author
Matilda Chaplin Ayrton
1846–1883
A pioneering 19th-century physician, she helped push open the doors of medical education for women and carried that work as far as Japan. Her life joined science, travel, and writing in a way that still feels strikingly modern.
1 Audiobook
Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories
by Matilda Chaplin Ayrton
About the author
Born in Honfleur, France, in 1846 to English parents, Matilda Chaplin Ayrton became one of the Edinburgh Seven, the first women formally matriculated at a British university. She studied medicine in London, Edinburgh, and Paris at a time when women faced steep barriers to medical training, and she is remembered as part of the generation that forced those barriers into public view.
After her studies, she traveled to Japan, where she opened a school for midwives. She also wrote about Japanese life and culture, and her best-known book, Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories, reflects that curiosity as well as her eye for everyday detail.
She died in London in 1883, only 37 years old. Even in a short life, she left behind a remarkable record: physician, traveler, observer, and one of the early women whose determination helped widen the possibilities of higher education and professional life for others.