During the years from 1894 to 1914 the main stream in Elsie Inglis's
life was her medical work. This was her profession, her means of
livelihood; it was also the source from which she drew conclusions in
various directions, which influenced her conduct in after-years, and it
supplied the foundation and the scaffolding for the structure of her
achievements at home and abroad.
The pursuit of her profession for twenty years in Edinburgh brought to
her many experiences which roused new and wide interests, and which left
their impress on her mind.
One who was a fellow-student writes of her classmate: "She impressed one
immediately with her mental and physical sturdiness. She had an
extremely pleasant face, with a finely moulded forehead, soft, kind,
fearless, blue eyes, and a smile, when it came, like sunshine; with this
her mouth and chin were firm and determined."
She was a student of the School of Medicine for Women in
Edinburgh of which Dr. Jex-Blake was Dean—a fine woman of strong
character, to whom, and to a small group of fellow-workers in England,
women owe the opening of the door of the medical profession. As Dean,
however, she may have erred in attempting an undue control over the
students. To Elsie Inglis and some of her fellow-students this seemed to
prejudice their liberty, and to frustrate an aim she always had in view,
the recognition by the public of an equal footing on all grounds with
men students. The difficulties became so great that Elsie Inglis at
length left the Edinburgh school and continued her education at Glasgow,
where at St. Margaret's College classes in medicine had recently been
opened. A fellow-student writes: "Never very keenly interested in the
purely scientific side of the curriculum, she had a masterly grasp of
what was practical." She took her qualifying medical diploma in 1902.
After her return to Edinburgh she started a scheme and brought it to
fruition with that fearlessness and ability which at a later period came
to be expected from her, both by her friends and by the public. With the
help of sympathetic lecturers and friends of The Women's Movement, she
succeeded in establishing a second School of Medicine for Women in
Edinburgh, with its headquarters at Minto House, a building which had
been associated with the study of medicine since the days of Syme. It
proved a successful venture. After the close of Dr. Jex-Blake's school a
few years later, it was the only school for women students in Edinburgh,
and continued to be so till the University opened its doors to them.
It was mainly due to Dr. Inglis's exertions that The Hospice was opened
in the High Street of Edinburgh as a nursing home and maternity centre
staffed by medical women. An account of it and of Dr. Inglis's work in
connection with it is given in a later chapter.
She was appointed Joint-Surgeon to the Edinburgh
Bruntsfield Hospital and Dispensary for Women and Children, also staffed
by women and one of the fruits of Dr. Jex-Blake's exertions. Here,
again, Elsie Inglis's courage and energy made themselves felt. She
desired a larger field for the usefulness of the institution, and
proposed to enlarge the hospital to such an extent that its
accommodation for patients should be doubled. A colleague writes: "Once
again the number must be doubled, always with the same idea in
view—i.e., to insure the possibilities for gaining experience for women
doctors. Once again the committee was carried along on a wave of
unprecedented effort to raise money. An eager band of volunteers was
organized, among them some of her own students. Bazaars and
entertainments were arranged, special appeals were issued, and the
necessary money was found, and the alterations carried out. It
was never part of Dr. Inglis's policy to wait till the money came in.
She always played a bold game, and took risks which left the average
person aghast, and in the end she invariably justified her action by
accomplishing the task which she set herself, and, at times it must be
owned, which she set an all too unwilling committee! But for that breezy
and invincible faith and optimism the Scottish Women's Hospitals would
never have taken shape in 1914."
Dr. Inglis's plea for the Units of the Scottish Women's Hospital was
always that they might be sent "where the need was greatest." In these
years of work before the war the same motive, to supply help where it
was most needed, seems to have guided her private practice, for we read:
"Dr. Inglis was perhaps seen at her best in her dispensary work, for she
was truly the friend and the champion of the working woman, and
especially of the mother in poor circumstances and struggling to bring
up a large family. Morrison Street Dispensary and St. Anne's Dispensary
were the centre of this work, and for years to come mothers will be
found in this district who will relate how Dr. Inglis put at their
service the best of her professional skill and, more than that, gave
them unstintedly of her sympathy and understanding."
Dr. Wallace Williamson, of St. Giles's Cathedral, writing
of her after her death, is conscious also of this impulse always
manifesting itself in her to work where difficulties abounded. He points
out: "Of her strictly professional career it may be truly said that her
real attraction had been to work among the suffering poor.... She was
seen at her best in hospice and dispensary, and in homes where poverty
added keenness to pain. There she gave herself without reserve.
Questions of professional rivalry or status of women slipped away in her
large sympathy and helpfulness. Like a truly 'good physician,' she gave
them from her own courage an uplift of spirit even more valuable than
physical cure. She understood them and was their friend. To her they
were not merely patients, but fellow-women. It was one of her great
rewards that the poor folk to whom she gave of her best rose to her
faith in them, whatever their privations or temptations. Her relations
with them were remote from mere routine, and so
distinctively human and real that her name is everywhere spoken with the
note of personal loss. Had not the wider call come, this side of her
work awaited the fulfilment of ever nobler dreams."
She was loved and appreciated as a doctor not only by her poorer
patients, but by those whom she attended in all ranks of society.
Of her work as an operator and lecturer two of her colleagues say:
"It was a pleasure to see Dr. Inglis in the operating-theatre. She was
quiet, calm, and collected, and never at a loss, skilful in her
manipulations, and able to cope with any emergency."
"As a lecturer she proved herself clear and concise, and the level of
her lectures never fell below that of the best established standards.
Students were often heard to say that they owed to her a clear and a
practical grasp of a subject which is inevitably one of the most
important for women doctors."
