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CHAP. X.

In the prosecution of my purpose to offer some remarks on the medical profession in my own country, as suggested by what came to my knowledge of its state in France, I find my engagement must be redeemed very briefly indeed, the quantity of preceding matter obliging me to curtail what I had to say to less than one third; and this brevity is the more necessary, until farther opportunity shall have supplied me with fuller information on different points connected with the government and usages of our College of Physicians. Short and comparatively unsatisfactory as the present sketch must be, I shall nevertheless have occasion to entreat the professional reader to be very patient with me. To whatever side his

predilections may incline, whether we nearly coincide, or are widely at variance, he will at least see, I trust, that my sole aim is not childish triumph in behalf of early partialities, but to arrive at some practically beneficial conclusion, for the advantage both of the public and the profession, whose true interests, indeed, can never be distinct.

Though upwards of twenty years a fellow of the London College of Physicians, and perhaps not less interested in its welfare than the most active of its resident members, with every thing to dispose me to overlook its failings, many of its learned society among my early, kind, and valued friends, and none more kind or valued than its present excellent President,—with all these and many other motives to sway me to a blind partiality, I must candidly own, that for a long space my eyes have not been shut to certain defects, which I have more than once hinted to the President my intention of some day submitting to the Profession for the common benefit of all. But while much odium was sure to be incurred, and, after all, the result

extremely doubtful, such an undertaking could 204 be very inviting, even to the most dauntless real; and, indeed, but for the accidental ocenexica of the subject with what fell under my notice in Paris, it might probably have been deferred du Če.

My equal relation to the College of Physiclans and to the Universities of which I am a member, I trost may excuse me for using the same freedom in speaking of the merits and demerits of each; my wish being to bring my mind, as much as I am able, into a state of that neutrality and indifference, without which it is impossible that our opinions on such questions should be entitled to respect.

To proceed without farther preface, I begin with noticing some of the principal objections accidentally gleaned in the course of my reading) which have been taken against the present constitution of the College of Physicians; after which I shall offer some thoughts on the comparative merits of the system of medical education at the different universities of Great Britain; and then wind up my brief essay with

some general remarks on the most feasible means of rendering the administration of the College effective to secure its true objects, and I believe the objects of its original foundation.

In replying, as I shall do, very briefly to the objections against the College, I doubtless must labour under great disadvantages, in consequence of not residing in the metropolis, or having ever bestowed any pains to inform myself of its statutes and by-laws. Yet for my present purpose of considering the question, this, perhaps, is not so great a disadvantage as may appear at first sight; since it is not so much what the College is legally authorized to do, as what it would be for the advantage of the public that it ought to do, which is of any real importance to have well ascertained.

One of the numerous objections I find taken against the College, after first imputing to it a desire to make a monopoly of the Profession, alleges, that with the view of keeping their acts and proceedings secret, they purposely withhold their statutes and by-laws from the perusal of both the fellows and licentiates. In reply

to this, I can only observe, that my recollection serves me with no instance of a fellow being hindered access to these documents; and if licentiates have been refused when the thing was decorously applied for, it is, I believe, very contrary to the liberal spirit which governs the general conduct of the College. But as, according to the existing statutes, the licentiates are not associated in the government and business of the College, I cannot see it a hardship that they should not be freely allowed a liberty which there is so much good reason to believe would often be vexatiously exercised. But that the permission in question has been actually granted on many occasions to licentiates as well as fellows, Ithink I can' take upon me positively to affirm; which is a full answer to this first, and in spirit not very liberal, imputation.

Another objection accuses the College of injurious limitation in respect to the number of fellows and licentiates: in reply to which, I am borne out by authority in asserting, that there is no law of any sort binding on the College to such an effect.

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