23. Dr James Barry: Unmasking History with Pioneering Force

The Intriguing Legacy of Dr. James Barry: Medicine, Identity, and History

This episode introduces the compelling story of Dr. James Barry, a pioneering medical professional in British history whose gender identity remains a topic of speculation. Born Margaret Ann Bulkley in 1795 in Cork, Ireland, Barry pursued a successful medical career by presenting as a man, despite women being barred from such roles at the time. Known for performing one of the first successful cesarean sections and campaigning tirelessly for better sanitation and medical care in army barracks and prisons, Barry's legacy is marked by their professional accomplishments and enigmatic life. The episode touches on the nuances of Barry's gender identity, the challenges faced, and their ultimate impact on the medical field and society.

Other episodes mentioned:
17. Elizabeth Garret Anderson
11. Empress Matilda
10. Lise Meitner

Sources:
The National Archives
A biography by Rachel Holmes called Scanty Particulars: The Life of Dr
James Barry
The London Guides blog article about museums and galleries of London
The University of Edinburgh alumni website
The biography Dr James Barry: A Woman Ahead of Her Time by Dr
Michael du Preez and Jeremy Dronfield
The Wellcome collection’s copies of documents from the Public Records
Office

00:00 Introduction to the F1 Craze
00:39 Welcoming Cara and Vicky
01:05 Introducing Dr. James Barry
03:31 Barry's Early Life and Education
08:00 Barry's Medical Training and Challenges
15:23 Barry's Career and Gender Identity
18:39 Margaret's Letter and Career Beginnings
19:19 Cape Town Deployment and Early Achievements
20:11 Barry's Medical Milestones
21:02 Campaigns for Sanitation and Overcrowding
21:24 Pub Trivia and Personal Anecdotes
23:00 Barry's Temperament and Duels
24:03 Conflicts with Florence Nightingale
26:09 Barry's Global Impact and Promotions
28:45 Retirement and Death
30:13 Posthumous Speculations and Legacy
34:32 Reflections on Gender and Identity
38:04 Closing Remarks and Acknowledgements

Transcript

audio1084464312: 0:08

They're all into it. We're, we all have been swept up in the Netflix drive to survive. Uh, amazing F1 wave. Yeah, so we are held in complete contempt by real fans, but hey, I'm having a good time. This will probably be the only race of the year I get up at this kind of time for, but it was just because it was the first one I was all in and then the race was insane. Are you ready to, you ready to rock? Shall we go? Shall we? Yeah. Hi Kara. Okay. Hi Vicki. How are you? I'm very well, thank you. And excited to talk to you about somebody who is so interesting and. Quite a mysterious character in their way. Oh my gosh. I'm so ready. Well welcome everyone to, she changed history, the lovely Carra is with us today and she's got a fabulous story to tell us. Alright, off you go. Let's hit it. Okay. So in the coming weeks as we're recording this, the world will be observing Transgender Day of Visibility, which falls on March the 31st each year. So that felt like a really good time to talk about a figure from British history called Dr. Barry, whose gender presentation was something private, obviously, but also became a topic of public speculation and was a key to their career because of the time in which they lived. Mm-hmm. I wanted to start with a sort of a broad disclaimer and say this is a nuanced story and a nuanced topic, and I, I, I always want to, and we'll try to here, stick to the facts, not make assumptions. Um, I'm, I've been as careful as it could be about the language, so I'll be using they instead of he or she, because there is ambiguity about how Barry thought of their own gender identity and some of the historical sources use wording that would now be considered inappropriate or outmoded. And I use those words advisedly and in context, but. Sure I am, I'm open to feedback. I am no expert. So at me if you wanna, I I am, I'm absolutely open to it. Hit okay. Exactly. And equally if I'm responding and I don't respond, um, in the. Current political way, just call me out. I'm totally happy to be, come down. Uh, yes, exactly. We, we kind of need the listeners to, to chime in on their areas of expertise where we are. We are doing our level best, but we are, we're open. We're open to learn, aren't we? We're learning. Let's go. Yep. Okay. So the sources for today then are the National Archives, a biography by a writer called Rachel Holmes called Scanty Particulars the life of Dr. James Barry, the London Guides. You know the fellows with the umbrella who take you around. Oh, seriously. Very cool. They, they have blogs about, museums and galleries of London. So there's piece there. The University of Edinburgh alumni website. Another biography, this one called