WOMEN IN MEDICINE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19121, 16 September 1936, Page 11

WOMEN IN MEDICINE

PROFESSOR’S OPINION VOCATIONAL GUIDANC'E PERTH, Aug. 2U. Professor Winifred Cullis, of the London School of Medicine and the University of London, arrived by K.M.S. Orford to-day. Interviewed on board the vessel in regard to the school of medicine for women in association with the Royal Free Hospital for Women in London, of which she is principal. Dr. Cullis said : “The school has about 340 students now; it. has to turn down each .year nearly as many as it takes. Woman doctors are finding no difficulty In securing work, and there are hundreds of them, but I do not know how long it will last.”

Professor Cullis, grey haired and alert, in the prime of her intellectual life, though over 60 years of age, admits herself “definitely a feminist.” She is on the Council for the Institute of Industrial Psychology, and as such has taken a keen interest in vocational guidance. The institute looks for innate capacities of vocation seeker, considering the job for the person instead of the person for the job. VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE

Professor Cullis gave examples of a young man, son of a farmer, who was meant to be a farmer, but was found to have a flair for men’s dress. A casual inquiry revealed ho would love to give advice about clothes, so he became a successful dress expert with a London firm. A girl who did manual tests like a boy was discovered to have a remarkable aptitude for mechanics, and is now carving out a successful career in a big engineering firm. • Professor Cullis enjoys her work. “I have the pleasant side, health instead of disease,” she said. “I believe in anything which affects, maintains or preserves health, for people who start off with healthy bodies have best chance.” She has a'great respect for the quality of the child mind, and during the last five years she has broadcast talks to children on hygiene, believing the child’s mind was essentially reasoning and wanted to know why. In each talk the hygiene dictates were preceded by a talk on physiology, giving the reasons lor the rules to follow. “1 consider we must realise how much knowledge children take in, and work on a basis of understanding with them,” she said. To meet or hear Professor Cullis is to realise woman’s place in medicine today. Having worked with men, she labours under no sense of fancied wrong; having worked with women, she knows their great and expanding capabilities. From both she has learned to be one of those great workers who unconsciously sweep awav the artificial barriers in the way of the natural equalities of the sexes.