The Subjugation of the Male Medical—A Warning

[By Men's Rights.]

The gradual degradation of the male medical student, under [unclear: th] influence of causes not as much appreciated by students as they [unclear: shou] be, is a fact that is slowly being recognised; and, as one who sighs [unclear: fi] the good old tempora acta, I feel the spirit moving me to "say a [unclear: little] bit" thereanent, as Mr A. H. Burton would express it.

The last few days of the first half were wont, in the olden days, to [unclear: h] celebrated by the mischievous pranks of an evil spirit of unrest [unclear: as] excessive bonhommie. These little overflows of the flood of [unclear: pervert] energies, characteristic of the coming lights of the profession, [unclear: usual] found exit, amongst a variety of harebrained performances, in a [unclear: vo] if hardly to be called musical, wave, which would sweep the [unclear: building] from end to end, from rafter to basement membrane, in the [unclear: expiri] hours of incarceration.

Occasionally cases occurred where the monotony of [unclear: vocalisation] (more or less so) was varied by the introduction of such [unclear: instrument] harmony as could be obtained from the united effect of wails [unclear: from] pensioned kerosene tin, seconded by the vaso-motor paralytic [unclear: into] due to the alternate opening and closure of the materia [unclear: medi] cupboard portals, the whole being delicately mellowed by [unclear: stomach] strains from a pipe band, consisting of a bass S Trap and a soprano 3-[unclear: inc] drain.

Of late years, however, a transformation has occurred, and by [unclear: such] remarkably insidious process of evolution as to make the [unclear: altera] fully comprehensible only after the most careful method of [unclear: examinatia] i.e., looking behind the scenes.

And what, then, do we find is the etiological factor in the [unclear: destruction] of the good old organism of fin-de-session tradition ? Who [unclear: h] dared to throw, as it were, the damp of antiseptic disapprobation [unclear: o] this once proud and virulent organism of 'Varsity custom ?

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The answer is only too evident—who would have had the hardihood to rob us of those traditions which we should prize, but the Lady Medical, who knows no limit to her concerns, but plunders on our rights even to the extent of assuming to herself the humble but useful trouser—I should say side pocket—to which she will, in all probability, in the near future, add the bifurcated appendages which are at present regarded as strictly masculine crural envelopes ? And by what means, you will ask, has she brought these things to pass ? With shame and a heavy stom—heart, I fear to write it. Tea and Buns !

Women and buns !—ye gods ! "Here's richness !" More effective than the thinly-veiled symptoms of professorial disapproval, or the head-splitting agonies of tympanic contumely, against even the meekest of undegrads., they have quelled and subdued us into humiliating silence. Tea and buns ! Ah, woman ! how insidious are thy modes of infecting the human heart, and how dyspeptic thy ways of soothing the savage chest! Were not the fall of Adam, the destruction of Troy, and the degradation of Sketcher Rayner, metaphorically speaking, sufficient scalps to hang, as trophies of thy prowess, on thy patent chest protector ?

No ! With that indomitable spirit of mischief-working and interference that is the birthright of all femininity, the lady medical, not content with abrogating to herself, in her peculiarly taking way, the majority of our rights—such as hip-pockets (already alluded to), arrangement of exams., &c, senior clerkships, &c., &c., which latter we might consider furthermore strictly our own by virtue of numbers and academical status—has gone further, and by the fascinating and intoxicating effects of tea and buns, actually and successfully, attempted to deprive us of the practice of those very traditions which we should jealously guard as heirlooms or organised residua from the brain cells of the pioneer giants of our alma mater.

Let us pause to admire the ingenuity of her temptations, and at the same time the degenerating effect of our frailty in giving way to her fascinations and those of her gustatory charms. For who could vocalise in that same soul-stirring way of old when pressed down under the weight of currant buns and tea and the fear of a morbid dilated stomach ? Who could extract those Orpheus-like strains from a soprano S Trap when his pancreas is groaning under its wrongs and the fear of traumatic glycosuria? Who, I say, could wield that primitive but appealing harmoonium of sound—the kerosene tin—with the proper spirit of the muse when his liver and portal circulation are racked by a million questioning peptones and the fear of a macaroonuria ?

