Forty years ago an unassuming old lady dressed in grey travelled up and down England with the novel purpose of interesting Catholic young women in a medical career so that they might devote themselves to the women of India, who could not be treated by men doctors. All doors were open to her since her family was well known. Her father, Duncan McLaren, had been a member of Parliament for Scotland; her stepmother, Priscilla, was the sister of John Bright ; her home, from her earliest infancy, was a rendezvous of men and women earnestly interested in social problems. In her youth the Ragged Schools of Dr Guthrie occupied much of her time. Later she became an active member of the suffragette movement. The white slave trade was to her not something to be deplored as a necessary evil; she took active steps campaigning against it,, even so far as to interview the Queen of Spain on behalf of its abolition.

Already well on in the thirties, she became an active sympathiser and friend of Elizabeth Blackwell and her companions in their endeavour to study medicine and obtain degrees. With a natural aptitude for the care of the sick frequently seen in her family circle and her great desire to help suffering humanity, she herself decided to study medicine. As the licensing in degrees in medicine for women had not yet been sanctioned by Parliament, she went to France to study. She was the first and only woman at the Medical Faculty of Montpellier, but was treated with respect and consideration. In 1876 she graduated. In order to be able to practise in her own country, she took an examination in Dublin, then the only medical school in Great Britain to grant medical degrees to women.