20 APRIL 1918, Page 13

THE ELIZABETH GARRETT ANDERSON HOSPITAL. (To THE EDITOR OF THE

"SPECTATOR."] SIR,—At a time like the present, when important changes are impending in our system of national education, I should like to call the attention of your readers to the work of the late Mrs. Garrett Anderson, M.D. For twenty-two years she was lecturer at the London School of Medicine for Women, and for almost as great a number of years was Dean of the School. It was her guiding hand that inspired the careers of a vast number of women students and doctors, and her name should be kept in perpetual remembrance as a successful teacher and practitioner in the great study of medicine. She was the first woman to obtain a medical degree in this country, and she was also the first woman to gain for her own sex a professional status equal to that of men. It is to the New Hospital for Women, now the " Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital," which she founded in 1866, that I would call tha attention of your readers. This hospital is the corner-stone of the whole medical women's movement, and it has been decided by those who reverence her memory that beds should be endowed in this hospital by the women of England as a memorial to her great work.

We have been specially fortunate in securing the help of many of the large women's colleges and schools in the country. Queen's College has presented us with the necessary £1,000 to name a bed after the College; Girton and Newnham have jointly promised a Cambridge Bed; Oxford Colleges are combining for an Oxford Bed. Bedford College; Roe(lean School, Brighton; St. Katharine's, Woking; the Physical Training Colleges, and the students of the School of Medicine for Women, have each promised to collect the requisite £1,000. The Actresses' Bed is being organized by Miss Irene Vanbrugh, and the women artists, musicians, writers, the W.A.A.C.'s, &c., are all helping to collect for their respective beds. The British Empire to-day owes much to the work of medical women and to this hospital, which first gave them opportunities for training, and we hope all women will come forward and help us to build up this hospital in a manner worthy of the name of the founder by subscribing towards one of the beds.--I am, Sir, &c.,