The reform of the College of Surgeons.

  • Morell Mackenzie
Date:
[1890]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The reform of the College of Surgeons. 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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    the College are also the proceeds of legacies; it does not offer any “ encouragement ” from its own pocket. It has never done any- thing to encourage physiological or pathological research—depart- ments of science closely connected, one might have thought, with the promotion of surgery ; and it has only lately set about aiding in the establishment of a pathological laboratory after nearly every medical school in the kingdom has organised one. Under the head of what are grandiloquently called “ expenses for scientific pur- poses” last year the total expenditure was £3,126 11s. 10d., the bulk of this sum consisting of salaries and wages to officials and servants in the museum ; of the “ promotion ” or “ encouragement ” of research of any kind I see no trace in these accounts! The Examiners, on the other hand, shared close upon £9,000 among them. The library of the College was actually founded against the wishes of those who obtained the Charter of 1800, one of the con- ditions insisted on by the opponents being that a library should be part of the new institution. It was more than a quarter of a century, however, before any real effort was made to carry this laudable pro- ject into execution, and then, as usual in the history of the College, only on pressure being applied from without. These facts suffice to show how the College of Surgeons, which is the richest medical cor- poration in the world, fulfils its function of promoting and encourag- ing the study and practice of surgery. The plain truth is that, instead of being in any sense a college or school of surgery, it is little more than a huge shop for the sale of surgical licences. It is, however, in its capacity of Cerberus at the gate leading into the medical profession that the College is most interesting to the public. The nation has a right to expect that at least this humble necessary function shall be discharged with all possible efficiency. What are the facts of the case? The College has done nothing for the improvement of medical education; on the contrary, it has sometimes shown itself so obstructive to reform as almost to justify a suspicion that it did not wish its members to become well enough educated to throw off the yoke and insist on the restoration of their rights. By a system of cunningly devised bye-laws it succeeded in closing the private schools of anatomy which flourished in London in the early part of the century, and in preventing provincial teachers from pre- paring students.1 The governing body thus obtained a practical monopoly of hospital appointments2 and lectureships, greatly to the detriment of medical education. The Lancet in its early days did much good work in reforming (1) These restrictions have now been removed, but for a long time they acted both injuriously and unfairly. (2) It will scarcely be believed that the degree of Master of Surgery of the University of London does not qualify for an appointment for the post of surgeon at the general hospitals of London.
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