A letter from the committee to the governors of the General Dispensary, Aldersgate Street, on the resignation of the medical officers.

Date:
1833
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter from the committee to the governors of the General Dispensary, Aldersgate Street, on the resignation of the medical officers. 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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    upon the Governors at large, which induces us again to address you; and, if in doing so, it should bethought by some that we have applied to anv of the profes- sional Gentlemen stronger language than is necessary to support the cause we wish to advocate, let it be remembered that strong; and unwarrantable language has been used towards us, imputing motives which never could exist in the minds of honourable men, and volunteering to advance charges against us, and against the eighty-six Governors who voted in the majority at the last general meeting, which, if true, would justly inflict upon them as well as upon us the censure of the public. The Committee at present consists of sixteen Go- vernors, annually elected, besides the Life Governors and the Medical Officers, and it is right to declare, that those who are not Medical Officers possess no greater advantage in the Institution, and have no greater patronage to bestow, than any other Subscriber to its funds—their services are wholly gratuitous, and their duties are frequently laborious and unpleasant; and if, in addition to these, they are to be subject to the annoyances they have lately experienced, tew men will be found to undertake the task of administering public charities, and the poor will soon be deprived of the benefits which such institutions afford them ; and though it may sometimes occur that men may differ as to the best mode of effecting good, yet their cha- racters ought to be a shield to protect them from aspersion as well as from a belief that they have been actuated by any other than honourable motives, until the contrary shall be proved: and such ought to have been the case in the present instance; for what other than the best of motives could actuate either the Com- mittee in recommending, or the Governors in adopt- ing, anv regulation for the government of the Charity, whether it affected the Medical Officers or any other branch of the Institution.