A statement by the Society of Apothecaries, on the subject of their administration of The Apothecaries' Act, with reference to some supposed features of Sir James Graham's promised measure of medical reform.

  • Worshipful Society of Apothecaries of London
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A statement by the Society of Apothecaries, on the subject of their administration of The Apothecaries' Act, with reference to some supposed features of Sir James Graham's promised measure of medical reform. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    be appointed the examining body, the Society ulti¬ mately consented to promote a bill limited to this object, which in the session of 1815 received the sanction of the Legislature, after encountering much opposition in its passage through both Houses of Parliament, and undergoing much mutilation in its latter stages more especially. The Apothecaries’ Act provides for the education of the general practitioner of medicine. It requires a body of apothecaries to select a court of examiners to be composed of apothecaries exclusively, and to this court the act assigns the duty of deter¬ mining the course of study to be pursued by the candidates for their certificate, and to test the com¬ petency of the student, thus educated under their direction, to practise his profession; and it remained to be seen whether the education of that class of practitioners could be safely entrusted to examiners selected from their own grade of the profession. The promoters of the measure (themselves general practitioners) appeared evidently doubtful of the re¬ sult of this part of the measure, for in the bill intro¬ duced by the Associated Apothecaries, the College of Physicians, as well as the College of Surgeons, was to take part in the examination of the general practitioner. A trial of nearly thirty years, will now enable the public to decide how far the Legislature acted wisely in entrusting the examination of the general practitioner of medicine to those of his own grade,.
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