During 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