Remarks on medical reform, in a second letter addressed to the Right Hon. Sir James Graham, bart. ... / by Sir James Clark, bart.

Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on medical reform, in a second letter addressed to the Right Hon. Sir James Graham, bart. ... / by Sir James Clark, bart. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    encouragement may be held out to induce me- dical students to prefer the latter. Let their qua- lifications be such as to entitle them fairly to the degree of Bachelors of Medicine, and give them the right of becoming members of the corporate body or bodies of the profession, and at no distant period the former class will, I trust, disappear. But I cannot believe, Sir, after you have been made acquainted with the responsible duties of the General Practitioner, that you will recom- mend, or the legislature sanction, a scheme fraught with such injurious consequences to the profession, and such injustice to the public. I can easily believe that you are not a little perplexed by the different opinions which you may receive on the education and position of the General Practitioner; but there is one test by which you may safely try those opinions, namely, the minimum education and the character of the man to whose care you would willingly trust your own family in a serious illness, when you could not call in the aid of the physician. No good reason can, I think, be given why the Medical Practitioners in civil life in this country should have an inferior education to those in the public service: yet such is the case. The gen- tlemen placed at the head of the medical depart- ments of the army and navy, Sir James M'Grigor and Sir William Burnett, dissatisfied with the