As a matter of fact she had not meant to speak again, but one of the
professors had left her no alternative. In the course of a long speech
he had asserted that, in consequence of mixed education, a college in
America “had become so degraded that a woman who respected herself
shrank from the contamination, and preferred to renounce the benefit of
years of study rather than don the academic robe of one of its
graduates.”
“Name the college,” said S. J.-B., and other voices took up the cry of
“Name!”
“He spoke on authority.” (A voice—“What authority?”) “On the authority
of Miss Blake herself, who ... when asked why she had not pursued her
studies instead of coming here, told him that the character of female
medical students in America had so deteriorated that she could not
consent to stay.”
It cannot be easy to speak when one has awaited one’s opportunity
through a storm of hooting and pea-throwing; but now indeed S. J.-B.’s
fine courage and truthfulness shone out like the sun:
“She wished merely to give an absolute, unqualified denial to
Professor X.’s statement respecting her. She never made the statement
he asserted she had made. During her whole visit to America she had
never spent one whole session in any medical college whatever.... It
was true she had studied two years in a woman’s hospital, and every
day’s experience there had made her long more and more to see women in
charge of their own sex—(Great interruption and cries of ‘Order’)—and
it was her experience in that hospital and her knowledge of the ladies
connected with it [One can almost hear her inward cry, ‘Oh, Lucy!’]
that made her devote her life to getting medical education for herself
and also for other women.... Some of the friends she was proudest of
were women doctors in America who had been educated there entirely,
and in regard to whom she scarcely knew any equals and certainly no
superiors.”
It was only in answer to repeated calls that Professor X. rose and said,
“He was sure there was not an individual in that meeting who would not
give him credit for having given what he believed to be the correct
version of what occurred according to his recollection two years ago—
(Hisses and cheers)—between Miss Jex-Blake and himself. If he had
misconceived what had been said, or if his memory had failed him and he
had stated what was not correct, he begged to apologise, as it was
purely unintentional.” (Applause and hisses.)
A somewhat disappointing outcome this, of a long course of training in
scientific exactness.
It was now that the Professor of Moral Philosophy (Calderwood) rose,
profoundly stirred beneath the calm and judicial demeanour that seldom
failed him, and pointed out that Professor X., while speaking to the
amendment “that the question (of the women students) be left to the
unbiassed decision of the Managers,” had voluntarily given them a fair
average specimen of an unbiassed opinion!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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