In reality, it is wholly different reasons that cause most professors of medicine, University teachers, in general, to take a hostile stand towards female students. They see in it a "degradation" of science, which might lose in the esteem of the narrow-minded masses, if the fact were to transpire that female brains also could grasp a science, which, until then, was confined to the select of the male sex only. All claims to the contrary notwithstanding, our Universities, along with our whole system of education, are in poor plight. As, at the public school, the child is robbed of valuable time by filling his brain with matters that accord neither with common sense nor scientific experience; as a mass of ballast is there dumped into him that he can not utilize in life, that, rather, hampers him in his progress and development; so likewise is it done in our higher schools. In the preparatory schools for the Universities a mass of dry, useless matter is pounded into the pupils. These matters, that the pupils are made to memorize, take up most of their time and engage their most precious brain-power; whereupon, at the University, the identical process is carried on further. They are there taught a mass of antiquated, stale, superfluous lore, along with comparatively little that is valuable. The lectures, once written, are reeled off by most of the professors year after year, course after course, the interlarded witticisms included. The high ministry of education becomes with many, an ordinary trade; nor need the students be endowed with great sagacity to find this out. Furthermore, tradition regarding University life sees to it that the young folks do not take their years of study too seriously, and many a youth, who would take them seriously, is repelled by the pedantic and unenjoyable style of the professors. The decline in the zeal to learn and to study is a fact generally noticed at all our Universities and higher schools, and is even cause for serious concern with those in authority. Intimately connected therewith is the "grafting" tendency, which, in these days of ours, so poor in character, makes great progress and grows ever ranker in the higher schools. To have "safe views" takes the place of knowledge, and the poison spreads. To be a "patriot," that is to say, a person without a mind of his own, who carefully takes his cue from above, sees how the wind blows there, and trims his sails accordingly, bends and crawls,--such a person is more considered than one of character and knowledge. When the time for examination approaches, the "grafter" crams for a few months what seems most indispensible, in order to squeeze through. When, finally, examination has been happily passed and an office or professional post is secured, most of these "ex-students" work along in a merely mechanical and journeyman style, and are then highly offended if one, who was not a "student," fails to