Dr. James Barry, a woman ahead of her time. Mm-hmm. By Michael Dupris and Jeremy Drawn Field and the welcome collections, copies of documents from the public records office. So Barry, today we have the story of Dr. James Barry, and it might not sound like an obvious choice for a pod called she changed history, but stick with me please. So to start us off from the National Archives, I've got some facts of Dr. Barry's life, which super concise. Born in 1795 in Cork, Ireland. Barry became a leading doctor with a glittering medical career who did much to raise standards of medical care in and outside of the army. Barry chose to exclusively live and identify as a man having been assigned female at birth. Mm-hmm. So, yeah, Barry at birth was assigned female and named Margaret Ann, bulky or bulky. born into poverty, with a couple of siblings. A father who struggled financially, in common with a lot of the stories that we talk about. The family was broken apart and Margaret's mother brought them to England when they were 15 years old. Okay, so brace yourself. We've got a little bit of Empress Matilda style recycling and reuse of names here. Yeah. It's not quite Empress Matilda levels, but Jeffrey. Jeffrey and Jeffrey Jr. Yeah. It's just a little bit like, huh? But then you go, oh, I see. Okay. So Margaret, as was Margaret, had an uncle called James. Barry. Yep. So after they immigrated, Margaret's mother reached out to Uncle James and he couldn't or wouldn't help them financially, but after he died, they inherited, they also were in contact with his circle of friends who were sort of, he was an artist and a professor. They were artists, they were liberals. They were politically active. So Margaret. And Margaret's mother decided to use the money they inherited from Uncle James as a nest egg to help pay for Margaret to pursue medical training at the University of Edinburgh. But the hitch was women did not gain the right to be admitted to universities in Britain at all until 1868. As you know, from past episodes, they didn't gain the legal right to be trained as doctors until 1876. So at this point it's 1808 and Margaret attending med school is not straightforward. They're like way ahead of their time. And also helpful with that. Is that your mum? Wants to invest in you. Yes. How nice is that? Yes. And, and is willing to kind of pull some strings and make some plans. So the alumni pages on the University of Edinburgh website says that when Uncle James died, a plan was hatched that they would study. They, Barry would study medicine in Edinburgh disguised as a man. And then once their family friend, general Francisco de Miranda Was trying at the time to liberate and take charge of Venezuela and then, Margaret would go to Venezuela and practice medicine there as a woman. Right. That's the plan. Got it. Yeah. Like, what's Venezuela got to do with anything? Barry Margaret, as was obviously identified, I can't do what I want to do in my own country. I'm willing to bend the rules and do what it takes to do it. But like Lisa Menner, like some of the other women you talked about, there comes a point where you have to make this decision to immigrate if, if the laws of the land don't support you, you want to do what you want to do, you go where you can do it. So that's where we're at, obviously very determined. Yeah. And also very like in line with today, like weirdly because of going after that a way. Yeah. And the way politics is going, people are considering moving to a country that supports what they wanna do and where Yes. They wanna live. And you know, it just shows that. We have the same dilemmas, hundreds a years later. It's, slightly different context, but the, the core decision that some people are making is the same. Right. It is, it, it's disturbing to think that we're still there. Yeah. That's a good word. So Barry Med School, they've got this clever plan. Yep. And the sneaky even. Well, they, they, they, they have to work for it. so Barry applies to the med school and has some, some work experience, having. Enlisted, apparently in the Army from about age 15 or so. Okay. Again, an army that only accepted men, so quite how that worked. So as a woman potentially, I don't know as a man at this point, I think it, it, it evidently must have been, as you say, as a man, but then goes along to the university to apply. And because Barry was of small stature and had no facial hair and a high voice, the university Senate moved to block the application and block them taking their entrance exams because they simply did not appear old enough. And if you've got the document that I'm mm-hmm. My notes, there's a portrait there and looking at the portrait. Oh gosh. Right. You can see the point. This person. Looks to be 11 years old, you would have some questions