"Up to the date of this enormity, the Press had been pretty evenly divided for and against us. But now, to their credit, they were unanimous, and reprobated the juggle as a breach of public faith and plain morality. Backed by public opinion, one friendly professor took this occasion to move the university to relax the regulation of separate classes since it had been abused. He proposed that the female students should be admitted to the ordinary classes.
"This proposal was negatived by 58 to 47.
"This small majority was gained by a characteristic maneuver. The queen's name was gravely dragged in as disapproving the proposal, when, in fact, it could never have been submitted to her, or her comment, if any, must have been in writing; and as to the general question, she has never said a public word against medical women. She has too much sense not to ask herself how can any woman be fit to be a queen, with powers of life and death, if no woman is fit to be so small a thing, by comparison, as a physician or a surgeon.
"We were victims of a small majority, obtained by imagination playing upon flunkyism, and the first result was we were not allowed to sit down to botany with males. Mind you, we might have gathered blackberries with them in umbrageous woods from morn till dewy eve, and not a professor shocked in the whole faculty; but we must not sit down with them to an intellectual dinner of herbs, and listen, in their company, to the pedantic terms and childish classifications of botany, in which kindred properties are ignored. Only the male student must be told in public that a fox-glove is _Digitalis purpurea_ in the improved nomenclature of science, and crow-foot is _Ranunculus sceleratus,_ and the buck-bean is _Menyanthis trifoliata,_ and mugwort is _Artemesia Judaica;_ that, having lost the properties of hyssop known to Solomon, we regain our superiority over that learned Hebrew by christening it _Gratiola officinalis._ The ***es must not be taught in one room to discard such ugly and inexpressive terms as snow-drop, meadow-sweet, heart's-ease, fever-few, cowslip, etc., and learn to know the cowslip as _Primula veris_--by class, _Pentandria monogynia;_ and the buttercup as _Ranunculus acnis_--_Polyandria monogynia;_ the snow-drop as _Galanthus nivalis_--_Hexandria monogynia;_ and the meadow-sweet as _Ulnaria;_ the heart's ease as _Viola tricolor;_ and the daisy as _Bellis perennis_--_Syngenesia superflua."_"Well," said Vizard, "I think the individual names can only hurt the jaws and other organs of speech. But the classification! Is the mild luster of science to be cast over the natural disposition of young women toward _Polyandria monogynia?_ Is trigamy to be identified in their sweet souls with floral innocence, and their victims sitting by?""Such classifications are puerile and fanciful," said Miss Gale; "but, for that very reason, they don't infect _animals_ with trigamy. Novels are much more likely to do that.""Especially ladies' novels," suggested Vizard, meekly.
"Some," suggested the accurate Rhoda. "But the ***es will never lose either morals or delicacy through courses of botany endured together. It will not hurt young ladies a bit to tell them in the presence of young gentlemen that a cabbage is a thalamifioral exogen, and its stamens are tetradynamous; nor that the mushroom, _Psalliata campestris,_ and the toad-stool, _Myoena campestris,_ are confounded by this science in one class, _Cryptogamia._ It will not even hurt them to be told that the properties of the _Arum maculatum_ are little known, but that the males are crowded round the center of the spadix, and the females seated at the base."Said Vizard, pompously, "The pulpit and the tea-table are centers of similar phenomena. Now I think of it, the pulpit is a very fair calyx, but the tea-table is sadly squat.""Yes, sir. But, more than that, not one of these pedants who growled at promiscuous botany has once objected to promiscuous dancing, not even with the gentleman's arm round the lady's waist, which the custom of centuries cannot render decent. Yet the professors of delicacy connive, and the Mother Geese sit smirking at the wall. Oh, world of hypocrites and humbugs!""I am afraid you are an upsetter general," said Vizard. "But you are abominably sincere; and all this is a curious chapter of human nature.
Pray proceed."
Miss Gale nodded gravely, and resumed.
"So much public ridicule fell on the union for this, and the blind flunkyism which could believe the queen had meddled in the detail, that the professors melted under it, and threw open botany and natural history to us, with other collateral sciences.
"Then came the great fight, which is not ended yet.
"To qualify for medicine and pass the stiff examination, by which the public is very properly protected, you must be versed in anatomy and clinical surgery. Books and lectures do not suffice for this, without the human subject--alive and dead. The university court knew that very well when it matriculated us, and therefore it provided for our instruction by promising us separate classes.
"Backed by this public pledge, we waited on the university professor of anatomy to arrange our fees for a separate lecture. He flatly refused to instruct us separately for love or money, or to permit his assistants.
That meant, 'The union sees a way to put you in a cleft stick and cheat you out of your degree, in spite of the pledge the university has given you; in spite of your fees, and of your time given to study in reliance on the promise.'