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.
4/4 page 28
![■ • 28 [July 11, 1857.] HOUSEHOLD WORDS. [Conducted By compiled in an ostentatious, cumbrous way i by the official medical council, and one of her < Majesty’s principal Secretaries of State. The register, we may be sure, will not be the j more popular for being a blue book instead I of a red book. But, we do not dwell upon i that point. A trustworthy medical directory i is a good thing, and such a work may need an Act of Parliament for its production—or it ! may not. The next is the troublesome point—uni- I formity of test. That notion is, we are j convinced, moonshine. To have uniformity of test in examinations, one must have uni- formity of brains in all examiners, and uniformity of ready wit in all the candidates. On the whole, up to a certain point, the tougher ! the examination has been the more it is ! worth ; but the best parts of a man’s skill are j those that cannot be brought out—except by { one examiner out of a thousand—in the way of ! catechism. Comparative ignorance with tact, j may find its use among the sick more surely ! than dull knowledge that does not give heed to the mere instincts of quick wit. There are not two practitioners in Britain uniformly ; qualified ; and we believe that the differences between mind and mind, after examination has ; been passed, are so great, as to reduce to insig- nificance the value of a few questions, more or less, in the preliminary test. A physician ] who has obtained his degrees with honours recognised as honours by his own fraternity, may be content with the seal thus set on his preliminary studies, and thenceforward prac- tise as if all the ends of study were achieved, j His friend, who narrowly escaped rejection at 1 the easiest examining board to which he could apply for a diploma, may have been ad- monished of his slender competence in know- ledge, and impelled to study as he works on in the world. In five years the position of the two men is reversed. By the preliminary test in medicine, as in all other walks of life, the subsequent career can seldom be deter- mined. We do not believe, then, that it matters 1! a jot to the profession or the public whether I there be ten or a hundred licensing bodies j in Great Britain to whom students may apply for leave to practise medicine, so long as it is made certain by the course of past experience, and by the increasing height of the ground taken by its practi- tioners on behalf of physic and surgery, that nobody will get a legal qualification who has not spent several years in a fixed course of training for his work, and who has not satis- fied certain examiners. Of these examiners, j the easiest we know, measure their candidates by as high a standard as a Secretary of State would find it prudent or just to assign as a minimum. Thus far we have expressed our opinion of the bills usually framed relative to doctors, Of the two doctors’ bills introduced during the present session we have sundry things tc say, and if they, or either of them, be pro- ceeded with in Parliament, we shall proceed to the discussion of them in this journal also. But if they be dropped, we shall save our ink and paper. GASTON, THE LITTLE WOLF. In eighteen hundred and twenty-four an old lady named Madame de Sariac, living in Gascony, had one of those nursery fights with her grandson aged seven, which at the time are treated as eternal sins, and after- | wards regarded as prospective virtues. Young master had been required to kneel and j demand pardon for some mjsdeed: young i master refused. Backing into a corner, he doubled his little fists, and in a voice of infantine thunder exclaimed, “ Touch me if j you dare ! ” Old grandmamma Sariac was j fain to leave her rebellious descendant to his own devices: which rebellious descendant was Gaston de Raousset-Boulbon, the Little ! Wolf of that Gascon household. On another occasion the Little Wolf, offended by Baptiste,, ordered Baptiste out of the house. The old servant, not taking the dismissal of a baby much to heart, remained; and the next morning performs his services as usual. Little Wolf, furious, appeals to grandmamma- Grandmamma, indignant at this baby invasion i of her authority, upholds Baptiste. “Very well!” lisps Little Wolf in an agony of passion, “then you must choose between him and me ! If he stays I go.” True to his word the young autocrat. : disappeared that very night, and was only' recovered when he had wandered three good leagues away on the Toulouse road. Another | time also he started off. This was when M. le j Comte de Raousset-Boulbon, senior, came to* j take him to the Jesuits’ College at Fribourg and papa Boulbon was a man so cold, so stern, so severe, that even the Little Wolf was daunted, and preferred the woods and ; hunger to that iron face and icy heart. This time he was two nights in the forest ; ; but the old count caught him at last, and hauled him off to Fribourg. The Jesuits received him kindly, and li! educated him judiciously. He had been: eight years at the college, and had never re- ceived a punishment in any shape, when, one* \ day—he was seventeen now—the reverend father ordered him to kneel during the even- ing lesson, as expiation of some collegiate j offence of which he had been guilty. “ I will only kneel before God,” he said to the father Gralice. , “You must obey, or leave the college:’5 j i answered the father. , “My choice-is made;” replied Gaston, and i he left the college that very evening. ■ A short time after this he came of age. . His father called him into his study, and ; j in the presence of a notary, gave him up > 1 all the accounts of his minority, putting](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22465996_0006.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
