Observations in reference to the licence of the Royal College of Physicians of London as a complete qualification to practise medicine, surgery, and midwifery : addressed to the Fellows of the College / by Richard Quain.

  • Quain, Richard, 1816-1898.
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations in reference to the licence of the Royal College of Physicians of London as a complete qualification to practise medicine, surgery, and midwifery : addressed to the Fellows of the College / by Richard Quain. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    and they are consequently obliged to place on the Medical j Register the names of persons who are but partially qualified. This difficulty does not apply to the Licentiates of our College with respect to the examinations which they have undergone or to the diploma which they possess, for, as I have shown, the College, in granting its Licence, fulfils the desire expressed by the Medical Council, by the Colleges themselves, and by the profession, to the effect that every practitioner should have been tested in every department of medical science, by a single Examining Board, prior to his name being put upon the Register. It is, however, now proposed that the College should surrendei its almost unique privilege of a Board examining in all the subjects required for a Licence to practise, and that it should compel a candidate seeking its Licence to go to the College of Surgeons or elsewhere for an examination in suigeiy. It is very difficult to see on what rational grounds such a proposition for breaking up the unity and simplicity of oui * The arrangements for an Examining Board between the two Colleges come very nearly to this : The College of Surgeons will appoint all the Examiners in Surgery, and chiefly those m Anatomy; will examine in Surgery, will give its diploma, and receive the same fee for this as it does at present. . The College of Physicians will appoint Examiners on all the subjects of Examination, as it does now, save those in SurgeryThe Examina- tion will be conducted as at present, and the College will issue its Licence, and receive the same fee for it. The result will be very much in accord- ance with what takes place at this moment. A candidate holding a surgical diploma, or undertaking to procure one, is exempted by 0111 College from the Examination in Surgery, as he will be in the new arrangement. Each College must, however, still maintain its own Examining Board; for example, the College of Physicians must have a board prepared to examine candidates who come up possessed of a surgical qualification, obtained from any source, if such qualification be registrable. The same remark applies vice versa to the College of Surgeons. We thus have the number of Boards already in operation still maintained, and a new one, such as it is, will be added to the much complained of number already existing. But then comes the importani^difference between the past and the present : In the arrange- ment it is agreed that “Each of them (the Colleges) will abstain, as far as allowed by law, from the exercise of its independent privilege of giving a qualification,” &c. In other words, the College of Physicians, which has, as is shown in the text, full legal powers to give a complete qualification, places itself in the same position as the College of Surgeons with its half qualification, having no such power or authority. This may be a clever or shrewd agreement on the part of the College of Surgeons, and it may be magnanimous in our College to accept it, but no feeling of this character should be allowed to supersede those principles of honour and of fidelity, which should guide us in preserving the great interest committed to our charge.