Observations extracted from the public journals on the resignation and conduct of the late medical officers of the charity, Drs Birkbeck, Clutterbuck, Lambe and Roberts, and Surgeons Coulson and Salmon.

Date:: 1833

Credit: Observations extracted from the public journals on the resignation and conduct of the late medical officers of the charity, Drs Birkbeck, Clutterbuck, Lambe and Roberts, and Surgeons Coulson and Salmon. 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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$MORNING HERALD, Saturday, October 10, 1833. The dispute between the Committee of the Aldersgate-street Dis- pensary and the late JVIedical Officers of that Institution, involves some points of public interest, and on which, therefore, we think it right to express an opinion. Institutions supported by voluntary subscription, for the purpose of affording medicine and medical advice gratuitously to the sick poor, are among the most useful of our public charities, as long as they are well governed. But if once turned to private advantage by a careless or corrupt system of government, it is unnecessary to say that they become undeserving of public support, and that the very beneficence of their original object makes their application the more grievous and disgraceful. “ The Aldersgate Dispensary is one of the oldest, if not the very oldest institution of the sort now existing in London. Being, like every institution which is supported by voluntary subscription, de- pendant upon public opinion, the length of time during which it has flourished affords a strong presumption in favour of its general good management, and makes it the more necessary to examine well the grounds of any accusation brought against those who are intrusted with the control and regulation of the charity. The accusation in the present instance does not come from abroad. It is not a complaint made by the subscribers to the institution, or by those for whom its relief was intended. The accusers are the medical officeis—most competent authority, it must be admitted, in all that properly belongs to the medical department. If regulations have been adopted by the governing body which interfere with the full and efficient exercise of their professional duties, and render their skill, knowledge, and ex- perience less available to the suffering objects of the charit\ than they ought to be, the medical officers have done rightly, not only in resist- ing such regulations, but in appealing to the public from the decision of the Committee, though we question that, under any circumstances, they were justified in suddenly leaving the patients of the charity des- titute of medical aid. In our opinion, humanity required that, if they felt it a duty to resign, they should have also considered it no less a duty to attend the patients as before until the election of their succes- sors. It is true they offered to attend at their oxen houses those per- sons then upon the books; but why this limitation in the case of a public charity, from which, in a course of years, some of those medical gentlemen had derived very considerable advantages } What was to become of those who could not attend at their houses, or of those who became patients after their resignation ? Why should a hostile feel- ing towards the Committee be indulged at the expense of the suffer- ing poor } “ Let us next see what was the cause of that hostile feeling. The Medical Officers put the quarrel upon the ground of their opposition to an improper regulation touching the election of Medical Practi- tioners ? What was that regulation ? It appears that formerly the$