Medical politics : being the essay to which was awarded the first Carmichael prize, of £200, by the Council of the Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland, 1873 / by Isaac Ashe.

  • Ashe, Isaac, 1834-1891.
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical politics : being the essay to which was awarded the first Carmichael prize, of £200, by the Council of the Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland, 1873 / by Isaac Ashe. 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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    TRADING SYSTEM; ITS RESULTS. ment Boards—these functionaries must, in order to allure them from lucrative practices, he accorded positions and emoluments equivalent to those of the judges and bishops, and, we venture to think, for the discharge of functions no less important and deserving of such return. It is, no doubt, difficult for the metropolitan consulting prac- titioner, making from, say, £8,000 a year in Dublin or Edin- burgh to ten times that sum in London, to realise the fact that the profession is overstocked. He does not feel it, being the fortunate occupant of an exceptional position. Yet when we consider the long number of years which must elapse before the metropolitan practitioner can begin to put fees in his pocket, or to acquire that reputation among the public which he may have had perhaps years previously among his professional brethren, we cannot but see that there is something astray, some adverse influence at work, which prevents the rise of men of intellectual eminence and high professional ability until the best of their days are over. And this adverse influence is clearly the result of the double system of entering practice, the backstairs of the profession, the trading system which we have alluded to, prevalent indeed in large towns, but almost exclusively resorted to in the country. The medical man, with, nominally, a physician’s and surgeon’s qualification, not only supplies medicine to his patients—which any man, as matters are at present, may by sheer force of circumstances be compelled to do,—but he charges for it, and in fact sells medicine only, to any persons who may ask him for it, under the fiction that by asking for it they become his patients, though he may perhaps give them no advice whatever. Indeed in the country, and country towns, a man’s profes- sional remuneration sometimes consists of charges for medicine only—laying him open to the allegation that, as every man makes his livelihood by selling the most valuable thing he can offer the public, the doctor’s medicine must be of more value than his advice. This advice-gratis system is the bane of the profession, from the highest to the lowest, and from all