A Woman's Letter.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 1, Issue 4, 15 December 1910, Page 7

A Woman's Letter.

The following letter has been received by the Editor from an ex-New Zealand girl who left the Dominion to study medicine at Home : —

"I do not know what you know of my recent doings, so I shall tell you briefly. After graduation I held the post of Resident Medical Officer in the Edinburgh Hospital for Women and Children; a small hospital, but one in which I got excellent and varied experience. I was there about eight months. After that I came down to London to try my luck. I began working up special subjects, such as eyes and ear, nose and throat, for a month or so, and to take out classes for the Diploma in Public Health. Then I was successful in obtaining the post of Assistant School Doctor under the London County Council. This is part-time work, and leaves mc time to complete my work for the Diploma of Public Health, which I shall sit for in a few months time. My work consists in medical examination of school children, in the course of which I point out the various physical defects which ought to be treated to the parents who are present, and recommend for special school those physical and mental defectives who are incapable of proper education in the Council's Elementary Schools. I also report upon the sanitation and general hygiene of the school buildings. The Medical Officer for Education has under his control a very large piece of medical machinery, one of the fore-runners of the State Medical Service, towards which we aro steadily moving. I expect that the opportunity I have here of getting knowledge of the administration methods of this department will be of immense value to mc, though I believe I am the ' baby ' on the staff. I notice down here a much nicer feeling of camaraderie between my male and female confreres, at least in this particular department. Up in Edinburgh a woman medical—whether student or graduate—has a rotten time of it. She is always treated ac an intruder, someone who is just allowed there on sufferance, and who ought to be content with the crumbs which fall from the table of her male contemporaries. If she becomes thoroughly efficient, she has to do it absolutely by main force, and never gets a word of encouragement from start to finish. Justice is a word which is unknown when applied to women who are asking only for ' a fair field and no quarter.' I notice, too, that Edinburgh. University is calmly appropriating a State grant of £12,0u0 a year, and still makes no attempt to provide facilities for the teaching of women-students within its walls. As a taxpayer—for the income tax collector descended upon mc last week like a wolf on the fold—l strongly object to State moneys being used for public institutions from which women are excluded. The medical teaching for women in Edinburgh as it exists at present is absolutely disgraceful. I hope no New Zealand woman will come to Edinburgh until the facilities for women are made equal to those for men. If they want to come to Great Britain, there are other Universities m which they will be treated like human beings, and this is also so in Germany. If New Zealand men had any sense of decency they also would give Edinburgh a wide berth until come latent sense of justice had been awakened there. It is because I love Edinburgh as well as hate her that I feel so strongly on this matter. Ido not wish anyone to suffer as she has made mc suffer; yet it hurts mc to £ m ls so Peking in what one thought were peculiarly Scottish characteristics, and so slow in facine the inevitable."