if they turned up and said, hi, I'm here to apply to uni. It's also just, and also I wanna be a doctor. I feel like, can you reach the table? Would I give you a scalpel? No, possibly, no. I, there's also a chance that portrait, I'm no artist, but between you and me, I'm saying it's perhaps not technically the best portrait that's ever been done. So who knows? Maybe it's a bit unfair. But anyway, ultimately, whatever misgivings they had, they did let Barry sit the entrance exams and they took their place at the university. And in Edburg, which is a beautiful university and very prestige and and has a, a rich history in the field of medicine, which, I'm sure we'll dig into more at other points. So Barry is now living at uni and doing their, their studies, and you think about your own uni experience and how do you disguise the physical fact of your body if you are presenting yourself as something other than what, what your physical appearance would suggest. So in a modern way, you think, how do you even do that? But social protocols around sort of personal privacy and demure, is that the right word? Like discretion in the 18 hundreds were pretty broad, so it wouldn't have been, it wouldn't have been. Alarming for someone to simply not show their body to, you know, you wouldn't be in a changing room having a chat. Yeah. Putting on your deodorant. Frankly, even now, I would sooner break a cyanide tooth than have a chat with someone that I know in a changing room. No, but Barry just kind of kept themselves to themselves and wore kind of heavy clothing that supported thick, I imagine. Yeah. Yeah. thick weaves and. Found any more feminine aspects of their physiology so that they did not show to be a female body. Mm-hmm. A bit likeon Jack A. Little bit. That's kind of what I'm thinking. That is such a good, and if you look at the gorgeous, gorgeous fashion that's in Gentleman Jack, you can see, I mean they played up the sexy obviously,'cause it's a fiction and it's kind of about that. But you can see how the tailoring of that day could be turned to your advantage if you were trying to sort of. Just give yourself a straight up and down, more masculine presenting line. More of that tailoring today please, I think. Don't mind, comfy. Don't mind that at all. Yeah, don't mind that at all. Um, I am, I'm slightly disturbed by the prospect of the smell of wet tweed. They're doing their program and University of Burgh, as you say, illustrious, respected university. But get this. The program to become a surgeon back at that time looked a bit like this. Okay, so Barry qualified as an MD in 1812. what an md a medical doctor, and that took one year, one teen, teeny, tiny year, a medical doctor. They had to write a thesis. And interestingly, the thesis Barry wrote was on a condition called femoral hernia. And apparently it's a condition more commonly presenting in women. So that's, that's an interesting choice. Yeah, it's cool. Um, then Barry went on to guys in St. Thomas's, another institution we would still recognize today as being, uh, in the forefront. Uh, that was to Stu study as a surgeon and they studied under some really well respected and renowned surgeons at the time. Right. And then had to pass an exam at the Royal Car College of Surgeons. And that happened in 1813. So, oh, so like, so two years guys done and dusted. Yeah. It's horrifying. I, thought's a busy patient stuff in these two years. Is it, I imagine it's just lots of theory and lots of looking at things in jars. I think there's also that really gnarly. Surgical historical thing of, you can see it in like books like The Mad Woman's Ball, where basically they rock up and watch the surgeons do a surgery and that's your training. I. Like, I've sat in a, an auditorium about 35 feet away. I didn't vomit or faint. Yeah, right. I'm just watching it'cause there's like 800 students all watching it. Great. We're qualified, you know what I mean? Jesus Christ. Yeah. So to, to put everyone's mind at ease. I read that and went, holy hell. That's alarming. Nowadays, if you want to be a surgeon in, in Britain, you typically take between 14 and 16 years. People listening, please do not cancel any procedures you might have booked. It's fine. We do live the NHS. We do, We all had to start somewhere and that's where they were. It was a pioneering field. They were doing what they were doing. Two years. Two years. And at the end of that two years, I may have mentioned it was two years. Barry became the first person to graduate as a medical doctor in Britain, who was a woman. Okay, under the radar. They didn't know that they'd done that under radar without the university knowing. So yes, without perhaps even them wishing to be known that way. So there is this question Mark Speaky, but the first openly female