This question was received, according to the newspaper report, with “_Laughter, hisses, and applause_,” but no one opened his mouth to reply. Perhaps in truth no reply could have been more significant than the burst of yells and howls which greeted the question from a gallery filled by students, who indeed so conducted themselves generally as to elicit a remark to me from a learned Professor, famous for his quaint sayings: “Well! ye can say now ye’ve fought with beasts at Ephesus!” About the same time a petition, signed by twenty-three male students,[94] was presented to the Infirmary managers, praying that the lady students should no longer be excluded, but no attention was paid to the request; and when subsequently a similar application was made to the Managers by a deputation of very influential citizens,[95] they again refused, by a majority, to do anything in our behalf. Professor Balfour moved the appointment of a Committee to enquire into a scheme for the instruction of ladies proposed by certain of the medical officers of the Infirmary, but Professor Christison carried an amendment negativing even this measure; and thus another year of Hospital instruction was lost. With each succeeding Session new students joined our small class, partly in consequence of the very kind encouragement held out by Lady Amberley, Dr Garrett Anderson, and other friends, in the way of Scholarships; for, since public indignation was excited by the refusal of the Hope Scholarship to Miss Pechey, hardly a term has passed without some generous offer of valuable prizes for those ladies who needed such assistance to pursue their studies, and who, by their success in competitive examinations, showed themselves worthy of them. Such kindness is the more valuable at a time when, by incessant delays and constantly-recurring difficulties, every effort is evidently being made to exhaust alike the patience and the purses of the troublesome women who desire to complete the work they have begun. It is not necessary for me to enter into details respecting the ladies’ progress in their studies, further than to state that in every course in which they have competed for prizes, more than half of the whole class have been in the honours list, and in some cases every lady student has so appeared;[96] so that any refusal to grant them further instruction can hardly be based on the plea that they have not done their best to avail themselves of what was already afforded.