The Edinburgh Women's Medical Society was a reflection of a period - late nineteenth century, early twentieth century - when women found many obstacles in their path towards careers in medicine on an equal footing with men. By 1916, the student journal The Gambolier was able to observe that women were finding work in 'fields which, some thirty years ago, would have been regarded as belonging entirely to men' - Public Health officers, private practitioners, lecturers, working in labs, in scientific research and in the organisation and management of hospitals. Meetings of the Edinburgh Women's Medical Society included lectures on subjects as diverse as: the pituitary gland; diseases of the bile passages; germs and disease; and, haemophilia.