128 WOMAN IN SCIENCE 



of healthy work, directed toward a definite object, com- 

 bined with an equally fair share of healthy play, during 

 the years of adolescence ; and those who are best acquainted 

 with the acquirements of an average medical practitioner 

 will find it hardest to believe that the attempt to reach 

 that standard is like to prove exhausting to an ordinarily 

 intelligent and well-educated woman." 1 



Substantially the same views are held by Mrs. Henry 

 Fawcett and Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, whose rare experi- 

 ence and knowledge give their opinions on the subject 

 under consideration special weight and value. 



After men of science had tried the various theories above 

 enumerated and found them wanting, they finally be- 

 thought themselves of investigating the relative intellectual 

 standing of male and female students in coeducational in- 

 stitutions, and inquiring into their comparative capacity 

 for different branches of knowledge, as made known by 

 their professors and by the results of oral and written 

 examinations. Considering the simplicity of this method 

 and the fact that it is the more rational way to reach 

 reliable conclusions, the wonder is that it was not thought 

 of sooner. It excludes the bias of prepossessions and pre- 

 conceived theories and lends itself to the discussion of 

 results based on incontestable facts. 



The first coeducational institution in which the intellec- 

 tual capacity of women, in competition with men, was fairly 

 tested was, strange to say, in the Royal College of Science 

 for Ireland. This was somewhat more than half a century 

 ago. When the time of examinations came, both the men 

 and women students were handed the same examination 

 papers. At the public distribution of prizes, at the close 

 of the session, "the ladies/' in the words of a Dublin 

 paper, "vindicated the genius of their sex by carrying off 



i Times, London, July 8, 1874. Of. Chap. XVII, on "Adolescent 

 Girls and Their Education/' in Adolescence, Vol. II, by G. Stanley 

 Hall ; New York, 1904, 



