View/Open - ARAN - National University of Ireland, Galway

success in its pursuit.’ 14 Another common argument against women’s admission to
medical education was that the study of medicine specifically might endanger a
woman physically and mentally. 15 This will be discussed further later in this chapter.
It was in this context that the KQCPI agreed to admit women to take its licentiate
examinations and thus be entitled to place their names on the Medical Register and
legally practice. Considering the hostile climate that existed in Britain towards
women in medicine, we must question why the College took such a decision. Was
Ireland more liberal than Britain or were there other reasons underlying the
decision? This chapter will begin with an examination of the arguments both for and
against women in medicine in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century before
investigating the admission of women to Irish medical institutions.
Arguments for and against women in medicine
Arguments against women in medicine were based on contemporary beliefs about
women’s physical, mental and emotional natures which were rooted in Victorian
physiological theories of the late nineteenth century. Medical practitioners,
particularly specialists in gynaecology and obstetrics who were beginning to notice
competition from female doctors in these areas, were instrumental in the attack on
the women’s higher education movement in nineteenth-century Britain. 16
Menstruation was commonly cited as a barrier for women who wished to undertake
higher education. The process of menstruation began to be referred to as a curse
rather than as a natural process, as may be seen in the words of James McGrigor
Allan, a nineteenth-century opponent of women’s suffrage. Writing in 1869 against
women in education, he claimed that the ‘eternal distinction in the physical
organisation of the sexes’ meant that the average man was the mental superior of
the average woman. He argued:
14
Charles West, ‘Medical women: a statement and an argument’, (London: J&A Churchill,
1878), p.30.
15
See: Joan Burstyn, ‘Education and sex: the medical case against higher education for
women in England, 1870-1900’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 117:2,
(April, 1973), pp.79-89.
16
Burstyn, ‘Education and sex’, p.81.
24