candidate, as you well know, was 50 years later in 1865, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, who you have done love another pod about and what number pod is she? Excellent one. Lemme get what number 17. Okay, so Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, pod number 17, and another one who exploited a loophole as you cover to, to go through her training. Yeah. Simon did a cracking gel, didn't he? Okay, cool. So this was slightly before, slightly before and under the radar where she was o openly going for it and fighting hard. Yeah. Yeah. so Barry now has done those years of training, is qualified and ready to work, but sadly for them and the plan that they had hatched with mom and the family friends, possibly, also, sadly for the people of Venezuela, I don't know the revolution, there did not go general Miranda's way. So all the plans of what happened after qualification had to be abandoned. And Barry. At that point has the choice, they leave the career that they've just trained for and love, or they continue to live as a man to practice in Britain. Yeah, it's a tricky one, isn't it? Because they're probably living it as well, is, my guess if you are studying and learning and your mom's invested in you, and you wanna thrive in that environment, don't you? That's it. They're not doing the easy thing. They're doing the hard thing. Yes. And you don't do the hard thing unless you have a really strong motivation. So we also understanding and values and your compass and all that, you know, and skill, absolutely. Mm-hmm. And as an extra layer to that. Because we don't know how Barry thought about their own gender. We did. This might not have been a tricky decision at all. This might have been quite straightforward, but what we can say is Barry went all in because immediately after achieving that qualification as a surgeon, they not only carried on living and working as a man, they also immediately joined the all male British army. So Right, okay. Like putting a tin lid on it. That is what I am doing. Mm-hmm. And again. That question, how do you get away with disguising your physical gender, if you're enlisting? And again, it's the timeframe that we're working within because people entering the military as an officer You're sort of grandfathered in because you're a certain social class, you've attained a certain level of education, so the door is open to you. You're not subject to the same scrutiny, I suppose. Also I'm thinking what's the alternative for Barry? So, absolutely. Went all hard, all in, but what was the, you just go back Yeah. Without knowing the detail of it, what, what springs to mind is, I suppose the limitations of the gender. What useful application can I get? How do I help people in that way? Yeah. Midwifery maybe, right? Yeah. Being kind of a village, like a quote unquote healer. That's not satisfying to someone who has trained at the absolute cutting edge of surgery in a time when surgery was in its infancy. And that was such a powerful thing to be able to do to help people. I have to say, there's also historical records, a letter that Barry. While still identified as Margaret wrote to their brother saying he, I guess, had decided to leave the army, the brother, to become a lawyer. No slouch. Okay. Uh, and Margaret kind of wrote a letter seemingly scolding him and saying, well, if I was a boy, I'd be a soldier. I can't believe you're, you know, throwing this away. So, okay. Perhaps that's interesting. Yeah. I don't think it was, um, I don't think it was like a b-list choice for them. Yeah. I think they were into it, so. Got you. Um, yeah, that started the career progression. I'm gonna try to kind of go through quick, quickly, because like a lot of the people we talk about it was hit the ground running and go, go, go after it. So Barry was. Deployed to Cape Town. Okay. And in short order, um, they ended up attending to medical matters for the kind of the big cheeses, the high ranking officers, and gaining favor using that time honored combo of impressing people with being very capable, but also very charismatic. And that won them a position whilst still at a relatively low military ranking to be the Colonial medical inspector, um, in Cape Town. Sweet. And that sort of set the ball rolling. Okay. And to kind of give you the, the greatest hits in a condu condensed way. Um, this is an excerpt from the London Tourist Guide website, So we've got the top four here. Barry was one of the first British surgeons in medical history. They say the first, but that's disputed to perform a successful cesarean section, saving both the lives of the mother and the baby. That's fascinating. Um, right. They were ultimately INS Inspector General of military hospitals, but we'll come back to that. The first person born a