him-unprovided for, at least for a while-those who looked solely to him for support. How that terrible interval has, in most cases, been passed we shall never know; for to the eternal honour of the Cornish women let it be recorded that, when a benevolent fund' had been collected on their behalf, it was with the utmost difficulty that many of those who most required its assistance could be induced to admit. that they were starving and almost naked.

The old Cornish language is now extinct; it was spoken by a few old fisher-folk at Newlyn and Mousehole probably for the last time during the closing years of the eighteenth century, and the last sermon in Cornish is said to have been preached at Landewednack towards the close of the seventeenth. Traces, however, are still to be found in the names of persons and places; and in a few rustic words and phrases, which, uncouth as they may sound to a stranger's ears, often have in their meaning a wild beauty of their own. For instance, Polurrian meant, to a Cornish ear, the sea-birds' home;' Carrag Luz, the hoary rock;' and Creeg Morgan, the stony hillocks by the sea.' It was a Cymric rather than a Gaelic dialect, and was tolerably well understood by those who spoke the tongues to which it was most nearly allied-the Welsh and the Bretons. Indeed, Bishop Gibson, in his Additions to Camden's Cornwall (1678-1700), pointed out that one of the disadvantages of suppressing the old language would be the loss of commerce and correspondence with the Armoricans of Brittany. Scawen, a Cornish writer and Vice-Warden of the Stannaries, who two hundred years ago even then lamented its impending disappearance, contended that it was 'not so guttural as the Welsh, nor muttered, like the Armoric;' and we have the testimony of Professor Max Müller that it was a melodious and yet by no means an effeminate language.' Yet it must be admitted that the coup de grâce was administered by the Cornish themselves; for Scawen is compelled to admit that our people in Queen Elizabeth's time desired that the common liturgy should be in the English tongue, to which they were then for novelty's sake affected, not of true judgment desired it.' The dialects spoken even in the present day in some country districts are quite unlike any of the other English dialects, and are as unintelligible to a stranger as that of Lancashire.

5

6

It has often been remarked that Cornwall has not yet found so worthy and complete an historian as many another English county. The best is still Lysons, in his Magna Britannia (1814); but Davies Gilbert (himself a Cornishman and a former President of the Royal Society) wrote during the present century a valuable account, based upon and partly incorporating the MSS. of Hals and Tonkin. Carew's survey is not full, but is most interesting; and Borlase, as

5 Scawen, Keigwyn, Llhuyd, Gwavas, and Price (Tonkin), also Edward Norris, and Zeuss (in his Grammatica Celtica) may be consulted on this subject; also some papers in the publications of the Philological Society, notably one by Mr. Henry Jenner in 1873.

well as Polwhele, Hichens, Drew, and C. S. Gilbert, have in later times afforded more or less important contributions. Sir John Maclean has lately completed a laborious and exhaustive description of one portion of the county, comprising over a dozen parishes (A History of the Deanery of Trigg Minor), and Colonel Vivian is publishing an admirably annotated Visitation of the Heralds. But by far the most extensive and valuable contribution towards Cornish history, biography, and literature which has ever yet appeared is the Bibliotheca Cornubiensis of Messrs. Boase and Courtney, the third and last volume of which was recently issued. It is a splendid monument of the writers' labour of love for their native county, and by its aid doubtless much light will ere long be shed upon many an obscure point relating to Cornish affairs. It has more than once been asked why, with such suggestive assistance as this, Cornwall has no companion book to Prince's Worthies of Devon; for, although Cornwall may have produced no Shakespeare or Milton, no Newton or Bacon, no Wellington or Nelson, she nevertheless has such names on her roll of honour as Sir Richard and Sir Bevill Grenville, the first Lord Vivian, Pellew, Lord Exmouth, and Admirals Boscawen and Bligh among her heroes by land and sea; such men of science as Humphry Davy, Goldsworthy Gurney, and that only halfrecognised genius, Richard Trevithick-to the last of whom we really owe the first application of steam to locomotion and to agriculture. The Royal Academicians, Opie, of the strong dark brush, and Bone, most delicate of enamellists, were also sons [of Cornwall; as were Foote, the wit and dramatist, Martyn, the missionary and scholar, and one who was the owner of perhaps the sweetest tenor voice that England ever produced-Incledon of St. Keverne. Such names as these, to say nothing of the older families (some now extinct), amongst others the Killigrews of Arwenack, the Arundells of Lanherne and Trerice, the Godolphins of Godolphin, and the Carews, the Bassets, the Trevanions, the Tremaynes, the Rashleighs and the Trelawnys, the St. Aubyns of Clowance and the Mount, and the Edgcumbes of Mount Edgcumbe and Cothele, are names of which any county may be proud.

