Medical reform : a letter to the Right Hon. Viscount Melbourne with the outlines of a Bill for regulating the practice of surgeon-apothecaries and chemists and druggists ... and a plan for suppressing uneducated practitioners ... / by Martin Sinclair.

Date:
[1840?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical reform : a letter to the Right Hon. Viscount Melbourne with the outlines of a Bill for regulating the practice of surgeon-apothecaries and chemists and druggists ... and a plan for suppressing uneducated practitioners ... / by Martin Sinclair. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

    25/36 (page 25)
    the Profession must, in most instances, adopt the same proceed- ings, because they have the same purposes to accomplish, while their occasional differences are merely unimportant modifications in the means of arriving at the same end. Thus the distinction turns out, at last, to be quite arbitrary ; to depend on, and he regulated by usage; founded on no fixed principles, and, there- fore, fluctuating and uncertain, like all matters of custom.” [see Mr. Lawrence’s lecture, op. cit.] These observations will, I trust, be sufficient to satisfy your Lordship that the study and practice of Physic and Surgery ought not to be separated, and that no person ought to he licensed to exercise the healing art unless he be qualified to practise Medicine, Surgery, and Pharmacy, leaving it to his option to practise those branches, afterwards, which he may prefer, or which he may select for spe- i cial pursuit; and further, that no person ought to have the second or higher degree of Doctor in Medicine ancl Surgery until five or six years have elapsed from the period of obtaining the first or Bachelor’s degree, so that there may be some reasonable pretence for exercising the functions of a Consulting Practitioner. Two ; objections, however, have been made to the above union to which I .shall very briefly advert,—the first is, that a Gentleman who i thinks proper to confine his practice to Surgery, viz., the pure t Surgeon, ought not to be required to take out a medical degree, either from the Society of Apothecaries or from an University : i in answer to this objection—I would adduce the evidence of Mr. Lawrence quoted above; and I would also further adduce evi- dence, given before the Committee of the House of Commons on Medical Education, that the Colleges of Surgeons are merely ) Colleges of Surgery, and that nine-tenths of the practice of pure i Surgeons is of a strictly medical character, or, in other words, I what ought to belong to the Physician : these I humbly submit ' are sufficiently cogent to induce the Legislature to require that ; every Practitioner ought to be qualified to practise both branches of the Profession. The second objection, to the union of all the branches of the Profession, is, that no Practitioner ought to be 1; allowed to practise Pharmacy, or in other words, to prepare i medicines lor his patients. Independently of old habits and i customs, to preclude Practitioners in remote districts of the country from dispensing medicines to their patients would be I quite impracticable, and an extension of legislation quite un- L called for ; and, further. Practitioners have more confidence in 3 lemedial agents compounded under their own immediate super- I intendence, and the recent exposiu'e of the practices carried on