Men who, after an irregular education and incomplete training, claim the name of physicians, are justly stigmatised as quacks, and excluded from honourable fellowship, for they have refused the straight and direct path as too laborious, and have sought admittance by crooked ways. It is right enough to impose heavy penalties on them for practising without a diploma which it needs only industry on their part to obtain; but what shall we say when women are refused admission to every regular Medical School, and then, when they have perhaps painfully and laboriously gathered their own education, either in England or abroad, are excluded from the fellowship of the profession, for the sin of having been unjustly treated! That some women have succeeded in acquiring most competent medical knowledge and skill can hardly be denied, except by those who really know nothing of the facts, or are wilfully blind to them; but in almost every case they have done so at a cost of money, effort, and personal sacrifice, that can be expected only from the few. Imagine all medical students met by the difficulties which female students must encounter;--how many properly educated doctors should we have? Many persons, however, who would gladly see women engage in the practice of Medicine, yet think it undesirable that they should obtain their education in the same schools as men; and here another practical point arises for consideration. If it is indeed true that no one is fit for the profession of Medicine unless able to banish from its practice the personal idea of sex, it certainly seems as if all earnest students seeking the same knowledge for the same ends, ought to be able to pursue their studies together. We are constantly told (and I think rightly) that no woman _need_ object, when necessary, to consult a medical man on any point, because the physician will see in it simply an impersonal “case,” and will, from his scientific standpoint, practically ignore all that would be embarrassing as between persons of opposite sexes. If this is and ought to be true, it does not seem too much to demand equal delicacy of feeling among those who will in a year or two be themselves physicians; and, from personal experience when studying in large American hospitals with students of both sexes, I believe that no serious difficulty need ever occur, except in cases of really exceptional coarseness of character on one side or the other. That such joint study will be for the first few days novel and embarrassing is of course natural; but I believe that, as the first novelty wears off, the embarrassment too will disappear in the interest of a common study, and that no thoroughly pure-minded woman, with an ordinary amount of tact, need ever fear such association with students of whom the majority will always be gentlemen. It is of course a radically different thing to study any or all subjects with earnest scientific interest, and to discuss them lightly in common conversation.[68]