“Is there not a much better thing for women than to be ‘medical men’ and that is to be medical women? Has not the cart been put before the horse in this women’s medical movement?”

When thinking of female doctors, most people’s minds turn to 19th century pioneers such as Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. This view, however, masks a much longer and richer story of women in medicine stretching back through time.

Female apothecaries, herbalists, writers of medicinal recipes, midwives – and of course doctors – have all worked within a male-dominated world for many centuries. Yet their roles have often been purposely obscured and frequently provoked fierce debate.

This September England and Wales’ oldest royal medical college, the Royal College of Physicians, marks its 500th anniversary with a major new exhibition that confounds prevailing notions of female participation in the medical professions and wider society. ‘This vexed question’: 500 years of women in medicine runs from 19 September 2018 to 18 January 2019.

Taking its title from the comments of a progressive Victorian male medical student who lamented the physical violence with which some of his peers reacted to the ‘vexed question’ of women training to be doctors, the exhibition explores the intriguing stories, and battles, of famous and forgotten female figures from more than half a millennium of medical practice. Highlights of the exhibition include: Britain’s first female doctors?, Women persecuted for practising medicine and Midwives and apothecaries.

As well as a whole range of events including walking tours, exhibition tours and a public programme.