Medical reform a social question, comprehensively studied with the light of philosophy, history, and common sense : two letters to the Right Hon. Viscount Palmerston ... / by Joseph Sampson Gamgee.

  • Gamgee, Sampson, 1828-1886.
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical reform a social question, comprehensively studied with the light of philosophy, history, and common sense : two letters to the Right Hon. Viscount Palmerston ... / by Joseph Sampson Gamgee. 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.

    13/38 (page 13)
    William Lawrence, Benjamin Travers, and Joseph Henry Green ; I venture to believe I accurately weigh the works of John South and MoncriefF Arnott, but I can only regard them as the surviving relics of an extinct generation, not as the philosophers of the present, the legislators for the future; if it be objected that the Houses of Parliament offer marvellous examples of the representatives of a former epoch, moving war and making peace, inspiring vigour and checking folly in the present generation, I reply yes; but Brougham, Palmerston, and Lyndhurst, have lived working for mankind half a century in public assembUes; in the fire of contest ever chaining victory to the standard of intellectual progress and of social right; Avhereas the ancients of the College of Surgeons have, in their dotage, been deaf to the voice of science, have struggled against popular opinion, have oppressed the Medical profession; and at its expense, at the sacrifice of learning, and of the people's welfare, have divided in a virtually self-elected coterie the proceeds of gain ill-gotten, by power undeserved, in a borough as rotten as old Sarura but infinitely more dis- graceful ; for its rottenness has been hidden with the mantle of Hunter—that immortal genius, whose history from childhood to death, whose mind, whose Avorks, whose every feature, are living protests to the principle and practice of the Council of the College of Surgeons, which is one