Matilda Chaplin Ayrton

Dr. Matilda Chaplin Ayrton MD (c. 1846 – 19 July 1883) was a British physician. She studied medicine in London, Edinburgh and Paris, pursuing higher studies at the latter's universities. She travelled to Japan, where she opened a school for midwives, and was an author of anthropological studies.

Matilda Chaplin was born at Honfleur, France around 1846. After beginning her studies in art she commenced the study of medicine in 1867, and continued to do so until her death. She spent two years at the Ladies' Medical College, and having passed the preliminary examination at Apothecaries' Hall in 1869, she presented herself for the later examination, but was refused admission on the ground of her gender.

Recognised as one of the heroic 'seven against Edinburgh' women, also known as the Edinburgh Seven, she eventually matriculated at the University of Edinburgh, but was barred from instruction in higher branches of medicine. Legal intervention allowed her to gain high honours in anatomy and surgery at the extramural examinations held in 1870 and 1871 at Surgeons' Hall, Edinburgh, before a judgment in 1872 finally prohibited women students.

In 1871, when she found the chief medical classes in England and Scotland closed to her, she resolved to complete her education at Paris, where every facility was afforded her. The University of Paris recognised her abilities by bestowing upon her the degrees of Bachelier ès-Sciences and Bachelier ès-Lettres. During her studies Chaplin maintained connection with Edinburgh, attending some of the classes open to her there.

In 1872 she married her cousin, the noted scientist William Edward Ayrton, an Edinburgh student, and a distinguished pupil of Sir William Thomson. Early in the following year she obtained a certificate in midwifery from the London Obstetric Society, the only medical qualification then obtainable by women in England, and shortly afterwards accompanied her husband to Japan, where he had been appointed to a professorship in the Imperial College of Engineering in Tokyo.

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