CHAPTER XIII
THE MEDICAL EDUCATION OF WOMEN
Medical education is now, in the United States and Canada, open to women upon practically the same terms as men. If all institutions do not receive women, so many do, that no woman desiring an education in medicine is under any disability in finding a school to which she may gain admittance. Her choice is free and varied. She will find schools of every grade accessible: the Johns Hopkins, if she has an academic degree; Cornell, if she has three-fourths of one; Rush and the state universities, if she prefers the combined six years' course; Toronto on the basis of a high school education; Meridian, Mississippi, if she has had no definable education at all.
Woman has so apparent a function in certain medical specialties and seemingly so assured a place in general medicine under some obvious limitations that the struggle for wider educational opportunities for the sex was predestined to an early success in medicine. It is singular to observe the use to which the victory has been put. The following tables show recent developments in coeducational and in women's medical schools taken separately:
| Year | Number of Coeducational Medical Schools |
Number of Women Students |
Number of Women Graduates |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1904 | 97 | 946 | 198 |
| 1905 | 96 | 852 | 165 |
| 1906 | 90 | 706 | 200 |
| 1907 | 86 | 718 | 172 |
| 1908 | 88 | 649 | 139 |
| 1909 | 91 | 752 | 129 |
| Year | Women's Medical Schools |
Number of Students |
Number of Graduates |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1904 | 3 | 183 | 56 |
| 1905 | 3 | 221 | 54 |
| 1906 | 3 | 189 | 33 |
| 1907 | 3 | 210 | 39 |
| 1908 | 3 | 186 | 46 |
| 1909 | 3 | 169 | 33 |
| Year | Number of Coeducational Medical Schools |
Number of Women Students |
Number of Women Graduates |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1904 | 100 | 1129 | 254 |
| 1905 | 99 | 1073 | 219 |
| 1906 | 93 | 895 | 233 |
| 1907 | 89 | 928 | 211 |
| 1908 | 91 | 835 | 185 |
| 1909 | 94 | 921 | 162 |
Now that women are freely admitted to the medical profession, it is clear that they show a decreasing inclination to enter it. More schools in all sections are open to them; fewer attend and fewer graduate. True enough, medical schools generally have shrunk; but as the opportunities of women have increased, not decreased, and within a period during which entrance requirements have, so far as they are con-
