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."

"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."

"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."

"I think he will probably come round in time, I mean to renew the subject pretty often."

"[My mother] speaks of my step being a source of life-long pain to her, that it is a living death, etc. By the same post I had several letters from anxious relatives, telling me that it was my duty to come home and thus ease my mother's anxiety."