Genre:

Essay, News-Commentary, Editorial

Subjects:

Gender, Education, Universities, Physiological Psychology

    Reports that the decision of the University of St Andrews to admit women to 'everything [...] has had some curious results. Among others it seems to have prompted Sir J. Creighton Brown [i.e. Crichton-Browne] to deliver a lecture concerning the brains of men and women, the gist of which is that, physiologically, women are born inferior to men, and that it is no use trying to pretend that they are otherwise. To quote the exquisite phrase of this specialist in lunacy, "that which has been settled millions of years ago by the prehistoric protozea, from whom we are supposed to be descended, cannot be reversed by Acts of Parliament or the resolutions of Women's Righters". This doctrine of the infallibility of the remote protozea is not a dogma that is likely to commend itself to the women of to-day'. Instead, suggests that although women are 'not able to do everything [...] equally with the protozea of the pre-historic ages they have a right to decide and to influence, so far as they can, the shape of their brain convolutions. The process is slow, but every little counts, and a full-grown woman has at least as much right to decide the shape of her own brain as those of interesting protozea who are elevated to the rank of scientific substitute for God Almighty'. (74)