woman to become a member of the Royal College of Surgeons 98 years before they officially admitted women. Yeah. You know, our, our episode 17 notwithstanding and apparently just to name drop, uh, old nappy bee, Napoleon Bonaparte summoned Dr. Barry to treat the son of his private secretary because the rumors are so great. Oh, I said four. There's actually five. Um, sorry. This is the most important one of all. I think Barry worked consistently throughout their career to campaign against poor sanitation and overcrowding in prisons and army barracks at every single place they were deployed to, which was many. Nice. They were out there working for the great and the good for people who didn't have a voice for themselves. Ugh. sound fabulous, right? And would you like a little bit of pub trivia? I mean, you know, I love a pub quiz. Let's go. Right. So, okay, here you go. The little baby that was born of the C-section that Barry. Performed. The first one. was the baby was named after Barry. the baby's name was John Barry Sig Mun. And then that family carried on the tradition of naming the Boy Children John Barry, and ultimately one of the descendants, ended up being the Prime Minister of South Africa. So, my God, from 1924 to 1939, John Barry, oh, not Mun, sorry. John Barry, Mick Herzog. Uh, there you go. So little baby carried on throughout the generations, bringing that name forward, who he ultimately, originally belonged to. Mean Uncle James, John, who wouldn't help James, who wouldn't help them. So back on track here. Sorry. Any of those achievements in a career I think would've been remarkable. True. I'll take it. Yeah. All of them. All of them. Whilst carrying the stress, presumably of like, might, might someone find out my gender and then I'm going to be disbarred, sacrificed. Whatever happens to doctors, surgeons, you get kicked out, you're done. So an absolute overachiever, but not necessarily. A nice person to know. So, oh yeah, I'll go back here to the University of Edinburgh who say Barry was considered a bad tempered, squeaky voiced, eccentric, often teased by colleagues for their voice. Okay. Mean, really mean. And it said that Barry challenged tormentors to duals and shot one man dead through the lung, and their note teasing died down after this particular incident. Well, I bet it did. I mean, I'm not surprised. Nobody likes a bully, but again, that's kind of overachieving In the avenging yourself stakes shooting someone through the lung. It's, it's a such intense period, but were juul's quite common back then. It probably, probably a Juul today is probably much more, I tell you my only frame of reference is Hamilton. It's Hamilton. That's exactly, I I they happened in a hundred percent of cases all disputes and one sheets. Yeah. Yep. That's what they, they say, but no, Barry apparently actually did the thing. Um, Barry even had beef with Florence Nightingale. So there's a quote from her basically saying, what a horrid little man, um, Florence Knight Gae was the beef. I don't know the details of it. It seems like Barry was on a horse, on a battlefield. They met, he was rude and dismissive. Right. She was not having it. I don't, I wasn't there. I think it gonna win I's like internalized misogyny a little bit. Well, I. I wonder that too. Yeah. Or perhaps a desire to keep a, a woman at arm's length who might stop things. Correct. Yeah. Like you might see through something. These guys aren't going to, I better, you know, take a strong move to put you in your place and not get off my horse. You know, Florence Nightingale man, Jesus pick a song synonymous with caregiving. Um, so yeah, Barry is probably more than a little bit spicy. Um, but those qualities of not shying away from a fight of being so self-assured and centered in their own beliefs. Are probably what allowed Barry to challenge the status quo. They had the stomach for an argument. They had the stomach to stand up to the politicians and the officials who were setting medical policy and to say, this is not good enough. People are becoming sick. Yeah. So that pattern of pushing back and making improvements to benefit the troops, the prisoners, the people who did not have a voice, it just came up again and again. It's a tosa, isn't it? Yeah, it really is. And these are people who are very also confident in their own, the rightness of their own opinions. And someone coming with medical fact and meeting fire with fire is what made change happen. So Barry's out there, South Africa, Mauritius, Jamaica, St. Helena, the West Indies, my gosh, travel bunny, traveling, posting military, military posting, military posting, ruffling feathers all the way, but had some friends in high places because of the sheer efficacy of the work. So sounds like they know how to play the game. Yeah, I