Two years later this loan was paid off, with the following letter:—­]

4 Marlborough Place, January 11, 1875.

My dear old Shylock,

My argosies have come in, and here is all that was written in the bond!  If you want the pound of flesh too, you know it is at your service, and my Portia won’t raise that pettifogging objection to shedding a little blood into the bargain, which that other one did.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[On October 24 Miss Jex Blake wrote to him to ask his help for herself and the other women medical students at Edinburgh.  For two years they had only been able to get anatomical teaching in a mixed class; but wishing to have a separate class, at least for the present, they had tried to arrange for one that session.  The late demonstrator at the Surgeons’ Hall, who had given them most of their teaching before, had undertaken to teach this separate class, but was refused recognition by the University Court, on the ground that they had no evidence of his qualifications, while refusing to let him prove his qualification by examination.  This the women students understood to be an indirect means of suppressing their aspirations; they therefore begged Huxley to examine their instructor with a view to giving him a certificate which should carry weight with the University Court.

He replied:—­]

To Miss Jex Blake.

October 28, 1872.

Dear Madam,

While I fully sympathise with the efforts made by yourself and others, to obtain for women the education requisite to qualify them for medical practice, and while I think that women who have the inclination and the capacity to follow the profession of medicine are most unjustly dealt with if any obstacles beyond those which are natural and inevitable are placed in their way, I must nevertheless add, that I as completely sympathise with those Professors of Anatomy, Physiology, and Obstetrics, who object to teach such subjects to mixed classes of young men and women brought together without any further evidence of moral and mental fitness for such association than the payment of their fees.

In fact, with rare exceptions, I have refused to admit women to my own Lectures on Comparative Anatomy for many years past.  But I should not hesitate to teach anything I know to a class composed of women; and I find it hard to believe that any one should really wish to prevent women from obtaining efficient separate instruction, and from being admitted to Examination for degrees upon the same terms as men.

You will therefore understand that I should be most glad to help you if I could—­and it is with great regret that I feel myself compelled to refuse your request to examine Mr. H—.