[83] The following passage occurs in a leading article on the riot got up in Philadelphia by male medical students, when in 1869 ladies were first admitted to the Pennsylvania Hospital:--“Their riotous procedure is just a manifestation of the same trades-union spirit that will stoop to any meanness, join in any tyranny, be guilty of any cruelty, rather than allow interference with what is considered as its ‘vested rights.’ In last week’s _Lancet_ we find a letter from a medical man, who asks with _naïve_ surprise whether the advocates of female physicians can possibly be aware that there are hundreds of medical _men_ not able to make a comfortable living! We know not which most to admire--the cool assumption that the medical profession exists only or mainly to fill the pockets of its members, or the serene assurance that takes it for granted that no woman has a right to expect to be allowed the chance of earning a living, till all male competitors are safely and sufficiently provided for! It is rather amusing to contrast the evidently keen dread of successful competition which degrades a man thus to plead _in formâ pauperis_, with the voluble assurances, in this and other medical papers, that nature has clearly interdicted to women the practice of medicine, and that here at least they cannot but utterly fail.”--_Scotsman_, Dec. 4, 1869. [84] _Times_, April 25, 1870. [85] See _Note J_. [86] “In answer to an incorrect statement which appeared in one of the medical papers respecting his class, Dr Alleyne Nicholson has forwarded to its editor a letter, from which we extract the following passage:-- ... “The course of lectures on Zoology, which I am now delivering to a mixed class, is identically the same as the course which I delivered last winter to my ordinary class of male students. I have not hitherto emasculated my lectures in any way whatsoever, nor have I the smallest intention of so doing. In so acting, I am guided by the firm conviction that little stress is to be laid on the purity and modesty of those who find themselves able to extract food for improper feelings from such a purely scientific subject as zoology, however freely handled. ‘To the pure all things are pure.’” In the moral courage and manly purity of the above letter we find fresh cause to congratulate the ladies on the teacher they have secured on a subject which might easily have been made offensive by a man of prurient mind. As teachers of truly scientific spirit become more common, we shall, doubtless, hear less and less of the difficulties of giving instruction to classes composed of medical students of both sexes.”--_Daily Review_, June 14, 1870.