_Medicine._—Though we find many references to women who practised medicine and surgery as professions, in the majority of cases their skill was used only for the assistance of their family and neighbours. _Midwifery._—Midwifery was upon a different footing, standing out as the most important public function exercised by women, and being regarded as their inviolable mystery till near the beginning of the seventeenth century. The steady process through which in this profession women were then supplanted by men, furnishes an example of the way in which women have lost their hold upon all branches of skilled responsible work, through being deprived of opportunities for specialised training. The relative deterioration of woman’s capacity in comparison with the standard of men’s efficiency cannot be more clearly shown than in the history of midwifery. Even though the actual skill of midwives may not have declined during the seventeenth century men were rapidly surpassing them in scientific knowledge, for the general standard of women’s education was declining, and they were debarred from access to the higher branches of learning. As the absence of technical training kept women out of the skilled trades, so did the lack of scientific education drive them from the more profitable practice of midwifery, which in former times tradition and prejudice had reserved as their monopoly. A. _Nursing._ Whatever arrangements had been made by the religious orders in England for the care of the sick poor were swept away by the Reformation. The provision which existed in the seventeenth century for this purpose rested on a lay basis, quite unconnected with the Church. Amongst the most famous charitable institutions were the four London Hospitals; Christ’s Hospital for children under the age of sixteen, St. Bartholomew’s and St. Thomas’s for the sick and impotent poor, and Bethlehem for the insane. There is no evidence that the women of the upper classes took any part in the management of these hospitals. The squalor and the ugly and disgusting details which are associated with nursing the diseased and often degraded poor, was unredeemed by the radiance with which a mystic realisation of the Divine Presence had upheld the Catholic Saints, or by the passionate desire for the service of humanity which inspired Florence Nightingale. Thus it was only the necessity for earning their daily bread which induced any women to enter the profession of nursing during this period, and as the salaries offered were considerably lower than the wages earned by a competent servant in London, it may be supposed that the class attracted did not represent the most efficient type of women.