Doctors and doctors: some curious chapters in medical history and quackery.

  • Everitt, Graham.
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Doctors and doctors: some curious chapters in medical history and quackery. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    later statute recites, for neighbourhood and God's sake, and of pity and charity, and not for any sort of fee, or reward. These charitable persons the chirurgeons prosecuted as pretenders under the Act. But the professional gentlemen acted the part of the dog in the manger; for they would neither attend the sick poor themselves, nor would they allow these good and charitable folk to help them. The consequence of this selfish conduct was lament- able ; and we are told by a statute passed more than thirty years afterwards, that many persons did absolutely rot and perish for lack of surgery. Selfish and inhuman conduct of this sort produced its natural consequences, and the legislature was compelled once more to open the door which they had been induced to close. The statute of the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth years of Henry the Eighth, cap. 8 [1542], recites the previous Act, and the mode in which its provisions had been found to work mischievously and dangerously.