The office of the physician is as holy as that of the priest: formerly they were one; now, at least, the physician should be priest-like. Irreverence and impurity should be banished from medical ranks. The science of medicine stands in great need of the intuitive genius of woman. In pursuing it, she will need the steady caution of man. In this country and in France, earnest and devoted students of both sexes have stood in the dissecting room to the benefit of both. So let them continue to stand, till the spirit is known by its fruits. An impure man is no better than an impure woman; but impurity among men may be concealed. Let it come between the two sexes, and it will be brought at once into antagonism with society, and will meet its true desert. The objection reveals the secrets of the medical college, and is the strongest argument ever offered for the medical education of women. If women are to practise as physicians, some means should be taken to protect society against those who are imperfectly educated. _What a degree means_ will always be doubtful, until men and women receive their degrees in the same way and from the same hands. America stands greatly in need of this protection. Crowds of unauthorized, half-educated women, some of whom have not been ashamed to cross the Atlantic, and have attracted such sympathy abroad as only a different class of students deserve, are thronging the valley of the Mississippi, as well as haunting with their empirical pretensions the purlieus of the seaboard cities. If men had received properly trained women into their colleges and medical societies, this would not have happened. Cannot such physicians as Dr. Zakrzewska, Dr. Blackwell, Dr. Sewall, Dr. Tyng, and Dr. Ross of Milwaukie, unite to organize a Woman's Medical Society, with an examining board whose diploma shall attest the character of the member? Dr. Storer's admirable pamphlet entitled "Why not?" points out an evil, which will never be remedied by thrusting empirical women into the positions now held by unscrupulous men.[5] And what have we to say of our own country? Has the American standard reached a safe altitude, or must we admit that it has the same limitations? A popular width of view we have certainly gained in the last half-century; but have we made secure progress in the right direction? Some eighty years ago, John Adams wrote of his wife, "This lady was more beautiful than Lady Russell, had a brighter genius, more information, and more refined taste, and was at least her equal in virtues of the heart, in fortitude and firmness of character, in resignation to the will of Heaven, and in all the virtues and graces of the Christian life. Like Lady Russell, she never discouraged her husband from running all hazards for the salvation of his country's liberties; she was willing to share with me, and that her children should share with us both, in all the dangerous consequences we had to hazard."