NATURE 



461 



THURSDAY, AUGUST 15, 1918. 



(>LD UNIVERSITIES AND NEW NEEDS. 

 The Life of Sophia Jex-Blake. By Dr. Marg^aret 



Todd ("Graham Travers "). Pp. xviii + 574. 



(London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1918.) 



Price 185. net. 



SOPHIA JEX-BLAKE was born in i§4o- and 

 died in 1912. The world, when she entered 

 it, offered to an intellectual woman neither the 

 education nor the opening^s which her more for- 

 tunate brothers enjoyed as a right and sought to 

 preserve as a monopoly. It is to her, probably 

 more than to any other individual, and to her 

 long and often bitter fight in the women's cause, 

 that their right to a liberal education has been 

 conceded and the gates of the medical profession 

 opened to them. She was a born chronicler and 

 recorder, as well as a downright and formidable 

 antagonist, and this, which has enabled her "bio- 

 grapher to write a full and accurate account of 

 her career, often stood her in good stead against 

 her opponents. Reproduced as an appendix is 

 the correspondence in the Times in which she 

 replied to the representations of the Principal of 

 Edinburgh University — a masterly instance of the 

 power of facts over the most skilful advocacy and 

 embroidery. As her biographer remarks: "The 

 two letters represent two conflicting schools of 

 historians, the. one sweeping, picturesque, prob- 

 able; the other definite, statistical, true." 



Dr. Margaret Todd has worked through and 

 drawn upon an immense accumulation of original 

 material for her biography. Losing herself and 

 her own personality in her task, her literary gifts 

 severely confined to the sifting and proper presen- 

 tation of voluminous correspondence, diaries, 

 and other records, she succeeds in giving a living, 

 human portrait of the old warrior and of what 

 manner of women they were — how unlike popular 

 caricature — who broke down the barriers and 

 burst the fetters of the Victorian age. Around 

 the central figure, her fauhs and her strength faith- 

 fully and sympathetically rendered, seeming to 

 stand out by themselves without aid, so artisti- 

 cally has the elimination of everything not essential 

 been performed, much of the history of the earlier 

 phases of the women's moment has been recon- 

 structed and much of permanent interest saved 

 from oblivion. 



But the book is something more than a bio- 

 graphy of a remarkable personality and history 

 of a period. It presents an epitome of the uni- 

 \ ersal struggle between progress and reaction as 

 it was fought out at one of the ancient seats of 

 learning. That fight is over, the victory has been 

 won, and the issue at stake has ceased to be a 

 living question. Much of what is here recorded 

 it is difficult to believe happened only fifty years 

 ago. Is not this, it may be asked, itself a tribute 

 to the magnitude and rapidity of the progress 

 made? Unfortunately, progress is not to be 

 measured by the magnitude of the opposition sur- 

 NO. 2546, VOL. lOl] 



mounted, nor is victory the term to apply to the 

 forced retirement of the opposing armies from a 

 position rendered untenable. The test of progress 

 and of victory is the dominant spirit of the ancient 

 universities to-day, and their attitude to the 

 needs of the present rather than the past genera- 

 tion. It is just because, for this one celebrated 

 instance, their devious and familiar methods of 

 obstruction have been remor.selessly pilloried by 

 Dr. Todd that her work and the story she tells 

 of the Edinburgh fight deserve a wider and more 

 critical interest than would be aroused were it 

 merely the biography of the protagonist or the 

 record of a conflict long since decided. 



As it is told here without rancour and with the 

 minimum of the most moderate comment, the 

 story is one that few to-day could read unmoved 

 by indignation. No more soul-destroying labour 

 can well be imagined than the task that must 

 have been involved in its telling, the task of 

 wading through the interminable insincerities, 

 sophistries, evasions, and legal chicaneries by 

 which an ancient university, having in an un- 

 guarded moment honestly sought the solution of 

 a modern demand, then attempted to draw back 

 and escape the consequences at no matter what 

 cost to its honour and self-respect. 



Regulations were duly framed by the L-niversity 

 of Edinburgh in November, 1869, for the medical 

 education and matriculation of women students, 

 but every conceivable obstacle was then thrown 

 in the path of the handful of young women who 

 presented themselves. The onus of finding 

 teachers willing to instruct them was put upon 

 them, influence being exerted to prevent even 

 those willing from undertaking the work. The 

 medical students, on the outlook for mischief and 

 ready "to follow a beck," were loosed upon'them. 

 'The women students, mere girls for the most part, 

 were pelted in the streets with mud and greeted 

 with filthy epithets.' One of them confessed in later 

 life that she would make a detour of miles rather than 

 pass the places where these incidents occurred. 

 Another, who, when the storm first burst, had 

 retired to the country "to listen to the nightin- 

 gales," returned in earnest with an indignant pro- 

 test at any woman being left to the care of the 

 sort of practitioners these young ruffians would 

 make. But, again, with the common sense and 

 penetration characteristic of these early pioneers, 

 she is found writing: " Do not be hard on the 

 students. They are very bad, but they are not 

 so bad as the professors." Posterity in the enjoy- 

 ment of the fruits of victory is apt to be forgetful 

 of its cost. 



Two days prior to their first professional exam- 

 ination the medical faculty interdicted the issue of 

 papers to the women candidates, and only with- 

 drew under threat of legal proceedings. The 

 Principal attempted to stop them matriculating, 

 though, in the words of a friendly professor, he 

 " had no more authority to issue this decree than 

 a janitor." Though loyally supported by the then 

 Lord Provost and many of the prominent citizens 

 of Edinburgh, and by the powerful advocacy of 



