A letter to Sir William Garrow, His Majesty's attorney-general, on his proposed Bill for regulating the practice of surgery throughout the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland / By James Hamilton.

  • James Hamilton
Date:
April 11 1817
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter to Sir William Garrow, His Majesty's attorney-general, on his proposed Bill for regulating the practice of surgery throughout the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland / By James Hamilton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    * ( 18 ) of a limb which had been considered beyond the reach of art by regular Surgeons ; and although this has been in most instances the effect partly of the patients submitting to a degree of violence from such Empirics which they would not allow regular Surgeons to exert, and partly of the boldness with which, from ignorance or self-confidence, such operators proceed, the result is of essential importance to the lame individual. But it is unnecessary to reason on this point; for it is impossible to believe that the British Legislature could sanction any attempt to sub¬ due one of the strongest natural feelings of mankind, the anxiety for the restoration of health.—Any proposal for a law tending to restrain the in¬ dulgence in that feeling would be considered as equally cruel and im¬ practicable. Thirdly, It may appear presumptuous in a Physician to doubt the effi¬ ciency of the provisions of a Bill submitted to Parliament by his Majes¬ ty’s Attorney-General, and yet several considerations induce me to be¬ lieve, that the avowed purpose of your Bill cannot be accomplished by the provisions you propose* Taking it for granted that no law can be enforced unless pains and penalties can be inflicted on those who transgress it, and seeing that you have not specified any such pains and penalties, I presume it to be your intention to engross them in the Bill, as it passes through a Committee ; and therefore I say nothing on the omission of so essential a clause. The first remark I have to offer is, That your Bill contains no prohibi¬ tion against disqualified persons giving Surgical aid without a pecuniary reward, and for a very plain reason, that any such encroachment upon individual liberty would be rejected with universal indignation : And yet, without such a provision, it is absolutely impossible that the object of your Bill could be fulfilled. In this commercial country, the compensation for labour to Surgeons 1; is been established by law as well as by custom ; that is, a Surgeon can make
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