The touchstone of medical reform : in three letters, addressed to Sir Robert Harry Inglis, bart., M.P. / by Joseph Henry Green.

Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The touchstone of medical reform : in three letters, addressed to Sir Robert Harry Inglis, bart., M.P. / by Joseph Henry Green. 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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    and as the diploma, which is the proof of surgical competency, is honorary, and its possession, except for qualification to appointments to the army, the navy, and to jails, at the option of the candidate, the fees for admission supplying the funds of the college are in fact almost wholly voluntary/. Unless, therefore, it should appear that the profession and the public would be be- nefited by such changes as would render the possession of the College diploma obligatory on all practitioners of surgery, in order to insure the competency of all, or as would hold out inducements to superior attain- ments by instituting honorary distinctions, there would seem to be no cogent reason for re-modelling the College constitution in these respects, as it is self- evident that professional candidates would not seek the College diploma, unless the terms, upon which it is obtained, insured to them an adequate return in profit and honor; and that the public have no grounds of complaint against the College, as trustees for the management of funds, designed to promote the interests of science. If, however, as we are not unwilling to admit, the profession and the community would derive advantage from a prohibitory law, which should restrict any one from practising surgery without having previously submitted his qualifications to scrutiny, and which should make the right of any one to call himself or to act as a surgeon, dependent upon his having obtained a license or diploma from the College—then it might be fairly argued, that the College of Surgeons, exercising an important