Medical women at war, 1914-1918.

Women had a long and difficult struggle before they were allowed to obtain a medical education.' Even in 1914 the Royal Free was the only London teaching hospital to admit them and some universities (including Oxford and Cambridge) still held out against them. The cost of a medical education continued to be a major obstacle, but at least there were enough schools by then to ensure that British women who wanted and could afford one could get it. The difficulty was in finding residency posts after qualifying, in order to make a career in hospital medicine. Few posts were available outside the handful of all-women hospitals, and medical women were channelled away from the more prestigious specialities-notably general surgery-into those less highly regarded, like gynaecology and obstetrics, and into asylums, dispensaries, public health, and, of course, general practice.2 When war broke out in August 1914, the Association of Registered Medical Women expected that women doctors would be needed mostly for civilian work, realizing that "as a result of the departure of so many medical men to the front there will be vacancies at home which medical women may usefully fill".3 As early as February 1915 it was estimated that a sixth of all the medical men in Scotland had taken commissions in the RAMC. In April of that year it was reported that "there is hardly a resident post not open to a qualified woman if she cares to apply for it". By January 1917 more than half the British medical profession had