This question has recently been asked in America and in one important quarter at least has been answered in the affirmative. This is all the more remarkable, since America is not only the country which witnessed the new birth of the lady doctor in modern times, but that in which she has hitherto appeared most to flourish. Miss Elizabeth Blackwell, who was the first, graduated in 1849. Three years later there were six in Philadelphia. In 1889 there were 3,000 lady doctors in the United States; in 1896 there were 4,555, and now there are probably 6,000, some of whom have very lucrative practices. But these would seem to be the exception. From Chicago comes the news that Princess Bamha Dhuleep Singh, daughter of the late Maharajah Dhuleep Singh, and seventy other young women, who were studying medicine at the North-Western University, will have to seek another school. After thirty two years' trial the trustees of the University have come to the conclusion that women are not a success as doctors. The school is to be abolished and the property sold. One of the trustees, Mr. Raymond, goes so far as to say that it is impossible to make a doctor of a woman, He adds: “We have run the Women's Medical School at a loss of £5,000 a year. Women cannot grasp chemical laboratory work or the intricacies of surgery. Fifteen years ago the graduating class of men and women signed a memorial saying that coeducation was a failure. Then we conducted the college exclusively for women, and it has been worse than a failure.”
(BMJ 1902;i:287)