Such, then, is a brief review of the story of Cornwall in the past and a statement of her claims upon our consideration now in the closing years of the nineteenth century. The peculiarities of the venerable county are so strongly marked in her ancient remains, her unfamiliar industries, her exotic climate, and in the character of her rural population-as yet, for the most part, unsophisticated--that it is difficult to believe that Plymouth, on her eastern boundary, is only six hours from Paddington, and that another two or three hours will convey us to the westernmost railway station in England-Penzance.

WALTER H. TREGELLAS.

MEDICAL WOMEN.

JUST ten years have elapsed since there appeared in one of the earliest numbers of this Review a thoroughly chivalrous paper with the above title, and I am glad to refer to it anyone who is not familiar with the history of the movement in favour of the medical education of women up to that date, and who may wish to read it as it appeared to a writer who had no personal interest whatever in the cause, except the one paramount interest of a love of justice and right.'

The case (he says) is an instance, not uncommon in the history of movements destined to succeed, of an uphill struggle apparently against long odds, of doubtful progress, hopes disappointed or defeated, the patience and the courage of many trembling in the balance, and then, at the moment of the greatest discouragement, the hour before the dawn, of a sudden collapse of opposition, and then of daylight and the haven reached.

I shall not, of course, attempt in the present article to go over again in any detail the ground which has been so admirably covered by Mr. Stansfeld, but shall make it my endeavour to supplement his paper with an account, as clear as brevity will permit, of the subsequent events in the history of the last ten years, and of the present position of medical women in this country and abroad. In order, however, to make my story clear, it will probably be necessary for me to recapitulate as briefly as possible the most essential points. referred to in the previous paper.

The whole story really turned upon the fact that, by the Medical Act of 1858, the sole power of admission to the medical register was vested in nineteen licensing bodies, and, by a fatal oversight, no clause in the Act made it obligatory on those bodies to examine all candidates irrespective of sex. It had never occurred to the framers of the Act that the boards in question would capriciously refuse to examine, and that in this way an enormous injustice might be committed under shelter of the law."

1 Medical Women, by the Right Hon. James Stansfeld, M.P., Nineteenth Century, July 1877.

2 It is a curious fact that Mr. Cowper-Temple (now Lord Mount-Temple) was in office in 1858, and as vice-president was specially instrumental in passing this Act; so that his subsequent advocacy on our behalf was peculiarly appropriate.

