Now S. J.-B.’s entry on any new sphere in life could seldom be fitly described as the addition of a little more of the same stuff. For better or worse, she was apt to come somewhat as the yeast comes to the dough, and yet that metaphor, too, falls short, for the medium reacted upon her as intensely perhaps as she acted on the medium. In the present case she had drifted into medical work all uncritical and full of admiration[43]; but a visit to England brought her back as an outsider with her critical faculty fully awake. She saw that the need of adequate Graduation—urgent though it might be—was as nothing compared to the need of adequate Education. It _was_ hard to make bricks without straw. In America women doctors had proved, against heavy odds, that women doctors were wanted. Why not give them a fair field? One heard on every side of the splendid advantages laid, so to speak, at the feet of men students at Harvard. Footnote 43: As early as June, 1866, she had written to Dr. Sewall:—“I am glad you are pleased with prospects as to the College; but, however good you may get it to be, take notice (if I study at all) I don’t mean to graduate at any Woman’s College,—on principle,—or else for vanity and ambition sake,—which is it?” Whichever it was, there can be no doubt as to the soundness of the decision, but she little guessed what that decision was to cost. Why should not women be admitted to Harvard? Why not ask? In April, 1867, the following correspondence was published in _The Boston Daily Advertiser_: “March 11th. 1867. GENTLEMEN, Finding it impossible to obtain elsewhere in New England a thoroughly competent medical education, we hereby request permission to enter the Harvard Medical School on the same terms and under the same conditions as other students, there being, as we understand, no university statute to the contrary. On applying for tickets for the course, we were informed by the Dean of the Medical Faculty that he and his coadjutors were unable to grant them to us in consequence of some previous action taken by the corporation, to whom now therefore we make request to remove any such existing disability. In full faith in the words recently spoken with reference to the University of Harvard,—‘American colleges are not cloisters for the education of a few persons, but seats of learning whose hospitable doors should be always open to every seeker after knowledge’—we place our petition in your hands and subscribe ourselves, Your obedient servants, SOPHIA JEX-BLAKE. SUSAN DIMOCK.[44] To the President and Fellows of the University of Harvard.” Footnote 44: