Laura Kelly

Irish women in medicine, c.1880s–1920s: Origins, education and careers

Available in paperback for the first time, this book is the first comprehensive history of Irish women in medicine in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It focuses on the debates surrounding women’s admission to Irish medical schools, the geographical and social backgrounds of early women medical students, their educational experiences and subsequent careers. It is the first collective biography of the 760 women who studied medicine at Irish institutions in the period and, in contrast to previous histories, puts forward the idea that women medical students and doctors were treated fairly and often favourably by the Irish medical hierarchy. It highlights the distinctiveness of Irish medical education in contrast with that in Britain and is also unique in terms of the combination of rich sources it draws upon, such as official university records from Irish universities, medical journals, Irish newspapers, Irish student magazines, the memoirs of Irish women doctors, and oral history accounts.

Fascinating scalpel-wielders and fair dissectors: women’s experience of Irish medical education, c.1880s-1920s

... Though all the world’s a stage and we are acting, Yet still I think your part is not dissecting, To me the art of making apple tarts Would suit you better than those “horrid parts”. In times to come when queens at home you are, There’ll be more rapture in the light guitar. Your knowledge—of the frog should only be How they are cooked in France—or making tea! And as for learning Chemistry and that ’Twould be a nicer thing to trim a hat. I know your aims in medicine are true But tell me is there any need of you?1 This poem, entitled Ode to the lady medicals and published in 1902 in St. Stephens, the student magazine of the Catholic University in Dublin, questions the relatively recent undertaking of medical education by women. Although admittedly tongue-in-cheek, it highlights some of the prevalent attitudes towards the admission of women to medicine, a subject that had faced fierce criticism from some.2 Certainly, this poem strongly suggests that a womans place should be in the home, learning how to cook frogs rather than how to dissect them, and that women should concern themselves with more feminine activities such as hat-trimming. Moreover, it ends on the question of whether there was actually any need for women doctors, highlighting fears about the overcrowded medical marketplace.

‘The turning point in the whole struggle’: the admission of women to the King and Queen's College of Physicians in Ireland

In 1877, the King and Queens College of Physicians in Ireland made history by becoming the first institution in the United Kingdom to take advantage of the Enabling Act of 1876 and admit women to take its medical licences. However, in spite of the fact that the King and Queens College of Physicians in Ireland was crucial in the registration of early British women doctors in this period, there has, as yet, been little academic attention paid to the history of women in medicine in Ireland. This article traces the history of womens admission to Irish medical schools. Drawing on Irish printed sources, it explores the arguments for and against women in medicine that were propagated during the period. It also investigates the reasons for the King and Queens College of Physicians in Irelands decision to admit women to take its licences, arguing that medical schools in Ireland had a more favourable attitude towards the admission of women than was the case in England.

Migration and medical education : Irish medical students at the University of Glasgow, 1859-1900

Irish-born individuals made up a small but important proportion of the medical students attending the University of Glasgows medical school in the second half of the nineteenth century. They in turn constituted a key part of the largely ignored middle-class Irish migration to Victorian Britain. This paper examines the origins, experiences and later careers of these individuals in Glasgow and beyond. It argues that they came to Glasgow for economic, social and academic reasons. They saw a Scottish education as better equipping them for a medical career and advancement in the profession. Also, underlying their actions may well have been a realisation that personal and professional progress would always necessitate emigration out of Ireland.

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson: early pioneer of women in medicine

Today, about 55% of medical students in the UK are women. While change is needed to address issues such as the representation of women in leadership positions in medicine, career progression, and gender differences in pay and grant funding, women are now entering medicine in increasing numbers. Given the important role of women in the medical profession, it might be easy to forget the struggles experienced by early women doctors in trying to attain medical qualifications. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, who died on Dec 17, 1917, was one of these early pioneers. Elizabeth Garrett was born in London on June 9, 1836. She was the second woman to gain a place on the British Medical Register, the first being Elizabeth Blackwell, who had trained at Geneva Medical College in New York, USA, and registered in 1856. Through her involvement with the Langham Place Circle, a group of women who were interested in the promotion of higher education for women, 23-year-old Garrett Anderson met Blackwell, and became inspired to study medicine. Her parents were initially opposed to these plans. In a letter to Emily Davies, of the Langham Place Circle, in 1860, Garrett Anderson wrote that her father believed “the whole idea was so disgusting that he could not entertain it for a moment”. Her parents were not unusual in their dismay over their daughter’s aspirations to study medicine. In the second half of the 19th century, various arguments were put forward against women in medicine. Often these were based on Victorian beliefs about women’s physical, mental, and emotional natures. A letter in The Lancet entitled “A lady on lady doctors” in 1870, for instance, commented that women lacked “the coolness and strength of nerves” required of a doctor, and that “the constitutional variations of the female system, at the best are uncertain and not to be relied upon”. Male medical practitioners, particularly specialists in gynaecology and obstetrics, who were concerned about competition from female doctors in these areas, were instrumental in the attack on the women’s higher education movement. It was also believed that the study of medicine might endanger a woman physically and mentally. By contrast, proponents of women’s entry to medicine argued that there was a need for women doctors to care for women patients. Some, like Sophia Jex-Blake (1840–1912) claimed that “women have more love of medical work, and are naturally more inclined, and more fitted for it than most men”. The UK was not exceptional with regard to the barriers faced by women wishing to enter the medical profession, with prospective women doctors in the USA and many European countries facing similar difficulties. Garrett Anderson was undeterred by these barriers. With the eventual support of her father, she became acquainted with the politician Russell Gurney and his wife Emelia, who became supporters of the campaign to admit women to the medical profession. Because no British medical schools were open to women at the time, Garrett Anderson did nursing experience on the surgical ward of the Middlesex Hospital in London for 6 months from August, 1860. But she was excluded from further study there as a result of a petition written by male medical students against the admission of women students. Despite being refused entry to a number of medical schools in England and Scotland, she studied privately at the London Hospital before qualifying with a licence from the Society of Apothecaries in London in 1865. After the award of her licence, the Society of Apothecaries then closed its licences to individuals who had received private instruction, meaning that women could no longer gain a British qualification. Garrett Anderson set up practice in Upper Berkeley Street, London, before establishing St Mary’s Dispensary for Women and Children in 1866, and later, the New Hospital for Women, in 1871. She attained an MD in Paris in 1870 and was involved in supporting the campaign by early women doctors like Jex-Blake to allow women admission to the medical profession. Jex-Blake was part of a group known as the Edinburgh Seven who tried, and ultimately failed, to gain medical Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836–1917) Doctopic: Analysis and Interpretation

'She has broken down the barrier of bigotry and exclusiveness and forced her way into the profession' : Irish women in medicine, c.1880s-1920s

This chapter explores the history of the first generation of women medical graduates in Ireland and draws comparisons between the history of women in the medical profession in Ireland with the Russian case. Despite the significantly different social and cultural settings, there are similarities between attitudes towards the admission of women to medical schools in both countries. Focusing on the Irish case, this chapter suggests that there, women were largely supported in their quest to gain admission to Irish institutions, and appear to have been treated in an egalitarian manner with regard to their educational experiences. As in Russia, early women students were provided with separate teaching facilities in some instances. The chapter concludes with discussion of the careers that the first generation of Irish female doctors pursued, suggesting that they found a niche in the field of general practice.

Irish Medical Student Culture and the Performance of Masculinity, C.1880-1930.

Abstract In recent years, there have been valuable studies of medical education that have highlighted the importance of shared educational activities and the changing image of the student. Less attention has been paid to how masculine ideals were passed on to students and how educational and extra-curricular spheres became sites for the maintenance of hegemonic masculinity. Taking Irish medical schools as a case study and drawing on the student press, doctors’ memoirs and novels, this article will illustrate how rites of passage in medical education and social activities such as pranks and rugby became imbued with masculine tropes. In this way, the transformation of student to practitioner was often symbolised as the transformation of boy to man. The cultivation of the image of the medical student as a predominantly male individual became an important force in segregating men and women students and helped to preserve Irish medicine as a largely masculine sphere.

Veiled Warriors: allied nurses of the First World WarCHRISTINE E. HALLETT

approach, but as Liz Stanley asks in her chapter on ‘white writing’, how is the connection between the microand macro-world of institutions to be conceived? She argues that Elias’ notion of the macro emerging from an accretion of micro activities, is inadequate, though she acknowledges the difficulty of moving beyond such a position. One way in which she takes the discussion forward is by linking a multiplicity of day-by-day encounters and activities to ‘what happens’. Rather than deriving an explanation of white domination in South Africa from structural determinants, Stanley is saying we need to know far more about the ‘how’, that is, how social relations played out over time in micro settings and how these were linked with emerging relations of power and authority. Seriality is one feature of this view of the social process. Contingency is another. These comments do not constitute a fully elaborated alternative to Elias, but they are very suggestive. The introductory paragraphs that begin each contribution illustrate the variety of positions, and their nuances, that are possible within the critical humanist perspective. There too, each researcher provides a brief self-interrogation of their approach. Such a tightly organised format inevitably creates an element of repetition. Equally the complexity and diversity of subject matter discussed here make for difficult reading at times. Nonetheless, this collection is likely to prove a valuable teaching resource for higher level courses in research methods and epistemology. For more advanced researchers across a broad range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, it also provides much food for thought

Book Reviews: Candles in the Dark: Medical Ethical Issues in Northern Ireland during the Troubles

This is an important book that will appeal, not only to historians of medicine, but to social historians and those interested in the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The authors have given an insightful account, which at times makes difficult reading, but which, nevertheless, is significant in its contribution to the history of the Troubles, encompassing the period from 1969 until the second ceasefire in 1998. The research conducted for this book is a momentous achievement: the authors conducted oral history interviews with over two hundred people over a three-year period, with the chief objective of trying to find out how difficult it was to conduct medical work in Northern Ireland in the period, and ‘to maintain the medical codes of ethics governing health care’ (p. 2). The interviewees consisted of health professionals, patients, ex-prisoners and medical staff working in prisons. The authors draw attention to the particular problems of oral history in the case of Northern Ireland, but in spite of these, the book as a whole gives a balanced view of the issues of both sides of the Divide, and the oral history accounts are compelling and give a personal insight into the experiences of men and women during the Troubles. Following the introduction and a chapter on the background to the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the main part of the book opens with two chapters that deal with the experiences of health professionals and patients. The first of these examines the effects of the Troubles on the work of general practitioners in Northern Ireland in the period, in particular, focusing on the difficulties that they encountered while trying to go about their daily work, such as unofficial roadblocks and the increased demand on mental health skills. In addition, the chapter examines the effects on patients, such as the difficulties they experienced in travelling to hospital and how their political and religious persuasions may have affected their choice of hospital and/or GP. The next chapter gives an insight into the particular problems that hospital staff and patients had to contend with during the Troubles. Notably, Northern Irish hospitals, such as the Mater Infirmorum, which straddles ‘one of the most fraught community interfaces in Belfast’, witnessed a great deal of civil strife and violence during the Troubles (p. 43). The chapter also addresses the issues of staff and patient security in Northern Irish hospitals in the period, indicating how these factors ‘complicated the lives of medical professionals and intruded directly on the delivery of medical care’ (p. 63). The final two chapters deal with the issue of medical care in prisons during the Troubles. The first of these is largely based on the allegations of prisoners and gives an insight into the effects of the Troubles on both prisoners and prison doctors during the period. The final chapter deals with the topic of ‘Prison Protests’, in particular, focusing on the ‘Dirty Protest’ and the strain it placed on medical services. This chapter was well balanced, and gave adequate focus to the experiences of prison medical staff, the stories of whom are often neglected in broader histories of the Troubles. Doctors working in prisons were targets for assassination on the outside, and the type of work they experienced resulted in consequences for their mental health, with one senior doctor, ‘Dr P’, who nursed most of the hunger strikers, representing a victim of this and committing suicide, arguably as a result of the pressures of his job (pp. 105-6). This book is a significant contribution to the history of Northern Ireland, examining the history of the Troubles from the perspective of those delivering and receiving medical care. The oral history accounts which form the basis of the book will represent a valuable historical resource for future generations of historians.