Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Medical reform / [by J. Brown]. 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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![[REPRINTED FROM THE EDINBURGH MEDICAL JOURNAL, DECEMBER 1857.] We have before us, two letters to Lord Palmerston on Medical Reform,—the one by our Professor of Clinical Surgery, Mr Syme ; the other by Dr Burt,— noster cordialissimus Burt. They are curiously unlike in their treatment of their common subject, and as curiously coincident in their main purpose. The Professor is concise, clear, inevitable—free from all superfluities of thought or word—his pen is as keen, as exact, and as much to the point as his knife —he has one thing he sets himself to do, and that one thing he does, so as to make any more, or any better doing of it hopeless. He is one of the few men in this wordy world, who know when they are done, and who are unable to speak when they have nothing to say. His, is what the clear-headed French call la manure incisive: you may not agree with him, but you must under- stand him. Mr Syme, as he is, we think, the most thorough, is also one of the oldest of our Medical Reformers ; and on looking into his former letters to Sir James Graham and Lord Advocate Rutherfurd, the one twelve and the other seven years ago, we see that he had always the same central idea in his mind, though each time he has enunciated it, it has been with more simplicity and precision, and in fewer words He proves, first, the urgency for legislative interference in the relations of medicine to the public. “ The fact that it is at present impos- sible, by any extent of education or examination, in Scotland or Ireland, to obtain the right of practising as a Physician or Apothecary in England with- out incurring the penalties of a criminal prosecution, appears so inconsistent with reason and justice, as to admit of explanation only by supposing it un- known to those who have the power of affording redress.” We believe this monstrous fact, this genuine Scottish grievance, may now for the first time be known to many of our readers; its mere statement, is argument sufficient. Mr Syme then defines the limits within which it is safe or competent, for the state to act in reference to, medicine. “ The object of legislative interferences is not to provide physicians or surgeons for the rich, but to protect the poorer classes of society from mismanagement by imperfectly educated practitioners. For, although it would be no less impracticable than inconsistent with the institu- tions of a free country, to prevent the people of any rank from being doctored according to their own notions, however absurd, it is clearly the duty of ’ Letter to Lord Viscount Palmerston. By James Syme, Esq., Professor of 1 Clinical Surgery, University of Edinburgh.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22465455_0005.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
