A history of English sexual morals / by Ivan Bloch ; translated by William H. Forstern.

  • Iwan Bloch
Date:
1936
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A history of English sexual morals / by Ivan Bloch ; translated by William H. Forstern. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    to crawl into a bedroom in the same surreptitious manner1. Amongst the many quacks who nourished during the eighteenth century there were a few women who achieved some renown. The first women doctors in the nineteenth century were Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell and Miss Elizabeth Garrett. In 1869 Sophia Jex-Blake started an agitation for the admission of women to the study of medicine. At length seven girls were permitted to attend medical lectures at Edinburgh University. As they were about to enter the lecture-room they were received by the medical students and a specially hired mob with the vilest abuse—and pelted with mud! Women were finally admitted to the study of medicine in 1876 by the Russell Gurney Act2. In the nursing profession the name of the noble MissFlorence Nightingale shines out for ever, since the days of the Crimean War. To her England owes the magnificent organisation known as the Nurses Training Institution at St. Thomas's Hospital. Above all, have philanthropy and nursing been benefited in England by women. The most energetic champion of the complete emancipa- tion of women was John Stuart Mill. His book The Subjec- tion of Women, which was published in 1869 and roused heated discussion, may be regarded as one of the most extreme in the literature of this question. It contains four chapters. In the first, the introduction, the author begins by pointing out that the standing of the two sexes has not been made different by nature. He instances as specially important that the character of the modern woman has been artificially produced and that no experience lies behind woman in a state of emancipation. Thus the advantages of men over women are one-sided. It is certain that the emancipated woman would not act contrary to her nature. 1 G. Hill, loc. cit.y Vol. II, pp. 271-275. a Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 284-285. [46]