96 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. Ill 



present, they had tried to arrange for one that session. 

 The late demonstrator at the Surgeons' Hall, who 

 had given them most of their teaching before, had 

 undertaken to teach this separate class, but was 

 refused recognition by the University Court, on the 

 ground that they had no evidence of his qualifications, 

 while refusing to let him prove his qualification by 

 examination. This the women students understood 

 to be an indirect means of suppressing their aspira- 

 tions ; they therefore begged Huxley to examine 

 their instructor with a view to giving him a certificate 

 which should carry weight with the University 

 Court. 



He replied : 



Oct. 28, 1872. 



DEAR MADAM While I fully sympathise with, the 

 efforts made by yourself and others, to obtain for women 

 the education requisite to qualify them for medical 

 practice, and while I think that women who have the 

 inclination and the capacity to follow the profession of 

 medicine are most unjustly dealt with if any obstacles 

 beyond those which are natural and inevitable are placed 

 in their way, I must nevertheless add, that I as completely 

 sympathise with those Professors of Anatomy, Physiology, 

 and Obstetrics, who object to teach such subjects to mixed 

 classes of young men and women brought together without 

 any further evidence of moral and mental fitness for such 

 association than the payment of their fees. 



In fact, with rare exceptions, I have refused to admit 

 women to my own Lectures on Comparative Anatomy for 

 many years past. But I should not hesitate to teach, 

 anything I know to a class composed of women ; and I 

 find it hard to believe that any one should really wish to 



