An address to the members of the Royal College of Surgeons of London: on the injurious conduct and defective state of that corporation; with reference to professional rights, medical science, and the public health / [John Armstrong].

  • Armstrong, John, 1784-1829
Date:
1825
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An address to the members of the Royal College of Surgeons of London: on the injurious conduct and defective state of that corporation; with reference to professional rights, medical science, and the public health / [John Armstrong]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    shamefully deficient mode of examining candidates, the exorbitant fees exacted from them, the private distribution of the immense funds thus annually collected, the mismanagement of the Library and Museum, with other matters, will afford you a broad, deep, and solid basis, upon which you may securely rest your claim for the necessity of a new Charter. Though you will have opposition to encounter, it is less formidable than you might at first sight imagine, and will yield to united firmness of purpose, with uniform moderation of manner ; this Corporation being upheld neither by the associations of ancient privileges, nor by the alliances of modem greatness. It is only a few years since, that Mr. Peel strongly opposed a Bill * one of the clauses of which went to render the diploma of the London College neces¬ sary to all who should hereafter practise Surgery in England, on the pretence that ignorant and incapable persons not being restrained by law from practising, the health and lives of great numbers were thereby injured and destroyed, as if its super¬ ficial examinations were a security against such evils. In opposing the manoeuvre of the Court of Examiners to increase its wealth and extend its power, Mr. Peel showed his penetration as a poli¬ tician, since it has ruinously misapplied the autho¬ rity which it already possesses ; though certainly, if * See Appendix containing the Debates upon the subject in the House of Commons in 1818, which the reader will find extremely interesting, especially the speech $f Mr, Feel,