I look forward with great interest to the time when you can aid me in these matters, for I have really no _medical friend_; all the gentlemen I meet seem separated by an invincible, invisible barrier, and the women who take up the subject partially are inferior. It will not always be so; when the novelty of the innovation is past, men and women will be valuable friends in medicine, but for a time that cannot be. I spend now about three or four hours each day in the wards, chiefly medical, diagnosing disease, watching the progress of cases, and accustoming my ear to the stethoscope. Already, in this short time, I feel that I have made progress, and detect sounds that I could not distinguish on my entrance. I advise you, E., to familiarise yourself with the healthy sounds of the chest. When you go home, auscultate all the family; you will find quite a variety in the sounds, though all may be healthy persons. Lay a cloth over the chest and listen with the ear simply; it is as good as a stethoscope with clean people. I wish I could lend you my little black stethoscope that I brought from the Maternité. I have been disappointed in one thing here—the Professor of Midwifery and the Diseases of Women and Children wrote me a very polite note, telling me that he entirely disapproved of a lady’s studying medicine, and begging me to consider that his neglecting to give me aid was owing to no disrespect to me as a lady, but to his condemnation of my object. By-the-by, I must tell you of a scientific explanation of the toughness of meat which I obtained from Mr. Paget’s lecture the other morning; it arises from cooking meat during the _rigor mortis_! Would not that be a delicate suggestion for a squeamish individual?... 28 Thavies Inn: 1850. DEAR DR. DICKSON,—I believe that my kind preceptor and earliest medical friend will be interested in a little account of my foreign life.