I say that some of the students appear to have taken the hint so
given; for to this I must think is due the treatment received by
myself and some of my friends if we happen to meet students on our way
home in the evening. It will possibly strike some people as
sufficiently extraordinary that a knot of young men should find
pleasure in following a woman through the streets, and should take
advantage of her being alone to shout after her all the foulest
epithets in their voluminous vocabulary of abuse; yet such is the
case. I am quite aware that it would be useless to represent to those
students the injury they do to the University and to the medical
profession in the eyes of the public, because neither of these
considerations would weigh with them for a moment; but it may make
some impression on them to be told that the effect of their conduct is
really such as they would least desire. Dr. Christison is reported to
have said during his examination in Court, that he considered the riot
of November to be ‘a great misfortune,’ and from his point of view he
was undoubtedly right. If the wish of these students is to bar our
progress, and frighten us from the prosecution of the work we have
taken in hand, I venture to say never was a greater mistake made. Each
fresh insult is an additional incentive to finish the work begun. I
began the study of medicine merely from personal motives; now I am
also impelled by the desire to remove women from the care of such
young ruffians. I am quite aware that respectable students will say,
and say truly, that these are the dregs of the profession, and that
they will never take a high place as respectable practitioners. Such
is doubtless the case; but what then? Simply that, instead of having
the medical charge of ladies with rich husbands and fathers, to whom,
from self-interest, they would be respectful, they will have the
treatment of unprotected servants and shop-girls. I should be very
sorry to see any poor girl under the care (!) of such men as those,
for instance, who the other night followed me through the street,
using medical terms to make the disgusting purport of their language
more intelligible to me. When a man can put his scientific knowledge
to such degraded use, it seems to me he cannot sink much lower.
How far the recent decisions are calculated to arrest or discourage
such conduct, I leave the public to judge.—I am, etc.
MARY EDITH PECHEY.”
One is glad to note that the _Lancet_ now took fire:
“Common candour must compel any unprejudiced person to admit that the
fight has been pursued by the orthodox party _per fas et nefas_, and
that the ill-advised conduct of grave and learned seniors in the
profession has offered only too plausible an excuse to the heated
blood of younger partisans to indulge in coarse excesses.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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