Page:Pioneer work in opening the medical profession to women - autobiographical sketches (IA b28145227).pdf/254

This page needs to be proofread.

time seeking to establish a women's college in New York. We took this step, however, with hesitation, for our own feeling was adverse to the formation of an entirely separate school for women. The first women physicians connected with the infirmary, having all been educated in the ordinary medical schools, felt very strongly the advantage of admission to the large organised system of public instruction already existing for men; and also the benefits arising from association with men as instructors and companions in the early years of medical study. They renewed their efforts, therefore, to induce some good recognised New York school to admit, under suitable arrangements, a class of students guaranteed by the infirmary, rather than add another to the list of female colleges already existing. Finding, however, after consultation with the different New York schools, that such arrangements could not at present be made, the trustees followed the advice of their consulting staff, obtained a college charter, and opened a subscription for a college fund.

The use of a spacious lecture-room in the New York University, on Washington Square, was temporarily obtained, until the house adjoining the infirmary could be leased and fitted for college purposes.[1]

A full course of college instruction was gradually organised, with the important improvement of esta-*

  1. The fine property on Stuyvesant Square, at the corner of East Fifteenth Street, has since been purchased, and is now the site of the New York Infirmary and College.