Should it be asked what was the secret of her success in her work, the
answer would not be difficult to find. A clear brain she had, but she
had more. She had vision, for her life was based on a profound trust in
God, and her vision was that of a follower of Christ, the vision of the
kingdom of heaven upon earth. This was the true source of that
remarkable optimism which carried her over difficulties deemed by others
insurmountable. Once started in pursuit of an object, she was most
reluctant to abandon it, and her gaze was so keenly fixed on the end in
view that it must be admitted she was found by some to be "ruthless" in
the way in which she pushed on one side any who seemed to her to be
delaying or obstructing the fulfilment of her project. There was,
however, never any selfish motive prompting her; the end was always a
noble one, for she had an unselfish, generous nature. An intimate
friend, well qualified to judge, herself at first prejudiced against
"In everything she did that was always to me her most
outstanding characteristic, her self-effacing and abounding generosity.
Indeed, it was so characteristic of her that it
was often misunderstood and her action was imputed to a desire for
self-advertisement. A fellow-doctor told me that when she was working in
one of the Edinburgh laboratories she heard men discussing something Dr.
Inglis had undertaken, and, evidently finding her action quite
incomprehensible, they concluded it was dictated by personal ambition.
My friend turned on them in the most emphatic way: 'You were never more
mistaken. The thought of self or self-interest never even entered Elsie
Inglis's mind in anything she did or said.'" Again, another writes: "One
recalls her generous appreciation of any good work done by other women,
especially by younger women. Any attempt to strike out in a new line,
any attempt to fill a post not previously occupied by a woman, received
her unstinted admiration and warm support."
It was her delight to show hospitality to her friends, many of whom,
especially women doctors and friends made in the Suffrage movement,
stayed with her at her house in Walker Street, Edinburgh. But her
hospitality did not end there. One doctor, whom we have already quoted,
on arrival on a visit, found that only the day before Dr. Inglis had
said good-bye to a party of guests, a woman with five children, a
patient badly in need of rest, who had the misfortune to have an unhappy
home, and was without any relatives to help her. Dr. Inglis's relations
with her poor patients have been already referred to. Not only did she
give them all she could in the way of professional attention and skill,
but her generosity to them was unbounded. "I had a patient," writes a
doctor, "very ill with pulmonary tuberculosis. She was to go to a
sanatorium, and her widowed mother was quite unable to provide the
rather ample outfit demanded. Dr. Inglis gave me everything for her,
down to umbrella and goloshes."
Naturally her devotion was returned, though in one case
which is recorded Dr. Inglis's care met with resentment at first. A
woman who was expecting a baby—her ninth—applied at a dispensary where
Dr. Inglis happened to be in charge. Her advice was distasteful to the
patient, who tried another dispensary, only to meet again with the same
advice, again from a woman member of the
profession. A third dispensary brought her the same fortune! Eventually,
when the need for professional skill came, she was attended by the two
latter doctors she had seen, for the case proved to be a difficult one.
Requiring the aid of greater experience—for they were juniors—they sent
for Dr. Inglis, with whose help the lives of mother and child were
saved. Thus the patient was attended in the end by all the three women
physicians whose advice she had scorned. The child was the first boy in
the large family, and the mother's gratitude and delight after her
recovery knew no bounds. It found, however, Scotch expression, shall we
say? in her tribute, "Weel, I've had the hale three o' ye efter a', and
ye canna say I hae'na likit ye—at the hinder en' at ony rate!" "That
woman kept us busy with patients for many a day," writes one of the
three. The bulky mother-in-law of one patient expressed her admiration
of the doctor and her lack of faith in the justice of things by saying:
"It's no fair Dr. Inglis is a woman; if she'd been a man, she'd ha' been
a millionaire!" The doctor in whose memory these incidents live says of
her friend: "No item was too trivial, no trouble too great to take, if
she could help a human being, or if she could push forward or help a
If Elsie Inglis's intrepidity, determination, and invincible optimism
were well known to the public, the circle of her friends was warmed by
the truly loving heart with which they came in contact.
The following incident may show in some degree what a tender heart it
was. A friend whose brother died, after an operation, in a nursing home
in Edinburgh was staying at Dr. Inglis's house when the death occurred.
The body had to be taken to the Highland home in the North. The sister
writes: "My younger brother called for me in the early morning, as we
had to leave by the 3 a.m. train to accompany the body to Inverness.
When Dr. Inglis had said good-bye to us and we drove away in the cab, my
brother—he is just an ordinary keen business man—turned to me with his
eyes filled with tears, and said: 'I should have liked to kiss her like
my mother.' (We had never known our mother.)"
In the fourteenth century, in that wonderful and most lovable
woman, Catherine of Siena, we find the same union of strength and
tenderness which was so noticeable in Dr. Inglis. In the Life of St.
Catherine it is said: "Everybody loves Catherine Benincasa because she
was always and everywhere a woman in every fibre of her being. By nature
and temperament she was fitted to be what she succeeded in remaining to
the end—a strong, noble woman, whose greatest strength lay in her
tenderness, and whose nobility sprung from her tender femininity."
In her political sagacity, her optimism, and cheerfulness also, she
reminds us of Elsie Inglis. During St. Catherine's Mission to Tuscany
the following story is told of her by her biographer: "The other case"
(of healing) "was that of Messer Matteo, her friend, the Rector of
Misericordia, who had been one of the most active of the heretic priests
in Siena. To this good man, lying in extremis after terrible agony,
Catherine entered, crying cheerfully: 'Rise up, rise up, Ser Matteo!
This is not the time to be taking your ease in bed!' Immediately the
disease left him, and he, who could so ill be spared at such a time,
arose whole and sound to minister to others."
We smile as we read of Catherine's "cheerful" entrance into this
sick-chamber, and those who knew Dr. Inglis can recall many such a
breezy entrance into the depressing atmosphere of some of her patients'