at the university, vögtlin and her few fellow women students benefited from particular support by the faculty, even as many conservatives decried the medical education of women as shameful and as a waste of time. after vögtlin passed the examinations with honours, she studied gynaecology in leipzig and worked in a dresden maternity ward. on 11 july 1874 she attained her doctorate in zürich with a dissertation on the topic of the state of the female genitalia in labour. it required the intervention of her father for her to obtain an official permission to practice medicine in zürich.