Medical reform a public question, or, How to save twenty thousand lives per annum without putting the country to a farthing's expense / by a physician.

Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical reform a public question, or, How to save twenty thousand lives per annum without putting the country to a farthing's expense / by a physician. 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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    are the men, who, from the palace to the poor- house, from the castle to the cottage, under all the varied aspects of human suffering, are found devoting their energies and existence to a suc- cessful warfare on disease, preserving life, assuag- ing pain, reviving hope, and conserving the best interests both of individuals and society. To the Apothecaries' Act of 1815, is the country chiefly indebted for so valuable a body of men, for with- out the requirements of that act, their qualifica- tions might not have been what they are; yet, strange to say, the privilege with which the Apo- thecaries'Society has rewarded its licentiate for an arduous course of study and severe examination, is the most grievous paradox that ever disgraced the profession, wronged the public, or injured the individual on whom it was conferred ; that privi- lege is the right to convert his profession into a trade, and to be remunerated for his skill by the sale of pills, plasters, and draughts. In this unwarrantable substitution of a com- mercial for a professional principle of remunera- tion, we recognize the greatest evil of modern practice—that which degrades it in the public estimation to a mere business of medicine vend- ing, obliterating its high intellectual character, and banishing all idea of scientific attainments, as the alone stock in trade which a medical man ever can possess, or ought ever to be paid for.