Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Doctors' bills / [Charles Dickens]. 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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![HOUSEHOLD WORDS. 26 [July 11, 1357.] sub-registrars, and proposed taxing the doc- tors for the means of paying its expenses. It proposed to get up a medical council for each of the three parts of the United King- dom ; in each council there were to be thirty- six men : in each thirty-six there were to be four-and-twenty representatives chosen by universal suffrage of the registered practi- tioners, &c., &c.; also there was to be a general election of six every year, &c., &c. There was to be a medical senate, as there is a clerical senate (a senate among senates), and then there was to be a new college of medicine. We need not go into details. It is not at all surprising to us, that the medical profession could not make up its mind that this was the bill of bills. In the year following, Mr. Hawes, Mr. Ewart, and Mr. Hutton introduced this bill again, with variations of detail; the chief variation being the extinction of the idea of another college. There was to be general registration. Bolus and Scalpel were to take out annual certificates, and pay for them. There was to be a Scotch council, an Irish council, and an English council, of twenty in each, the members elected by ballot. They were to form a lower house ; and there was to be formed of its select men an upper house or medical senate. The profession natu- rally did not care greatly to be bothered with the addition of this new machinery to the clogs already tied about its body. We jump to the years forty-four and forty- five, during which Sir James Graham was engaged in compounding a pill for the doc- tors. Forty-five was a great year for measures and amended measures. Sir James, in a second version of a former device of his own, proposed a new council of health, with one of Her Majesty’s principal Secretaries of State for president, the medical Regius Pro- fessor, and certain other persons for the members. The council was to see that a register was kept, to see that examinations were of the right sort, and to protect as well as meddle with existing medical cor- porations, leaving them their monopolies to all intents and purposes intact. This bill was taken into a committee room, whence it emerged with a new royal college of general practitioners fastened to its tail. But the profession didn’t really care about state councils and royal colleges. The bill was torn down; and, in the succeeding year, a new bill was pasted over it by Mr. Wakley and Mr. Warburton. This bill aimed simply at secur- ing registration. It went into committee and came out an amended bill; of which the pur- port was that all qualified surgeons were to be compelled to take in, as a sort of annual, price five shillings, their marriage lines to the profession whereto they were joined, and be able to prove by them, and by them only, that they were wedded to it lawfully. The doctors didn’t care very much about these marriage lines. They were proposed to them rConducteJ by stil prc again in the year following, with the addi- tion of some machinery for enabling a said Secretary of State” to secure uniformity of qualification among doctors. The profession didn’t believe in this bill either. We break off the catalogue and come at once to the time present,—which begins last year. Mr. Headlam introduced last year a new medical bill, which suffered metamorphosis in a committee of the House of Commons. This year the metamorphosed bill appears in the House under Lord Elcho’s guardianship, and the unaltered bill also appears in the House, it being again brought forward by Mr. Headlam. Before we describe the substance of the two new propositions, we must state one very essential fact ; because, in the different modes of dealing with this fact, there lies the real difference between the spirit of the one bill and the spirit of the other. There are two sets of examining bodies in Great Britain, first, the corporations of physicians, of surgeons, and of apothecaries ; second, the several universities. The universities can grant degrees, of which some do and some do not convey the right of practice, and some give the right of prac- tising only within a given area. The general spirit of Mr. Headlam’s bill is to protect the corporations and keep down the universities ; the general spirit of the other bill is to pro- tect the universities and keep down some, at least, of the corporations. Each, at the same time, sets up a medical council and a scheme of registration. So we have in the new bills a strong family likeness to the whole gallery of their predecessors. Medical reform is still heldp? to be the destroying of something that doe; exist and the creating of something that doe not exist. As commonly proposed, it is th( destruction of some bit of life and the creatior of some bit of machinery in place of it. But the thing really wanted is more ful ness of life and less restriction. While tin bandaging of the afflicted profession has beer discussed year after year in Parliament the afflicted profession itself, restive or in different about every such proposal, has beer developing fast, and working its way noblj forward to a higher life. Except the Londoi College of Physicians, there is scarcely : medical examining body in the kingdom tha has not made more or less rapid advance iri its demands on the wit of candidates for it: approval; and in the very front of this grea forward movement there now stands the^ University of London. It is, we think simply absurd to propose the delivery of thi young giant of a calling, tied and bound, int< the hands of any single state council, or o any corporation. To deliver up the profes sion of physic in England as serf to th London College of Physicians—one consel quence of Mr. Headlam’s propositions—is o all conceivable mistakes the worst. Tha) body includes many very able men ; but, as adi dei bill Blit](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22465996_0004.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
