Medical maths

A memorial to Sophia Jexblake and the “Edinburgh Seven” (your report, 11 April) may right one injustice, but it will create another. The concept of the “Seven against Edinburgh” battling for female medical education was Jex-blake’s own. The true story is more complex. Of the 11 women who matriculated in November 1869 as the first admitted to study for a degree in any UK university only five, including Jex-blake herself, belonged to the “Seven”. There were nine female medical students in 1870, 28 in 1871, and in session 1872-73 (the last they were permitted to matriculate) there were 13.

It is not clear why Jex-blake singled out only six of her fellow students when several of the others appear to have been equally committed to, and active in, the struggle to obtain a medical education for women. She was, however, a woman of strong likes and dislikes.

Jex-blake was, without doubt, the leader of the movement but any memorial including her fellow pioneers should celebrate them all and not just a selected few.

EDWARD DUVALL

Dalhousie Terrace, Edinburgh

You are correct to highlight the importance of Sophia Jex-blake and the Edinburgh Seven in Edinburgh’s medical history. They clearly merit an appropriate statue.

But we should not ignore the brilliant Dr James Barry, who graduated in Edinburgh in 1812 and had a remarkable career as a surgeon in the British Army, but on “his” death in 1865 was revealed anatomically to be a woman. Among her many other achievements was the first caesarean section in Africa by a British surgeon in which both mother and child survived. JOHN BIRKETT Horseleys Park St Andrews, Fife