After referring to the remarkable circumstances under which the two first English medical women, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell and Dr. Garrett Anderson, succeeded in placing their names upon the British Register (in 1858 and 1865 respectively), and the still more remarkable way in which the doors through which they entered were closed effectually after these forerunners of the movement,' Mr. Stansfeld proceeded to give an account of the struggle itself, which he dates from the month of March 1869, when application was made by a woman to the University of Edinburgh, for permission to become a student in its medical faculty. After various vicissitudes which it is impossible to narrate, the requisite permission for separate classes was given, and received the sanction of every one of the governing bodies of the University. Five women were allowed to matriculate in October 1869, and, after passing the requisite examination in arts, were required to pay the usual fees and to sign the University roll, then receiving the ordinary matriculation tickets, which bore their names and declared them to be Cives Academia Edinensis. The apparent success thus gained was, however, ultimately rendered. nugatory by the fact that, while the University authorities 'permitted women to attend separate medical classes, and forbade them to attend any other, they did not require the professors to give such classes, and so left the women dependent on the personal caprice of each individual teacher. At the end of two years a dead lock ensued, and subsequently the Court of Session was called upon to decide between the claims of those medical students who had the misfortune to be women, and the assertion of the right of professors to refuse to teach one section of Edinburgh undergraduates. The action was tried in 1872 before Lord Ordinary Gifford, and was by him decided substantially in favour of the women's claims.

It is impossible to hold (said his lordship) that ladies are students with no rights whatever, whereas males are students with legal and enforceable rights. To admit them as students and yet deny their right to be taught would be absurd. . . . And, lastly, it follows that the pursuers are entitled equally, as a matter of right, to demand full and complete medical degrees. The right to demand graduation is a necessary consequence of the right to study at the University; ordinary medical degrees are not matters of favour or of arbitrary discretion; they are the indefeasible right of the successful student.

The question, however, was not allowed to rest here. The case was appealed to the Inner House, and, after deliberations extending over nearly a year, judgment was, in June 1873, given against the ladies by a bare majority of the whole Court of Session. The defeated students thus lost all the labour and expenditure of the previous four years, and were, moreover, made liable for the whole expenses of the lawsuit, amounting to 8481. It would of course have been possible

For all details see Medical Women, by the present writer, second edition, Oliphant, Anderson, & Co., Edinburgh, 1886.

still to appeal to the House of Lords, but after much anxious consideration the women in question determined, as Mr. Stansfeld puts it, 'to widen their appeal, to base it on the ground of right, and to address it to Parliament and to public opinion.'

The little band of Edinburgh students came to the south, and enlisted sufficient sympathy in and out of the medical profession to enable them to found the London School of Medicine for Women, which was opened in October 1874, and which has ever since pursued a career of increasing usefulness and success. Lecturers from existing schools were induced to undertake the teaching of its students; and when, in 1877, the wards of the Royal Free Hospital were also thrown open to them, chiefly through the exertions of Mr. Stansfeld, the whole problem of the medical education of women might be considered as satisfactorily solved.

But this was only half of what was required. It was also necessary that access to the Medical Register should be secured, through the examinations and qualification of at least one of the Examining Boards. The question came up in Parliament again and again, and the cause of the women was generously taken up with equal readiness by just men belonging to both sides of the House. In 1874 a bill was brought in to remove doubts as to the powers of the Universities of Scotland,' but those Universities (or some of them) preferred that the doubts should remain, and the bill proved a failure. In 1875 Mr. Cowper-Temple proposed that the degrees of certain foreign Universities should be registrable in the case of women, so long as these women were debarred from the ordinary British examinations and diplomas; but this bill also fell to the ground. Finally, a bill was, in 1876, brought in and carried by Mr. Russell Gurney, then Recorder of London, which 'enabled' (without compelling) all British Examining Boards to extend their examinations and qualifications to

women.

At the same time the question was brought by the Government before the Medical Council, who delivered, as their official reply, that 'The Council are not prepared to say that women ought to be excluded from the profession.' Within a few months of the passing of the Enabling Act the path of the women was made plain by the liberality of the King's and Queen's College of Physicians in Ireland, who declared their readiness to admit them to their ordinary examinations and to grant them the usual qualification for registration.

Now, then, the goal at length was won, and when Mr. Stansfeld wrote his article in 1877, the three absolutely essential points had all been secured-(1) a medical school; (2) a hospital for clinical teaching; (3) examination and registration. The foundations, in fact, were well and safely laid, after eight years of incessant struggle; but much, very much, still remained to be done before the superstructure could be considered complete. At that time only one