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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    the prosperity of Corporations which manage their affairs with prudence. In Mr Headlands Bill it is proposed that all members of the Medical Profession, before obtaining permission to prac¬ tise, should connect themselves with a College of Physicians or S urgeons, and have their names publicly registered in one or other of these capacities. Now, it is difficult to imagine anything more objectionable than such an arrangement. For, if the fellowship, which ought to be a reward of honourable distinction in practice, were to become obligatory at the outset of professional life, it would cease to operate as a stimulus to exertion, and be merely a tax for the benefit of Corporation coffers. Moreover, the titles of Physician and Surgeon have hitherto been severally understood to de¬ note the cultivation of one department of practice, while it is notorious that the general wants of the community must be supplied by Medical Practitioners of all work; so that Mr Headlands Register, according to the received meaning of words, would, for the most part, be nothing better than a tissue of misrepresentations, since some men who are living by the administration of pills and potions would be held forth as Physicians, while others, who are maintained by the administration of potions arid pills, would appear as Surgeons. Such an attempt to classify Practitioners being no less dishonest than absurd, while it is equally imprac¬ ticable to determine the grade which they are eventually to assume in practice bv any process of education, it will, I trust, appear that the sole object of Medical Legislation should be to regulate the terms of that license without which no one ought to be admitted to the privileges of the Medical Profession—these being made the same throughout every part of Her Majesty’s dominions. When so many opposing interests are concerned, this important matter does not admit of any satisfactory set- *
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