The pioneer woman physician in Chicago was Dr. Mary H. Thompson, who, having graduated at Philadelphia, and spent a year as interne at the New York Infirmary, settled in the West in 1863. At this period she was often introduced as a curiosity. Western curiosity, however, is rarely ill-natured, and in this case was soon exchanged for respect and a substantial sympathy, which enabled Dr. Thompson to establish the Hospital for Women and Children. In 1869, when the medical school was opened for women, its students found in this little hospital their first opportunities for clinical instruction. From 1869 till 1877, the collegiate course was conducted in a “small two-story building containing a dissecting room and one little lecture room furnished with two dozen chairs, a table, a portable blackboard, and a skeleton. There were scarcely any means for practical demonstration in the lectures, there was no money to procure them.”[92] Worse than all, several among those who had consented to teach the students seemed, strangely enough, to have done all they could to discourage them. “One lecturer only delivered two lectures in the entire term, and then took up part of the time in dwelling upon the ‘utter uselessness of teaching women.’ The professor of surgery went on the staff with great reluctance, and remarked in his introductory lecture that he did not believe in female doctors, and that the students were greatly mistaken if they imagined the world was waiting for them. His lectures chiefly consisted of trifling anecdotes.”[93] The class which graduated in 1871 under these discouraging circumstances consisted of three students. No one would study more than two years, “because it was found that in that time could easily be mastered all the college had to teach.” But in 1881, the graduating class rose to 17, and in 1889, to 24. There is now a Faculty of twenty members, with eight lecturers and assistants. There were 90 students in the current year, and it was announced that in twenty years had been graduated 242 pupils.