A memorial, presented to the medical and surgical officers of the Worcester, Salop, Birmingham, Gloucester, and Hereford, Infirmaries, on the abuses existing in the public Hospitals : with an appendix, containing the answers received from them.

Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A memorial, presented to the medical and surgical officers of the Worcester, Salop, Birmingham, Gloucester, and Hereford, Infirmaries, on the abuses existing in the public Hospitals : with an appendix, containing the answers received from them. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    If, then, he has succeeded in proving-, that the system of de- manding exorbitant Sums of Money from Students, for admitting tliem to see the Practice of Medicine and Surgery in tlie Hospitals of the Country, be a direct violation of tJie objects of these Public Charities; a flagrant perversion of them to private purposes; a most cruel, iniquitous, and oppressive tax, levied on a most useful and necessary science, which, by obstructing its progress towards perfection, and by impeding the attainment of the knowledge essential to those who practise it, inflicts an incalculable injury on the community; he trusts, he may have said sufficient to induce the immediate abolition of a system, so little in accordance with Humanity and Justice. But, if anything further be desired on this head, if any ad- ditional proof be required of the melancholy effects resulting to society from the operation of this system, he need only relate some of those melancholy cases (unfortunately too numerous) in which diseases have been mistaken, injuries remained undetected, and the unhappy patients have, consequently, suffered (to say the least) a great aggravation of pain and misery. Unable to form the least conception of the nature cf the argu- ments by which the system can be defended, even conceiving that no substantial reasons can possibly be brought forward in its sup- port, he deems it superfluous to say more, than that he is prepared to prove, in the most unequivocal manner, that the alteration he has proposed in the following Memorial, will inevitably tend to establish, and to confirm the interests of these Charities. Worcester, 20tli Sept. 1831.