As she handed the clerk her entry ticket, Ann Preston was excited, if a little apprehensive. It was Saturday, Nov. 6, 1869, and Preston, dean of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, and her students, were about to attend a clinical medicine lecture at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia in a radical mixing of the sexes. Male medical students from Jefferson Medical College and the University of Pennsylvania had regularly attended these lectures for years; students from the women’s college were regularly refused admission. This was the second time Preston had brought students to a lecture there. After the first time, back in 1856, the women had been barred from returning. Until now.
Preston and her students were immediately reminded of their second-class citizen status when the clerk told them they would only be allowed to enter by way of the back stairs. Still, nothing could dim their enthusiasm. The determined dean and her 30 students began to file into the octagonal surgical amphitheater, gingerly squeezing their long puffy skirts through the tiered rows of seating that climbed the sides of the wall.
The day before the lecture, one female student had gotten hold of an ominous slip of paper that was being circulated among the male medical students. It read: “Go tomorrow to the hospital to see the She Doctors!” Clearly, the boys were planning some form of mayhem for this historic occasion. But what awaited the women
— source motherjones.com | Olivia Campbell | May 31, 2021