think it sounds very political nuance and very like they know how to navigate this world and that, to be honest in itself is a very stronger skill set. It really isn't is and need bluff and bluster with just as much pure, you know, like, yeah, I do know actually. Thank you Mr. Mann. And that won over as long as you deliver. You know, you can sort of out bully a bully sometimes, but. Nobody can argue with fact if you have soldiers dying strategy Ry and then they're not dying of dysentery because of mo moves that you said were necessary. That's that, isn't it? Yeah. Like you can't, you can't out bully fact. Um, so they work their way through in this way and then were promoted in 1840 to become the principal medical officer in the army. And let's not stop there off to Corfu to become the Deputy Inspector General of hospitals on to Canada, which was a British commonwealth territory. Is that the right term? So off to Canada in 1857 to become the Inspector General of hospitals, which is. A very fine ranking. Hi. Hi. Yeah. And again, extending that program of care and fact-based service to include prisoners, people with leprosy as well as the soldiers and their families. We're not just being, transactional about it. We're actually caring about the wellbeing of people. So, I have a picture, an actual photograph of Barry, with. it says a long serving butler called John. And then there's a little dog called Psyche. Barry was apparently immensely fond of animals. So there you have, Barry and John in London. Gentleman mode. and that is ultimately what Barry was to become in 1859. Barry was forcibly retired from the army. He didn't retire. They retired him, because he was old by their standards and in poor health. And Barry fought hard to not be retired, but ultimately lost. That sounds consistent to his character. Yes. You don't tell me, I tell you when I'm ready to retire, that is absolutely consistent with his character. definitely. that being said, the army may have had a point because it was just six years later that Barry did die and not a good death, sadly, died of dysentery, which is miserable. Um, what's that? Oh, it's a gastrointestinal disease. Okay. It is. I think. It's a waterborne illness, it turns up in areas of poor sanitation. Okay. I'm not saying London at the time was that, but this is a person who's traveled a lot. dysentery and I think on the death certificate, the doctor put it down to, oh, he used a really interesting turn of phrase, which was something like unconventional dietary choices. And Barry is known to have been a vegetarian, which I suppose in that day where you ate like a lamb chop for breakfast, it probably did seem peculiar to, to eat only vegetables. But one way or the other, poor old berry is now. Dead. And this is the point where the identity that they have worked hard to preserve and keep private Oh, of course became a matter of public speculation. So the facts are as follows, A person, a woman, went to the media to say Dr. Barry, the, medical inspector from the British Army as was, was physically female. And there is, a kind of narrative behind that, that the person came in to wash their body to prepare them for. The funeral procedures. At any rate, there is some speculation about she, the woman who disclosed this might have been motivated by money or perhaps had a grudge Yeah. But one way or the other, she went to the media and said Dr. Barry was physically female. there was even more already unreliable sources. Yeah. It's, it's sketchy, but the historical documents do support the facts of Barry having a female presentation. Okay. Whatever her reasons interesting why she chose to make that public and the ethics of making that public, I'm not even gonna touch because Yeah. Yeah. That's, it just seems. It seems too shrouded and mystery doesn't feel like a great thing to do, obviously. Uh, but whatever the reasons it caused a media sensation. The colleagues who had worked with Barry over the years were contacted and there are all these articles and you've kind of got people expressing surprise. You've got people saying absolutely cannot be true, and people saying, I knew it all along. I, I don't know what Florence Nightingale would've made of it if she was still around at the time. But ultimately the comment that I'll kind of pull in at this point was, from someone whose position was Registrar General. They went to the medical examiner who issued Barry's death certificate on which it was declared that Barry was male. And the Registrar General asked that person, Mr. McKinnon, what's the deal? And Mr. McKinnon's comment was, it was none of my business, whether Dr. Barry was a male or a female. That as I thought he might likely be neither. whether Dr. Barry was male, female, or hermaphrodite again, in outmoded term. But