[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR:1
SIR,—Everyone interested in the general, and more especially in the medical, education of women must thank you heartily for your admirable article of last week, and for no part of it will they be more grateful than for your insistance on the primary necessity that the University of London should "abate no jot of its intel- lectual conditions, in deference to considerations of sex." It is precisely for this that we have been for many years contending not that women should enjoy any exceptional privileges or immu- nities (which in their case would indeed be real disadvantages), but simply that the exceptional hindrances and barriers placed in their way should be removed.
I am glad, however, in justice to the only two Medical Boards -that have hitherto consented to examine women, to bear witness that in each case the same principle has been scrupulously main- tained, and that to them at least are inapplicable the strictures most justly due to any institution that may have adopted an opposite course.
The Queen's University of Ireland is, in fact, at this moment unable to examine women, although its authorities have declared their willingness to do so, because the ordinary regulations require a year of study in one of the affiliated Queen's Colleges, and none of these has as yet consented to admit women to instruction.
The Irish College of Physicians, also, have adhered in the most rigid manner to their regulations, printed long before any woman Applied to them for admission ; and, as one of the five women who have recently passed their examinations, you will allow me to testify that no jot or tittle of their ordinary requirements was relaxed ; and, indeed, that the whole examinations for both men and women were conducted simultaneously and in the same apartment.
I should not think it necessary to trouble you with these lines, but that misstatements on this subject have been deliberately made by one of the minor medical papers, and have not been re- tracted, in spite of the demonstration of their falsity by the official statements of the College Registrar. Should it be sup- posed that the allusion in your influential journal was confirma- tory of these misstatements, a grave injustice would be done to the two medical corporations who have led the van in justice and generosity, and whose chief claim on our gratitude is that they have wholly ignored the element of sex in all candidates admitted by them to examination.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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