As a result of the selection of Dr. Ashmun and of the other members of the administrative board, who were chosen with a view to their availability as sympathetic colleagues, letters of protest from several physicians appeared in the newspapers complaining that the new hospital was being conducted on unscientific and shallow principles, disapproved of by the leading men of the profession.  Selma was indignant yet thrilled.  She promptly took steps to refute the charge, and explained that the hostility of these correspondents proceeded from envy and hide-bound reluctance to adopt new and revolutionizing expedients.  Through the aid of Mrs. Earle and Miss Luella Bailey a double-leaded column in the Benham Sentinel set forth the merits of the new departure in medicine, which was cleverly described as the revolt of the talented young men of the profession from the tyranny of their conservative elders.  Benham became divided in opinion as to the merits of this controversy, and Selma received a number of anonymous letters through the post approving her stand in behalf of advanced, independent thought.  Among the physicians who were opposed to her administration of the hospital she recognized with satisfaction the name of a Dr. Paget, who, as she happened to know, was Mrs. Hallett Taylor’s medical adviser.

Another matter in which Selma became interested was the case of Mrs. Hamilton.  She was a woman who had been born in the neighborhood of Benham, but had lived for twenty years in England, and had been tried in England by due process of law for the murder of her husband and sentenced to imprisonment for life.  Some of the people of the state who had followed the testimony as reported in the American newspapers had decided that she ought not to have been convicted.  Accordingly a petition setting forth the opinion of her former neighbors that she was innocent of the charge, and should as an American citizen be released from custody, was circulated for signature.  A public meeting was held and largely attended, at which it was resolved to send a monster petition to the British authorities with a request for Mrs. Hamilton’s pardon, and also to ask the government at Washington to intercede on behalf of the unfortunate sufferer.  The statement of the case appealed vividly to Selma, and at the public meeting, which was attended chiefly by women, she spoke, and offered the services of her husband to lay the matter before the President.  It was further resolved to obtain the names of influential persons all over the country in order that the petition might show that the sentiment that injustice had been done was national as well as local.