In 1849, “Diplomas and advanced courses of study were things entirely outside the intellectual life of women.”[46] The pioneer female colleges, the Troy Seminary and the Mt. Holyoke school, had scarcely been founded,[47] and women everywhere received only the most rudimentary education. On the other hand, the medical education of men, was, as compared with the objects to be attained by it,—in about an equally rudimentary condition. The intrinsic tests were so shifting and unreliable, the standard of attainments so low, that it was proportionately necessary to protect the dignity of the profession by external, superficial, and arbitrary safeguards. Of these the easiest to apply was the distinction of sex. It was often difficult to decide, in the absence of intrinsic tests, whether a given individual were or were not a competent physician: but it was of course always easy to recognize that he was a man. This simple principle of distinction was adopted, therefore, as the guiding rule in future controversies. All men, however or wherever educated, were to be considered competent physicians, if only they chose to say so themselves. And all women were correlatively to be declared incompetent, no matter what care they had taken to prepare themselves. The principle was well suited to crude and uncultured societies, and became proportionately popular. Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell were led to the study of medicine in a different manner than Harriet Hunt, their immediate predecessor. While still quite young girls, they were, by the sudden death of their father, unexpectedly confronted with the necessity of supporting not only themselves, but their mother, and a large family of younger brothers and sisters. “Then we realized the infinite narrowness and pettiness of the avenues open to women, and the crowds of competitors who kept each other down in the struggle. We determined that we would endeavor to open a new door, and tread a fresh path,—rather than push for a footing in one already filled to overflowing.”[48] In this determination a new key-note was sounded. The Blackwells, and especially Elizabeth, were less the associates of Harriet Hunt, and of their own immediate successors, than the spiritual daughters of Mary Wollstonecraft, whose courageous demand for a wider field for her sex had remained hitherto almost alone, like a voice crying in the wilderness. They did not seek wider opportunities in order to study medicine, but they studied medicine in order to secure wider opportunities for all women.[49]