From time immemorial it has been universally recognised that the care of the sick is women’s work; but somehow, partly from the low standard of women’s education, partly from the false notion that all paid work was in a way degrading to a woman’s gentility, it seemed to be imagined that women could do this work of caring for the sick without any special teaching or preparation for it; and as all paid work was supposed to be unladylike, no woman undertook it unless she was driven to it by the dire stress of poverty, and had therefore neither the time nor means to acquire the training necessary to do it well. The lesson of Florence Nightingale’s life is that painstaking study and preparation are just as necessary for women’s work as they are for men’s work. No young man attempts responsible work as a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, or even a gardener or mechanic, without spending long years in fitting himself for his work; but in old times women seemed to think they could do all their work, in governessing, nursing, or what not, by the light of nature, and without any special teaching and preparation whatever. There is still some temptation on the part of women to fall into this fatal error. A young woman, not long ago, who had studied medicine in India only two years, was placed at the head of a dispensary and hospital for native women. Who would have dreamt of taking a boy, after only two years’ study, for a post of similar responsibility and difficulty? Of course failure and disappointment resulted, and it will probably be a long time before the native community in that part of India recover their confidence in lady doctors.