The reason why the university was induced to annul its contract, after the women on their part had fully complied with all its stipulations, soon became apparent. It was purely and simply to make it impossible for women to secure a license as medical practitioners. Both in and outside of Edinburgh the conviction daily grew stronger that women doctors were a menace to the monopoly so long enjoyed by the medical fraternity, and that the movement in their favor should be crushed by fair means or foul before it got beyond control. The _Spectator_ made this clear by stating at the time of the controversy that "every profession in this country"--England--"is more or less of a trades union," and yet the members of these professions "would shake their heads and prate about the necessity of stamping out trades unionism among workmen." "Women," whined one of the doctors, "would snatch the bread from the mouths of poor practitioners." Another doctor who had championed the cause of women physicians, when commenting on the hypocritical objection that it was unbecoming for women to practice medicine or surgery, expressed the same idea in other words. "It appears," he declared, "that it is most becoming and proper for a woman to discharge all the duties which are incidental to our profession for thirty shillings a week; but, if she is to have three or four guineas a day for discharging the same duties, then they are immoral and immodest and unsuited to the soft nature that should characterize a lady." After Miss Jex-Blake and her companions learned that the university was determined to refuse them the degrees to which they were entitled, they brought suit against it for breach of contract. But, after a long and expensive trial, the judge rendered a decision against them. They then appealed to Parliament, and, after a protracted and strenuous campaign on the part of friends whom they had enlisted in their cause, they saw their opponents not only dragged at the chariot wheels of progress but forced to help to turn them; for, in 1878, after nearly ten years of a persistent, continuous struggle such as had rarely been witnessed in woman's long battle for things of the mind--a struggle in which the intrepid, dauntless Miss Jex-Blake "made the greatest of all the contributions to the end attained"--the women of Great Britain had the supreme satisfaction of winning what was probably the most glorious victory which their sex had ever won.[214] The war was over and henceforward they were free--as were their sisters in other parts of the world--as the women in Italy had been for a thousand years--to devote themselves at will to the study and practice of the healing art without let or hindrance.