In 1850, a group of women applied for admission to Harvard Medical School. The faculty at first agreed to admit them but was forced to withdraw the admission after protests from the all-male students. About two decades later, the school would have an official admission policy on women but not in the direction you’d expect.

In the late 1860s, Harvard Medical School adopted an official No Women Policy. The reasons were as follows : 1. Students could fall in love which could lead to disastrous marriages. 1. Women could have trouble keeping up with the academic demands and slow down men’s progress. 1. A woman’s future was so different from a man’s that educating them together was of no use. 1. Academic stress may become so severe that they could fall ill and destroy their chances of a good marriage.

The reasons may seem incoherent now but they made absolute sense to the school board at the time. You can even make a few inferences about societal attitudes during those times. For example, the first rule above implies that society did not think that people should marry because of love. You could fall in love or you could marry. But you did these two things with two different people. Society was also very apprehensive about the negative effects of the education of women to the institution of marriage.

The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, founded in 1893, would have followed suit had it not been for a group of wealthy, decidedly feminist, educated women from Baltimore. These women pledged half a million dollars on the condition that the school admit both sexes. The school now had to choose between following in the footsteps of the best medical school in the country or getting an extremely generous donation.

Enter Dr William Osler, considered the father of modern medicine and a co-founder of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Osler did not think that society had any use for female doctors at the time. He also suggested that single women could study medicine but had to drop out once married. But money was on the line. And money has a way of clearing up your mind fast. So, he and the Johns Hopkins school board decided to accept the donation and admit women into the college.

Now, the school had a chance to test if the fears of the Harvard school board would come true. But at least they also had lots of money in their pockets. Not bad.