Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/105

 actually throwing stones and filth at them in the public streets. Every woman was excluded from the Medical Schools and even the governing body of the infirmary for a long time excluded them from the wards.

On making her appeal to the law, Miss Jex-Blake secured the decision of Lord Gifford in the Court of First Instance, that the University was bound to admit the women to both classes and degrees, but this decision was reversed by a higher court, and the women were compelled to go abroad to more enlightened seats of learning to obtain the necessary qualifications.

The opinion of the medical profession for a long time lagged behind parliamentary and even public opinion on this question of the admission of women to their ranks. The London School of Medicine, including on its staff both men and women, was founded in 1874. In 1876 Parliament passed a law which permitted the Universities to grant medical degrees to women, and several colleges at once admitted women. In 1877 the British Medical Association declared women to be ineligible for membership, and it was many years later that this last rock of medical conservatism was shivered into atoms. There were in 1912 553 women physicians in Great Britain, and it is significant and worthy of note that, of this number, 518 have recently set their names Rh