in favour of having the M.D.; though it should be a foreign one, I believe it would command more respect than the licence from the Hall would alone. I am fortunately able to choose to do whatever is most advisable, as I need not be in a hurry to enter upon the profession from pecuniary or any other motives, and I think I cannot aid the cause more soundly than by trying to do everything in the