Elsie Inglis should be remembered first and foremost as a women’s rights campaigner

Medical pioneer and women's suffrage campaigner Elsie Inglis

The sculptor, Professor Alexander Stoddart, has put forward plans for a memorial that will see Dr Inglis carved out of stone, in the military uniform she wore during World War One when she set up medical units in France, Russia and Serbia.

But it is her pioneering work in women’s medicine that is her most important and enduring legacy. She was one of the first women to enrol in the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women, established by Dr Sophia Jex-Blake, and once qualified, she started her own medical practice and opened The Hospice, a maternity unit for poor women. And when she was not saving women’s lives, she campaigned for women to get the vote.

As Natasha Phoenix, one of the female sculptors who had hoped to win the commission to create the memorial said: “The proposed statue has her in military clothes, but that was just three years of her life … She was a feminist suffragist who staffed her hospital entirely with women. So this statue is not suitable as it is. She was a leader in medicine yet that’s been totally overlooked here.”

Campaigners have written an open letter expressing their concerns about the style of the statue, and it has been signed by hundreds of people, including writers Sara Sheridan and Val McDermid and The Proclaimers. One of the councillors who represents the High Street, Labour’s Margaret Graham, told a newspaper that the design was “dowdy and not representative of the character of Elsie Inglis” and she has called for further public consultation before a final decision is made.

I am sure that Elsie Inglis would have greeted the controversy over how she is portrayed with a wry smile, while rolling up her sleeves and getting on with the more urgent task of saving lives and changing society. But how she is remembered does matter. There are more than enough conventional statues of men on the Royal Mile. Elsie Inglis was first and foremost a women’s rights campaigner, and any memorial to her should reflect that defining aspect of her life and her career.