The state of the medical profession further exemplified : an additional supplement to The medical profession in Great Britain and Ireland / by Edwin Lee.

  • Lee, Edwin, -1870.
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The state of the medical profession further exemplified : an additional supplement to The medical profession in Great Britain and Ireland / by Edwin Lee. 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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    “ When, we come to business done, we find that almost the whole consisted of votes of thanks and votes of money.” The “British Medical Journal” of about the same date said: “ The Council sits year after year as a mere talking body, in the end doing little or nothing. The expense of the twelve days’ sitting may be moderately estimated at 1,300/.; and at what result has it arrived in regard to medical educa- tion, the subject on which, beyond all others, it was expected at least to bring forth something definite ? Simply this, that it has done this year just what it did last year. If the Council proceeds in this way year after year, men will naturally ask whether it is not a mere farce that is enacted, and whether a Council is of any worth that goes on, as Mr. Syme is reported to have expressed it, ‘ doing actually nothing except deceiving the public by publishing year after year a list of persons supposed to be qualified, many of whom are not qualified.” * The Council has published a British Pharmacopoeia. Dr. Watson, in his address on being re-elected to the Presidency of the College of Physicians, remarked, in re- ference to it; that “he was only expressing a general and deep-rooted opinion, when he said that the work had occasioned great disappointment and perplexity, and that many of the changes that had been effected were not only injudicious but highly dangerous. He had adopted the plan of writing his prescriptions in the old manner, thus saving great trouble and avoiding the risk of mistakes.” The * “ This registration,” says the writer of a previous article in the same journal (April, 1863), “ has been the milch cow that has enabled the Council to live and operate. During the five years that have elapsed since the Medical Act passed, the profession has paid down 49,9081. for the honour of being registered according to Act of Parlia- ment, and of possessing a Medical Council. Many medical men say the Register is not worth 50,000 pence, and boldly ask, ‘ Of what earthly use is it to us V It is the Old Man of the Mountain; we have it on our necks and must wear it. Yes, 50,0001. we have paid down, and about 4,0001. per annum we are paying at present and shall pay for the future, thanks to the Medical Act. ” — “ Why,” asked “ Punch,” “ should the registration of medical men’s titles cost more than the registration of births and deaths, unless the object is to tax medical men for some exclusive object. Surely a shilling is quite enough to ask a man to pay for obliging him to furnish the public with a statement of his qualifications, by the publication of which he gets nothing whatever more than the ability to maintain a law-suit against any patient who will not pay him his bill.”