Sir, – Further to "Dr James Barry: the Irishwoman who fooled the British Empire" (September 3rd), Cork-born Margaret Bulkley did, indeed, have to disguise herself as a man in order to practise medicine in the first half of the 19th century, but when women became doctors in their own right, Ireland was in the vanguard.
In 1877, the King and Queen’s College of Ireland – later the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (RCPI) – was the first body in the British Isles to allow women to register and get a licence to practise medicine. In 1885, the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) opened its medical school to women, becoming the first in Great Britain and Ireland to allow women to take its examinations.
In 1886, the RCPI and the RCSI agreed to a conjoint degree that was registrable. In 1886, out of 50 women on the UK’s General Medical Council register, 44 had entered it as Dublin licentiates. – Yours, etc,
Dr JOHN DOHERTY,
Vienna.