Page:Restorative medicine - an Harveian annual oration delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, London, on June 21, 1871 (the 210th anniversary) (IA restorativemedic00cham).pdf/84

RESTORATIVE MEDICINE. derstanding that women are not rivals. Ladies do not in general study political economy, otherwise I should suppose they had found out that by their entering professions they must as a body lose income.

ORATOR. It is the individuals who wish to gain income. But still I do not quite see your argument.

CHEMICUS. The income of each profession is the largest sum the public chooses to spend in that particular way. It cannot be increased by being divided among an additional number. Most medical men marry directly they can afford it, and their wives have the use of the professional income; so that if a doctress settles down in a village, and takes away half the practice, she is impoverishing her own sex after all. By working in professions women would at most gain what now they gain without working. If any large number entered a profession, they would reduce the rate of remuneration by competition, Medicus snubbed me last night when I ventured to use such an old-fashioned argument as the theory of an implied Social Contract, but I won't entirely forego it nevertheless. I think women feel that a point of honor is involved in their abstaining from