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Occasionally, medicine was viewed as being a profession for ‘ladies’ while nursing
was viewed as a career for ‘women’. In 1876, an article by Jonathan Hutchinson,
senior surgeon to the London Hospital, appeared in The British Medical Journal
which claimed that the study of medicine by women might ‘lower feminine
delicacy’. 68 Emily Davies, a pioneer in the women’s higher education movement in
Britain, writing in a paper entitled ‘Medicine as a profession for women’ claimed that
‘the business of a hired nurse cannot be looked upon as a profession for a lady’ and
that medicine was a far more suitable profession for women of the middle classes. 69
She furthermore pointed out that the salary of a hospital nurse was no better than
that of a butler or groom, and, for this reason, women of the middle classes should
have been attempting to gain access to medicine instead.
To conclude: those arguing against women in the medical profession in Britain
claimed that women’s natures made them unsuited to work as doctors. As with
arguments concerning women’s role in higher education, opponents claimed that
medical education would put unnecessary strain on women students and that
menstruation would hinder their education. It is evident that not everyone shared
these views, with supporters of women’s admission to the medical profession
arguing that there was a definite demand for women doctors by female patients who
would be more comfortable being attended by a woman than by a man.
Additionally, it was claimed that there was a need for women doctors in the
missionary field. Despite this, opponents claimed that medicine was not a suitable
career for women and that women should choose the alternative career path of
nursing if they wished to care for the sick. I have suggested that, as with the
backlash more generally against middle-class women in higher education and in the
workplace at this time, these notions were constructed in order to protect the
institution of the family and of the Victorian wife and mother, all of which were seen
as crucial for a healthy economy and society.
This section has outlined the attitudes that existed in the United Kingdom in the
wake of the admission of women to the KQCPI in 1877. In the following sections, I
68 Hutchinson, ‘A review of current topics of medical and social interest’, p.233.
69 Emily Davies, ‘Medicine as a profession for women’, (1862) in: Emily Davies, Thoughts on
some questions relating to women, 1860-1908, (Cambridge, 1910), p.37.
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