On scientific medicine, and its relations to, and claims upon, society at large : being an address read before ... the North of England Medical Association ... 1840 / by William Elliot.
- Date:
- 1840
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On scientific medicine, and its relations to, and claims upon, society at large : being an address read before ... the North of England Medical Association ... 1840 / by William Elliot. 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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![fession are slighted, insulted, and overlooked by the government, and their valuable and competent labours either superseded or inadequately re- munerated,—no council, board, hall, nor college, has ever stepped forward on behalf even of its own licentiates, to defend their rights, to recom- mend their claims, or to remonstrate against their oppression and degradation. To take one series of instances: it has happened, in the course of cer- tain preparatory and public enquiries in reference to epidemic pestilence and other matters, that youthful barristers have received from 2~ to 10 times the amount of daily pay given to medical men of considerable experience and practice, be- sides that travelling expenses were allowed the former, and withheld from the latter. (This occur- red in Ireland.) And while the remuneration of barristers, engaged in administering the poor laws, and in other public duties, has been uniformly high, medical men have found them- selves aggrieved and insulted, and the sanitary interests of the poor most unworthily estimated, (G) by the adoption, in reference to their services, of what has, by a sad misnomer, been called the “tender” system. And will it be believed that in carrying out to its farthest extreme this system of medical degradation,certain poor-law authorities would condescend, in public advertisement, to hold out to embarrassed members of the profession the bait of an opening in private practice on their official introduction? Yet such is the fact. [See cover of Lancet, March 28, 1840.] And very lately, when it was proposed to enquire into the sanitary condition of Scotland, notwithstanding the valuable and almost exclusive labours of](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21952383_0036.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
