CARLYLE ON WOMEN DOCTORS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3096, 31 May 1881, Page 3

CARLYLE ON WOMEN DOCTORS.

The follawing highly characteristic letter, which has not previously been published, was sent by the late Mr Thomas Carlyle to a medical student who was a prominent supporter of his candidature for the Lord Rectorship of Edinburgh University, and who had requested him to express his opinion on the woman question generally, and especially in regard to the entrance of womeri into the medical piofession : — " No< §, Cheyne Row, Chelsea, " February 9,1871. " Dear Sib, —It is with reluctance that I write anything to you on this subject of female emancipation, which is now rising to such a height, and I do it only on the strict condition that whatever I say shall be private, and nothing of it get into the newspapers. The truth is, the topic for flve-ancl-twenty years past, especially for the 1 last three or four, has been a mere sorrow to me—one of the md3t afflicting proofs of the miserable anarchy that prevails in human society, and I have avoided thinking of it, except when fairly compelled. What little has become clear to me on ifc I shall now endeavor to tell you. "In the first place, then, I have never doubted but the true and noble function of a woman in this world was, is, and forever will be, that of being a wife and helpmate to a worthy man ; and discharging well the duties that devolve on her in consequence as a mother of children and mistress of a household — duties high, noble, silently important as any that can fall to a human creature ; duties which, if well discharged, constitute woman —in a soft, beautiful, and almost sacred way— the queen of the world; and which by her natural faculties, graces, strengths and weaknesses, are in every way indicated as specially hers. The true destiny of a woman, therefore, is to wed a man she can love and esteem, and to lead noiselessly under his protection, with all the wisdom, grace, and heroism that is in her, the life prescribed in consequence. " It seems, furthermore, indubitable that if a woman miss this destiny or have renounced it, she has every right, before God and man, to take up whatever honest employment she can find open to her in the world. Probably there are several or many employments now exclusively in the hands of men for which women might be more or less fit—printing, tailoring, weaving, clerking, etc., etc. That medicine is intrinsically not unfit for them is proved from the fact that in much more sound and earnest ages than ours, before the medical profession rose into being, they were virtually the physicians and surgeons, as well as sick nurses—all that that the world had. Their form of intellect, their sympathy, their wonderful acuteness observation, etc., seem to indicate in them peculiar qualities for dealing with disease, and evidently in certain departments (that of female disease) they have quite peculiar opportunities of being useful. My answer to your question, then, may be that two things are not doubtful to me in tlvs matter.

"First—That woman—any woman that deliberately so determines—has a right to study medicine, and that it might be profitable and serviceable to have facilities or at leaßt possibilities offered them for so doing. But—

" Second—That, for obvious reasons, female students of medicines ought to havo, if possible, female teachers, or else an extremely select kind of men. And, in particular, that to have young women present among young men in anatomical classes, clinical lectures, or general studying medicine in concert, is an incongruity of tho first magnitude, and shocking to think of to every pure and modest mind. " This is all I have to say, and I send it to you under the condition above mentioned, as a friend for the use of friends. —Yours sincerely, " T. Cablyle."