Northwestern University Woman's Medical School

Co-education of the sexes, in medicine and surgery, was experimentally tried from 1868 to 1870, but the experiment proved repugnant to the male students, who unanimously signed a protest against the continuance of the system.

The requirements for graduation were fixed at four years of medical study, including three annual graded college terms of six months each.

As in other institutions of the kind, there were several conditions which combined to call it into existence, but the strong desire on the part of a few women to obtain a thorough medical education was the mainspring in the original attempt which resulted in its final establishment.

[4] In 1852, Emily Blackwell attended one course of lectures in Rush Medical College; she was denied entrance a second year and finally graduated at a Cleveland institution.

A few years later two female practitioners, educated in the East, located in this city for a short time, but so far as I am aware no students received instruction or asked for it in their office."

This soon became the rendezvous for the women of the West, who, being denied access to any regular college in this region, found in the clinical advantages of the hospital their nearest approximation to an institution for medical instruction.

"[4] Thompson herself was desirous of taking an advanced course, and realizing that the hospital advantages alone would not suffice to educate regular practitioners, she applied to Rush Medical College for admission, but it was refused on the ground of "inconvenience".

Having learned of a number of women throughout the Northwest who desired a thorough medical education, he promised to lay the matter before his faculty and to give it his support.

[5] Referring to this time, Earle stated:— "Although the relations of the ladies and gentlemen as students had always been dignified and respectful, the male members of the class, at the close of the college year, sent to the faculty a formal protest against the admission of women , claiming that certain clinical material was not as ready in coming forward and that certain facts and observations of value were omitted from the lectures in the presence of a mixed class.

Although the accommodations were scant and facilities inadequate, the classes were intelligent, and many of those graduates obtained honorable and lucrative practice bringing credit upon the institution and inducing others to pursue the course.