By far the largest number of the references to medicine, however, are concerned with the manners and customs of medical students, and if corroboration be needed for the unflattering picture of this class which has been drawn in _Pickwick_, the pages of _Punch_ supply it in distressing abundance. The counterparts of Bob Sawyer and Benjamin Allen, in all their dingy rowdiness are portrayed in a series of articles and paragraphs running through the early volumes. [Illustration: THE MEDICAL STUDENT] Thus, under the heading Hospitals we read:-- The attributes of the gentlemen walking the various hospitals may be thus enumerated: Guy's {Half-and-half, anatomical _fracas_, St. Thomas's {and billiards. St. George's Doings at Tattersall's. London Too remote to be ascertained. University Conjuring, juggling, and mesmerism. Bartholomew's State of Smithfield Markets. Middlesex Convivial harmony. Charing Cross Dancing at the Lowther-rooms. King's College Has not yet acquired any peculiarity. Westminster Dashes of all the others combined. Even when all allowance has been made for the exaggeration of the satirist, there was undoubtedly a serious warrant for this indictment, and we may congratulate ourselves that it is a gross libel on the medical students of to-day. They may be exuberant, noisy, and rowdy on occasion, but they are neither grubby nor callous, and the unfortunate episode of their treatment of Mr. "Pussyfoot" Johnson may be regarded, we believe, as a blot on the scutcheon of their sportsmanship which the great majority regretted and reprobated. WOMEN IN THE 'FORTIES AND 'FIFTIES On the position and influence of women in society _Punch_, as we have already seen, furnishes a critical if not a complete commentary. Extravagance, exclusiveness and arrogance are faithfully dealt with. There is genuine satire in the picture of the fine lady who, on hearing that her pet dog had bitten the footman in the leg, expressed the fervent hope that it would not make the dog ill. Fashionable delicacy is ridiculed, and _Punch_ ranged himself on the side of "S.G.O." (Lord Sidney Godolphin Osborne) in his crusade in _The Times_ against Mayfair matrons for not nursing their own offspring, and for employing wet-nurses who, in turn, had to starve their own children. A few years earlier, when the question "Can Women regenerate Society?" was seriously discussed in the same journal, the issue is drowned by _Punch_ in a stream of comic suggestions. There is not much to choose between the "Dolls' House" ideal and that expressed in the sonnet printed in the winter of 1846:--