for them all suitable means for that practical instruction which
is gained at hospital clinics.

The taunt has heretofore been frequently thrown out that ladies
have not attended the great clinical schools of the country, nor
listened to its celebrated teachers, and that, consequently, they
cannot be as well prepared as men for medical practice. We
believe, as we have always done, that in all special diseases of
men and women, and in all operations necessarily involving
embarrassing exposure of person, it is not fitting or expedient
that students of different sexes should attend promiscuously;
that all special diseases of men should be treated by men in the
presence of men only, and those of women, where it is
practicable, by women in the presence of women only. It was this
feeling, founded on the respect due to the delicacy of women as
patients, perhaps more than any other consideration, which led to
the founding of the Women's Hospital in Philadelphia. There the
clinical demonstration of special diseases is made by and before
women alone. As we would not permit men to enter these clinics,
neither would we be willing--out of regard to the feelings of men
as patients, if for no other considerations--that our students
should attend clinics where men are specially treated, and there
has been no time in the history of our college when our students
could intentionally do so, save in direct contravention of our
known views. In nearly all the great public hospitals, however,
by far the larger proportion of cases suited for clinical
illustration--whether medical or surgical--is of those which
involve no necessary exposure, and are the results of diseases
and accidents to which man and woman are subject alike, and which
women are constantly called upon to treat. Into these clinics,
women also--often sensitive and shrinking, albeit poor--are
brought as patients to illustrate the lectures, and we maintain
that wherever it is proper to introduce women as patients, there
also is it but just and in accordance with the instincts of the
truest womanhood for women to appear as physicians and students.

We had arranged when our class was admitted to the Pennsylvania
hospital to attend on alternate clinic days only, so as to allow
ample opportunity for the