But even this severe blow, which, by means of indirect violence, has been dealt by our lady meds. at our old customs, is but a flea-bite, a straw showing how the wind blows, to other indications of a set pur- page 96 pose for the subjugation of the superfluous male, which can be detected if we care to look below the surface.

Too true that her efforts are often, as it were, sugar-coated, but none the less toxic, even as the complacent-looking but deceitful pill. Thus it is that now by means of a violent but primitive love-making, now by a scornful bearing of contemptuous superiority, our lady metis, are apparently seeking by tooth and nail, by sugared buns and love, to slowly subjugate us to that condition of stark-nakedness of privilege; and position which is seemingly her estimate of the state of being which will be the lot of the mere male in the approaching millenium.

What, may we ask, will be the sequel of Such a condition of serfdom and deprivation of, so to speak, moral and mental clothing ? Shall we, even at that stage of nakedness, shame, and trembling, be allowed to remain so, the vestige of a once pride-endowed race, or shall her insatiety go further, and by the usurpation of our last—our hymeneal—rights totally secure to herself the privilege which in the darker days she enjoyed only quadrenially—in leap years ?

Alas ! I sadly fear that the trend of events, from the hesitating and demure entrance into the sacred portals of the first lady med. down to the stage of masterful proprietorship and arrogance of our latter-day Amazons, is only too much to be dreaded as the prelude to that final era of moral and academical asthenia, wherein she will take to herself the right of carrying us off neck and crop to Hymen's altar as a kind of belated coup d'avenge for our indiscretions from the Rape of the Sabines down to the fickle affaires-de-cœur of the present freshman.

Too true it is that even now one or two of our number are verging on the brink of bacularian destruction—too irrevocably and deeply stricken to give the faintest hope of a favourable prognosis of ultimate cure. And what, I ask, was the means of their first seduction ? Turn ye for reply once more to the baleful sugar-coated bun and the ensnaring afternoon cricket tea.

My little ones! take ye heed, and be warned in time by their awful example of what shall inevitably be the lot of each and all of ye who give way to the dulcet temptations of her who cometh clad in the simplicity of Mother Eve.

Beware of the factors that predisposed to their fall, e'en though it be apparently a noble fall.

Learn to look below the surface for the sign of the cloven foot—yea, even in the innocent ceremony of afternoon tea, buns, and flirtation, if aggravated by the romantic surroundings of an artistic crick pavilion, or the darkly-quiet corner of the cloak-room without chaperon-age.

Be impassive to the love-lit smile flitting from opposite seat to opposite seat in the lecture room.

Shrink as an icicle of prudery from the warmth of sentimentalism engendered by pathological fireside studies in the twilight.

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Look only with the cold and hasty glance of the misogynist on the peeping well-turned ankle so innocently displayed.

Regard with distrust the ginger and biscuits so lovingly offered, as doth the atonic small boy the spoonful of jam from the stern parent.

Withhold the fervour of admiration at the more daring achievements in millinery audacity, lest in the consideration of the material ye wander unguardedly to the personal beneath.

Take safety in talking "shop" when the duties of "accompanying home" the lone lady med. devolve upon you and sternly deny yourself the touching and tender good-bye.

Abhor virtuously the compromising and awkward questions of the fair junior, lest your blush of modesty become the by-word of the unregenerate.

Dread as a pit of serpents the demure desire to "look at your eye" in the ophthalmic department of the hospital, in the absence of that safety which alone exists with the presence of numbers.

These, and many more warnings would I give, but that space forbids, and I must conclude with these few remarks in the hope that the warning herein given may serve to postpone, even for a short time, that state of subjugation that we are inevitably coming to, the path to which we are making easier by giving way to the temptations and fascinations of the lady med., as above set forth, thereby strengthening her authority and influence till the latter will become such an enormous factor that our subjugation will be complete, and our total extinction but a question of utility or otherwise in that day when (speaking from a medical standpoint) women alone shall wield the lancet, and man shall be little less than nurse and a little more than slave.