Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/398

378 medical practitioners. The first Englishwoman took the M.D. degree of the University of Paris in 1870. Four years later further obstacles were overcome, and the School of Medicine for Women was opened.

Indeed, on all sides medicine and surgery had made gigantic strides since the early days of Queen Victoria, and in no department has progress told more on the social life of the people. From 1838 to 1847 the death-rate had been twenty-two persons out of every thousand. In 1885 it was only nineteen per thousand. The discovery of anæsthetics in 1848 at once robbed surgical operations of half their terrors, while the establishment of a Board of Health, to enforce better sanitation and a higher degree of human cleanliness, had a decided effect on the health of the community.

Mercy and pity, with a higher value on human life, were marked characteristics of the period, and though we are here only concerned with the material view of life in England, yet it is impossible to separate matters spiritual from matters material, and a few words about the renewed activity in the religious life of English men and women seems necessary to explain many social