it said in context, I do not know, nor had I any purpose in making that discovery as I could positively swear to the identity of the body as being that of the person who I had been acquainted with as Inspector General of hospitals for a period of eight or nine years. Yes, Mr. McKinnon. Right. Loving this guy. So we cannot know what was in Mr. McKinnon's mind as he wrote those words, but to my thinking, what I take from it is this Barry. Was the person McKinnon knew. Yeah. And whatever was going on in their pants was of no relevance to anyone other than Barry themselves. Yeah. Had no bearing on their professional capabilities. They were just Dr. Barry as skilled, a practitioner as you could hope to meet. Ferocious ally, fearsome enemy, which it's very a, she changed history take. Right. That's, that's what we appreciate. We need more of that thinking. Now we do think these, the gender limitations on almost every single job you could think to do with some very specific exceptions, gender limitations on work. Are inappropriate and they diminish all of us. They take people out of the workforce who would be so capable Oh my God. And would be so productive and would progress humanity Exactly. That we could ever realize. So all of that around the professional capability piece having been said, I will now in my last, thoughts on the topics, mention this, that. The University of Edinburgh puts it this way to give Barry the full respect they're due and to refer to them by the correct gender. It would be useful to know if they considered themselves to be a man or if they, they identified as a woman all along after decades of pretending. And, you know, they may have considered themselves non-binary. And we, we probably will never know because the, treasure troves of source material about this have been pretty thoroughly examined. Yeah, there's been a lot of time, I imagine there has and, and, but why such an interesting character people have really sought to kind of dive in and now with, a lGBTQ plus lens, a modern lens on this issue. Yeah. There are people who want to know this for an entirely new set of social reasons. So I I, I, I get the historical interest, but whatever the case may be about how Barry saw themselves, the life's work speaks for itself. For itself. And the uncertainty really only serves to show to my mind that gender non-conforming people are and always have been a productive part of our society. So, oh, yeah, that is where I leave it, Dr. Barry. I did feel like really light after the Dr. McKinnon quote. I was like, yes. Like, yeah, that's articulated better than I ever could. That, the work's more important than the person, I acknowledge that I have chosen a specific set of lines from a long, a longer letter, but if you go onto the welcome, um, collection website, you can see a photocopy of the letter. I truly believe that it was a matter of, of logic and well, don't be absurd. That doesn't even matter. And you know, yes, yes, yes, yes. Mr. McKinnon love it. Oh, ra, thank you so much. Yeah, nice. You did that. Yeah. Really good narrative. Thank you. Excellent. Yeah, this is nice one. I have to say my, my great friend Phil is, a huge medical history buff. And the reason I know about this person is that Phil loaned me, one of the biographies that I, I cited in the sources scanty particulars. It's really been interesting to revisit this person, because when Phil loaned me that book, it was probably 10 years ago, say, okay. And the book had been knocking about for more than a decade and already the difference in how we view a life and a person's right to their own gender identity. You know, for our, for our purposes. The facts of a woman's ability to do certain jobs or so on is, those are just plain facts, but the, the kind of more murky things about how, how a person might feel about their own identity have really started, the thinking has moved on since I last read about this character, and that's been fascinating to dive into. Hey, thank you Phil. Shout out to, yeah, Phil there. Super star. He's dude, he's a good actor. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Well, thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks very much. Well, we hope you enjoyed it too. Thank you for listening. if you did enjoy that, please share. Please share our podcast, like rate, subscribe. we're on Instagram, well now on YouTube properly. I've understood. Has worked YouTube now. Yeah, well done. Nice one. but I don't think an Instagram likes us anymore. I think. Oh, the old, it's uh, the old algorithms gone on the turn. It's, it hates us a little bit of the minute, so anything you can do to share would be very, very valuable. Listeners, thank you very much and we'll be back next week. Thanks Vicki. Thanks listeners. Thanks. Bye.