WOMEN STUDENTS IN LONDON HOSPITALS

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6804, 7 January 1929, Page 7

WOMEN STUDENTS IN LONDON HOSPITALS

QUOTA TO BE FIXED. British Official Wireless. RUGBY, Jan. 4. The limitations placed • upon tho medical education of women, in tho London hospitals aro the subject of a report, which has been drawn up by the committee appointed by tbe Senate of the London University a year ago. This question was rendered acute at that time by the exclusion of further women students from tho medical schools of the London hospitals. Sir James Purves Stewart, senior physician to tho Westminster hospital, then expressed the view that usually the ablest women forsook the profession shortly after graduating in order to marry; that some men students were disinclined to sit alongside women in the medical classroom, and that opportunities for athletics must also be less attractive in mixed schools; whilo inevitable distractions could not but arise from the continuous association of attractive young men with attractive young women in tho classrooms, laboratories and wards. It is understood that tho committee has now reported in favour of the retention of women students in the London hospitals, but it recommends that, in order to prevent an excess of women students, each hospital should take a definite quota. Dr. Graham Little, who is one of tho champions of women doctors, and is a member of the committee, expressed the view to-day that any obstaclo which the. hospitals might put in the way of the best possible medical education for women was nothing short of a crime, in view especially of the present mortality of childbirth.