Letter to Lord Viscount Palmerston, on medical reform / by James Syme.

  • James Syme
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letter to Lord Viscount Palmerston, on medical reform / by James Syme. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    appointment of new examining bodies ; knowing well that the existing Boards were quite sufficient for every useful purpose; and also knowing that,, as, in Scotland at least, the services of the men most competent to examine were thus already engaged, the new Boards would be inferior to the old ones, unless constructed from the same materials. Neither would the Universities have voluntarily consented that their degrees should cease to be regarded as qualifications for practice, which they have long been, in accordance with legal deci¬ sions and established usage, in Scotland. In the Northern Counties especially, a large proportion of the Medical Practitioners bear honourable testimony to the superiority of Academic education, being, for the most part, Graduates in Arts as well as Medicine, and although possessing no other qualification, being justly regarded as most eminently respectable. Indeed, when it is recollected that the Ex¬ aminers of Universities are selected, by public authority, from the whole range of the profession—in Scotland, there are eighteen appointed by Government,—and that they teach the subjects on which they examine, there can be little hesitation in admitting, that their efficiency should be considered as at least equal to that of the nominees of corporate bodies, whose choice is limited to their own members, occupied, as they are for the most part, in the routine duty of general practice. The Corporations object to University Examiners on two grounds; and, in the first place, because, being teachers, they may be supposed partial to their own pupils. But, in offering this objection, they seem to forget that it is applic¬ able also to themselves. For instance, the Edinburgh Col¬ lege of Surgeons has in its Board of Examiners several gentlemen who give lectures, which are advertised in a programme signed by the Secretary; while nearly a half of the London College of Surgeons’ Examiners are Teachers.
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