In the prospectus issued for the second year of the school, Mr. Gregory brought forward a new set of arguments in its support, in addition to those previously adduced. There was then (1849) in New England, a surplus female population of 20,000 persons,—and “hundreds of these would be willing to devote any necessary length of time to qualify themselves for a useful, honorable, and remunerative occupation.” They could afford, moreover, to give their services at a much cheaper rate than men, charging about a third the ordinary fees,—thus $5 instead of $15 for attendance on a confinement case. Thus not only would the morals of the community be preserved, but the burdens on its purse be considerably lightened by the employment of educated women as obstetricians. As the medical profession had just become keenly alive to the peculiarly lucrative character of obstetrical and gynæcological practice, this suggestion that it might now profitably be undersold naturally aroused the keenest resentment. It was soon retorted that the cheaper practitioners were to be prepared by a system of education so cheap as to be absolutely worthless; and unfortunately the early history of the first medical schools for women entirely justified this accusation. To support Mr. Gregory’s school, a Female Medical Education Society was formed in Boston, and incorporated with a state charter. Nothing seemed at the outset fairer than the promises of the new college,—but it had one fatal defect. There was no one connected with it who either knew or cared what a medical education should be. It followed that, under the name of medical education, was offered a curriculum of instruction, so ludicrously inadequate for the purpose, as to constitute a gross usurpation of the name,—in a word, to be an essentially dishonest affair. And still more unfortunately, the same inadequacy, naïvely or deliberately unconscious of itself, continued in greater or less degree, to characterize all efforts for the isolated medical education of women for the next twenty years. This, the fourth period of their medical history,—deserves therefore to be considered by women rather as a pre-medical or preliminary epoch; where purposes were enunciated that were only to be fulfilled many years later. The Gregory Medical School maintained a precarious existence until 1874, when, by an enabling act of the Legislature, the funds were handed over to the Boston University, just founded,—upon condition that women should be admitted to the medical department of the latter. This condition was punctually fulfilled; women students were rendered eligible to all departments of the new university. But as the medical school, for some reason, became exclusively homœpathic,—the fortunes of medical women in the regular profession were not thereby greatly advanced.[42]