5. That in our experience in these mixed classes the demeanour of the
students is more orderly and quiet, and their application to study
more diligent and earnest, than during former sessions when male
students alone were present.
6. That, in our opinion, if practical bedside instruction in the
examination and treatment of cases is withheld from the female pupils
by the refusal to them of access as medical students to the practice
of the Infirmary, we must regard the value of any systematic surgical
course thus rendered devoid of daily practical illustration, as
infinitely less than the same course attended by male pupils, who have
the additional advantage of the hospital instruction under the same
teacher.
7. That the surgical instruction, being deprived of its practical
aspect by the exclusion of the female pupils from the Infirmary, and
therefore from the wards of their systematic surgical teacher, the
knowledge of these female students may very reasonably be expected to
suffer, not only in class-room examinations, but in their capacity to
practise their profession in after life.
8. That our experience of mixed classes leads us to the conviction
that the attendance of the female students at the ordinary hospital
visit, along with the male students, cannot certainly be more
objectionable to the male students and the male patients than the
presence of the ward nurses, or to the female patients than the
presence of the male students.
9. That the class of society to which these eight female students
belong, together with the reserve of manner, and the serious and
reverent spirit in which they devote themselves to the study of
medicine, make it impossible that any impropriety could arise out of
their attendance upon the wards as regards either patients or male
pupils.
In conclusion, we trust that your honourable Board may see fit, on
considering these statements, to resolve not to exclude these female
students from the practice of, at all events, those physicians and
surgeons who do not object to their presence at the ordinary visit
along with the other students.
Such an absolute exclusion of female pupils from the wards of the
Royal Infirmary as such a decision of your honourable Board would
determine, we could not but regard as an act of practical injustice to
pupils who, having been admitted to the study of the medical
profession, must have their further progress in their studies barred
if hospital attendance is refused them.—We are, my Lord and Gentlemen,
your obedient servants,
P. D. HANDYSIDE,
PATRICK HERON WATSON.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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