Elsie Inglis | Page 7

the nine years from 1885 to her father's death in 1894, she
began and completed her medical studies with his full approval. The
great fight for the opening of the door for women to study medicine
had been fought and won earlier by Dr. Sophia Jex-Blake, Dr. Garrett
Anderson, and others. But though the door was open, there was still
much opposition to be encountered and a certain amount of persecution
to be borne when the women of Dr. Inglis's time ventured to enter the
halls of medical learning.
Along the pathway made easy for them by these women of the past,
hundreds of young women are to-day entering the medical profession.
As we look at them we realize that in their hands, to a very large extent,
lies the solving of the acutest problem of our race--the relation of the
sexes. Will they fail us? Will they be content with a solution along lines
that can only be called a second best? When we remember the
clear-brained women in whose steps they follow, who opened the
medical world for them, and whose spirits will for ever overshadow the
women who walk in it, we know they will not fail us.
Elsie Inglis pursued her medical studies in Edinburgh and Glasgow.
After she qualified she was for six months House-Surgeon in the New
Hospital for Women and Children in London, and then went to the
Rotunda in Dublin for a few months' special study in midwifery.
She returned home in March, 1894, in time to be with her father during
his last illness. Daily letters had passed between them whenever she
was away from home. His outlook on life was so broad and tolerant, his
judgment on men and affairs so sane and generous, his religion so vital,
that with perfect truth she could say, as she did, at one of the biggest
meetings she addressed after her return from Serbia: "If I have been
able to do anything, I owe it all to my father."

After his death she started practice with Dr. Jessie Macgregor at 8,
Walker Street, Edinburgh. It was a happy partnership for the few years
it lasted, until for family reasons Dr. Macgregor left Scotland for
America. Dr. Inglis stayed on in Walker Street, taking over Dr.
Macgregor's practice. Then followed years of hard work and interests
in many directions.
[Illustration: JOHN FORBES DAVID INGLIS
ELSIE INGLIS' FATHER
"If I have been able to do anything--whatever I am, whatever I have
done--I owe it all to my Father."
Elsie Inglis, at a meeting held in the Criterion Theatre, London, April
5th, 1916]
The Hospice for Women and Children in the High Street of Edinburgh
was started. Her practice grew, and she became a keen suffragist.
During these years also she evidently faced and solved her problems.
She was a woman capable of great friendships. During the twenty years
of her professional life perhaps the three people who stood nearest to
her were her sister, Mrs. Simson, and the Very Rev. Dr. and Mrs.
Wallace Williamson. These friendships were a source of great strength
and comfort to her.
We may fitly close this chapter by quoting descriptions of Dr. Inglis by
two of her friends--Miss S. E. S. Mair, of Edinburgh, and Dr. Beatrice
Russell:
"In outward appearance Dr. Inglis was no Amazon, but just a woman of
gentle breeding, courteous, sweet-voiced, somewhat short of stature,
alert, and with the eyes of a seer, blue-grey and clear, looking forth
from under a brow wide and high, with soft brown hair brushed loosely
back; with lips often parted in a radiant smile, discovering small white
teeth and regular, but lips which were at times firmly closed with a
fixity of purpose such as would warn off unwarrantable opposition or

objections from less bold workers. Those clear eyes had a peculiar
power of withdrawing on rare occasions, as it were, behind a curtain
when their owner desired to absent herself from discussion of points on
which she preferred to give no opinion. It was no mere expression such
as absent-mindedness might produce, but was, as she herself was aware,
a voluntary action of withdrawal from all participation in what was
going on. The discussion over, in a moment the blinds would be up and
the soul looked forth through its clear windows with steady gaze.
Whether the aural doors had been closed also there is no knowing."
"She was a keen politician--in the pre-war days a staunch supporter of
the Liberal party, and in the years immediately preceding the war she
devoted much of her time to work in connection with the Women's
Suffrage movement. She was instrumental in organizing the Scottish
Federation of Women's Suffrage Societies, and was Honorary Secretary
of the Federation up to the time of her