Medal given as a prize for pathology at the Medical College for Women, Edinburgh, Scotland, 1905

Medal, silvered, Medical College for Women, Edinburgh, to S. Jean Meiklejohn, for Pathology, 1905, made by Kirkwood and Son, Edinburgh

S Jean Meiklejohn was awarded this medal in the academic year 1904-05 for winning first prize for pathology. The Medical College for Women in Edinburgh, Scotland, was founded in 1889 by Elsie Inglis (1864-1917). Inglis had studied at the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women, which had been founded by Sophia Jex Blake (1865-1925), one of the first women in Britain to gain a medical qualification. The medal shows a woman dressed in classical robes with an owl at her feet. The owl represents the Roman goddess Minerva or her Greek equivalent Athena, who was the goddess of wisdom. There is also a snake coiled around an urn. A coiled snake is associated with medicine and especially the Greek god of healing, Asklepios.