When I felt rather overcome with [my father's] opposition, I said as firmly as I could, that I must have this or something else, that I could not live without some real work.

At first he was very discouraging, to my astonishment then, but now I fancy he did it as a forlorn hope to check me; he said the whole idea was so disgusting that he could not entertain it for a moment.

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson

I asked [my father] what there was to make doctoring more disgusting than nursing, which women were always doing, and which ladies had done publicly in the Crimea. He could not tell me.

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson