Medical education and medical organisation : being the oration delivered before the Hunterian society on the 12th February, 1879 / by Walter Rivington.
- Rivington, Walter, 1835-1897
- Date:
- 1879
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Medical education and medical organisation : being the oration delivered before the Hunterian society on the 12th February, 1879 / by Walter Rivington. 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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![has more than once appeai-ed a fait accompli, and on two occasions—once in 1870 and once in 1878—medical Bills, ren- dering combination of Corporations in each division of the king- dom compulsory, have been withdrawn at the eleventh hour, after they had been discussed, amended, and approved by the Genera] Medical Council. The profession is now anxiously, but confidently, awaiting the completion by the Conservative Government of 1879 of the M'-ork commenced under Liberal auspices and carried to a successful issue by the Conservative Government of 1858. As the Government are thoroughly im- pressed with the necessity for amalgamation of the licensing corporations, particularly alive to the evils which have resulted from admitting to the Register persons qualified only in one faculty, and apparently anxious and determined to pass a Medical Act Amendment Bill during the current session, it would be thrice to slay the slain, to combat the objections, sub- stantial and sentimental, urged by the Caledonian and Hiber- nian members of the Council against conj oint examinations The rivalry between the medical Corporations and the Uni-. versities in Scotland and Ireland in licensing the general practitioner, and the difliculty of adjusting the pecuniary and other claims of each Corporation, have blurred the outlines of the object, and produced in the eyes of the interested parties a certain degree of chromatic aberration. Hence the protests uttered against the reduction of the examinations for the ad- mission of candidates to the medical profession to one dead level of uniformity. Mark the ingenuity of the epithet, ' one deadAevel of uniformity;' but mark also how completely the epithet—as epithets often do—begs the whole question at issue To the more accurately accommodated eye of the disinterested bystander, conjoint examinations imply, not acZeacZ or loiu level of uniformity, but a hir/h level of uniformity of good and trust- worthy examinations through which no incompetent men could filter. Equality of fees, which savours of injustice to the economical instinct of the Scotchman, appears to the average Englishman a just and necessary provision, effectually guard- ing against the possibility of the perpetuation of the old abuse of competition of examining bodies downwards. Moreover,](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22294843_0017.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
