A similar opportuneness characterizes her answer to the question which continues to be asked to-day as it has been asked down the ages: SHOULD WOMEN STUDY MEDICINE? So many women, both young and of mature age, appeal to me for information concerning the profession of medicine that I have thought it desirable to express my opinion thus publicly. The principal points inquired about are How to study medicine? and What are the prospects in practice? There are so many medical schools now open to women, both in the East and in the West, that the selection of one for the purpose of study need depend only upon individual convenience and the pecuniary resources of the student. A student needs to have means for her support during three full years of college life and, if possible, for an additional year’s residence in some hospital before entering upon practice. Next comes the question, What can she expect in practice? Many young women enter the profession because it seems to them a lucrative business. Yet for a young person to choose this path in life because she thinks it leads invariably to success--by which she means a plentiful purse--is a mistake. Success in the practice of medicine may coexist with small pecuniary gains; the money gain should be incidental, not primary, in the thought of the physician. A well-educated physician, who has passed through the regular course of study and who conscientiously works within the legitimate sphere of her knowledge, must allow about ten years of indefatigable labor before her practice brings a competency worthy the name of independence, by which I mean a comfortable living free from the anxieties of petty economies and allowing occasional relaxations from duty. Many a young woman has gone out of my office excited and indignant because I have expressed doubt that the medical profession would be the best career for her to choose, and her final exclamation as she left me is very significant, “You have been successful; why should not I be so?” This “why not” is just the hard point to explain. On April 5, 1888, it was just thirty-six years since I began to seek practice. Young (twenty-two and one-half years old), full of enthusiasm and self-reliance, willing to work, ready for self-abnegation in every direction, I felt sure that I should succeed in life, but this success never presented itself before my mind in the shape of a plentiful purse. Besides the moral qualities I have mentioned, I started with another great advantage, namely, a good physical constitution. In no profession is sound steady health so requisite as in the medical, for the practitioner must be ready night and day, and at the beck and call of patients--whether paying or charity. Thus this profession demands a body free from annoyances of all kinds and a clear, sound head, to enable one to be decisive in judgment, firm in advice, and kind in sympathy.