Medical reform : being the subject of the first annual oration, instituted by the British Medical Association, and delivered at the second anniversary of that society / by A.B. Granville.

  • Augustus Granville
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical reform : being the subject of the first annual oration, instituted by the British Medical Association, and delivered at the second anniversary of that society / by A.B. Granville. 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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    dishonest practitioners, and quacks, the two colleges have admitted, through their respective presidents, that they possess no power :* while the Company of Apothecaries have confessed! that there are more cases of infraction of their own peculiar Act than the society has the means of prosecuting and punishing. But the inefficiency of the Apothecaries’ Company is proved much more strongly by another of their own admissions. Their charter and acts bind that body to visit the shops of general practitioners, to see that no bad drugs are kept, or spurious medicines sold.! When asked how often they exercised that duty, the master answers, “ During one day, or more than one day, once in two years.”§ To a former question the same gentleman had replied, that such visits generally began at one o’clock, and ended at about six; and that, upon an average, each visit lasted, perhaps, a quarter of an hour.”!] How, on the face of this very admission, does the effective nature of the Apothecaries’ Company’s operations in this matter appear ? Here is a body politic desired to watch over an important branch of public safety, who exercise it by limiting their vigilance to about twenty investigations on one, two, or three days, once in two years, among the one thousand general practitioners who, according to another answer of the worshipful * Questions 215, 279, 282, Part I.; 4865, 4898, 4943, Part II. Also Question 4842, Part II. “ The College of Sui’geons is a body that has no power.” The President’s Answer. And again, An- swer 4851, “ The awkwardness of our situation is, that we have no authority, no power, to prevent an evil of this kind.” t Answer 94, and others, Part III. X Answer 49, Part III. § Answer 55, Part 111. || Answer 48, Part III.