Volume 1

St. Andrews Medical Graduates' Association : transactions ... / edited by Leonard W. Sedgwick.

Date:
1868-1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: St. Andrews Medical Graduates' Association : transactions ... / edited by Leonard W. Sedgwick. 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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    University, >?ould seriously compromise the interests of the Uni- versity of Edinburgh in the event of its being united with the University of St. Andrews in returning a member to Parliament, and resolved to bring the whole subject under the notice of the Government. But the Senatus Academicus, a body which com- prises the Principal and the Professors of the University, at a meeting held after that of the University Court, resolved un- animously— That the Senatus Academicus, having had their attention directed to the decision of the University Court to oppose the proposition that Graduates in Medicine of the University of St. Andrews should receive electoral privileges under the Scotch Reform Bill, resolve not to join in the o]pposition. Our hearty thanks are due to those enlightened men who dis- carding the narrow and ignoble plea of separate interests, have seen that there could be no real antagonism between the Doctors of Medicine of St. Andrews and the Graduates of Edinburgh, and who have refused to range themselves in opposition to those with whom they may in a short time be associated as fellow-voters, and who are members of the same profession as many of themselves. And what says our own University to this matter ? Surely it is foremost in the fight, urging on the authorities with all the energy of hearty conviction and the weight of a learned and ancient body, the just claims of the most numerous section of its Graduates, by whom and through whom, it may with the barest truth be said, it lives and moves and has its being. Alas, no ! The University Court has not spoken. The Senatus Academicus, to whom in the trustful confidence of youth we turned for encouragement at our first meeting, and for whose generous sympathy and active support we asked in June last, have as yet uttered no sound. But the General Council has met; that body, composed of 368 Graduates in Arts, in whose hands up to the present time the academical interests of the 1300 Doctors of Medicine have been placed, has been pleased to consider our position. Not many of the 368 have spoken, only some 23 were there, and this is what they have done. They have resolved to petition Parliament against the clause in the Reform Bill for Scotland which provides that Gra- duates who have not given residence at the University be made members of the University Council. It was not without opposition that the resolution was passed. Professors Macdonald and Bell spoke out manfully for their brethren, but they were alone. And now the General Council of the University of St. Andrews is committed to the position that it is right and fair to grant to successful candidates the Degree of M.D. after an extended examination, and to take their fees, and yet to refuse to acknowledge the holders of such Degrees as Graduates of the University by the only recog- nition worthy of educated men, that of a voice in its Councils.
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