The touchstone of medical reform; in three letters, addressed to Sir Robert Harry Inglis, bart / [Joseph Henry Green].

  • Green, Joseph Henry, 1791-1863
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The touchstone of medical reform; in three letters, addressed to Sir Robert Harry Inglis, bart / [Joseph Henry Green]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    43/76 (page 39)
    and the Church, and to establish such criteria of the competency of the members as the public shall be qualified to estimate in guiding their selection. This at least the Legislature is bound to do, if, as can¬ not be doubted, it is the duty of a government to provide for the well-being of social man, in his rela¬ tions and duties as a citizen, by suppling the requi¬ sites for his moral cultivation, his social security, and his health; and it is rather a consideration of the practical difficulties, than any doubt of the principle of interference, that would prevent my urging the Legislature to withdraw its countenance, accorded under a specious and misused plea of liberty, from the knavish quack, and to protect, by penal law, his patients, who vindicate their civil rights at the expense of being robbed, maimed, and poisoned. Certainly it is disgraceful to the country that its government should derive a revenue from so unholy a source as that of patents granted to secret reme¬ dies and pernicious nostrums. And, at all events, as the writer of the excellent article on Medical Reform in a late number of the Quarterly Review, has pointedly argued, if every individual is to be at liberty to choose his medical adviser in his own case, he ought to be restricted at law from making others the victims of his whims and caprices; and when¬ ever his functions impose on him the duty of select¬ ing a medical practitioner for a public office, or of appointing him to the charge of others, his choice ought to be limited to those whose qualifications