The good Professor
Hope had lectured to ladies fifty years ago; had taken their fees, and
founded his scholarships with their money: and it would have done his
heart good to see a lady win and wear that prize which, but for his
female pupils, would never have existed. But it is easy to trample on a
dead man: as easy as on living women.
"The perfidy was followed by ruthless tyranny. They refused to admit the
fair criminal to the laboratory, 'else,' said they, 'she'll defeat more
men.
"That killed her, as a chemist. It gave inferior male students too great
an advantage over her. And so the public and Professor Hope were
sacrificed to a trades-union, and lost a great analytical chemist, and
something more--she had, to my knowledge, a subtle diagnosis. Now we have
at present no _great_ analyst, and the few competent analysts we have do
not possess diagnosis in proportion. They can find a few poisons in the
dead, but they are slow to discover them in the living; so they are not
to be counted on to save a life, where crime is administering poison.
That woman could, and would, I think.
"They drove her out of chemistry, wherein she was a genius, into surgery,
in which she was only a talent.
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