Medical women; a thesis and a history.

  • Jex-Blake, Sophia, 1840-1912.
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical women; a thesis and a history. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. The first edition of this book has now been out of print for some years, and repeated applications have been made to me by booksellers and others for a second edition. It was, how- ever, manifestly impossible to issue this without bringing the history of events down to the present time, and more pressing duties have repeatedly obliged me to delay the execution of this project. Even now the work has been accomplished only with considerable difficulty, in the intervals available in the course of a busy professional life; and I trust that this circumstance will be remembered by critics, who can, no doubt, only too easily find defects that might have been avoided if a greater measure of learned leisure had been at my disposal. I have made it my single object in this volume to give as complete and comprehensive a view as brevity would allow of the whole question of medical practice by women, and of the history of the movement in this country. It may be thought by some that I have dwelt at dispropor- tionate length on the details of the struggle in Edinburgh, and in particular have spared too much room in the Xotes to quotations from the opinions and literature of the hour. I have, however, done so deliberately, not only because I believe the events recorded to be of the class that truly make history.' l»ut because I am very anxious to submit to the public as full a narrative as possible, and am content to abide by their judgment whether or no the so-called failure in Edinburgh was due in whole or in part (as some have endeavoured to maintain) either to the errors, or to the Idches, of those who carried on the warfare. My own opinion is that, properly speaking, there was no failure; I believe that it was the seed sown in tears in Edinburgh that was reaped in joy elsewhere. It is my firm