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?]
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.
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![i greatest number of Practitioners in the shortest period, and at the smallest possible expense, I respectfully submit that a College founded upon such a basis would not meet the wants of ' the Profession or of the Public at the present day, and would not establish uniformity of education amongst the members of the L] Profession; and from the numerous distinctive titles and divi- Isions of labour contemplated in the Bill, greater jealousies and invidious distinctions would be created than under the existing Corporations. Again, under Mr. Warhurton’s Bill, Chemists and Druggists, quacks and mountebanks, and half-educated doctors are legalized to practise medicine and surgery, in chief; and if the Secretary of State for the Home department he a complaisant and accommodating gentleman, the names of these worthies may he registered under a third and fourth class of Practitioners; and thus an official reputation will be gained by them, and their success in practice may probably be more certain and rapid than those who have devoted much care and anxiety to study every branch of the Profession. As the end of all legislation is the public good, the objects which any legislative enactment applied to the Medical Profes- sion should embrace are the following, viz:—1st. to provide a suitable supply of well-qualified Medical Practitioners competent to exercise every branch of the healing art;—2nd. to protect the regularly educated Practitioner in the exercise of his calling;— and 3rd. to prevent the uneducated from usurping the functions and discharging the duties of a Medical Practitioner. In the course of education to be pursued by Candidates for the Medical Profession the curriculum of study ought not, on the one hand, to he too extended, nor, on the other hand, to be too contracted : if the former, persons in the middle ranks of life will be pre- vented from entering into that honourable profession—the supply will consequently be inadequate to the demand—and quackery will reign triumphant.—If on the other hand the curriculum be of a low standard an opposite evil will follow,—an inferiorly edu- cated and incompetent class of Practitioners will be legalized to act as Medical Practitioners—the public health will he jeopard- ised and the lives of numerous families and individuals placed m imminent hazard and danger. As health is a blessing of the fiist importance to every member of the community, and to none more so than to the labouring man, who has to maintain his family by his ability to pursue his daily labour, it follows that the -Legislature ought not to sanction any measure which does uo piovide tliat every Member of the Profession should be](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21935488_0009.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
