No further event of importance occurred during the winter, except the meetings of Infirmary contributors, at the first of which a close contest took place between managers known to be favourable to us and those known to be unfriendly. A new Act came into operation at this date, and all the managers had to vacate their seats unless re-elected. I can give no more significant proof of the immense amount of pressure brought to bear by the medical clique than by stating that, of the three medical men who had voted for us six weeks before, it was found when the day of election came that two had turned their coats, while the one who refused to do so was unseated by the medical body that he had represented! At the Contributors’ Meeting on Jan. 2, 1871, at which six managers were to be elected, the Lord Provost himself proposed the election of six gentlemen known to be friendly to the admission of ladies to the Infirmary; but by the very narrow majority of 94 votes to 88, the managers previously on the Board were returned. No other question was raised, and those who voted with the Lord Provost did so simply in consequence of the importance they attached to the exclusion of the ladies by those managers who now desired re-election.[92] At a subsequent meeting, the Rev. Professor Charteris brought forward a motion expressive of the desire of the contributors that immediate arrangements should be made for the admission of the ladies, and this motion was seconded by Sir James Coxe, M. D., but was lost by a similarly small majority. On this latter occasion, two incidents occurred that deserve notice. Firstly, a petition in favour of the ladies’ admission was presented, signed by 956 women of Edinburgh.[93] Secondly, Mrs Nichol, an elderly lady whose name is venerated throughout Edinburgh, made, in spite of ill health, the great exertion of coming forward at that public meeting, to ask one question,--“not,” as she distinctly said, “in the interests of the lady students, but on behalf of those women who looked forward to see what kind of men were they who were to be the sole medical attendants of the next generation of women, if women doctors are not allowed.” The question which she said she had been commissioned to ask by more than 1300 women, belonging to all classes and all parts of the country, was as follows:-- “If the students studying at present in the Infirmary cannot contemplate with equanimity the presence of ladies as fellow-students, how is it possible that they can possess either the scientific spirit or the personal purity of mind which alone would justify their presence in the female wards during the most delicate operations on, and examinations of, female patients?”