504 ABUSES IN THE PUBLIC HOSPITALS. 



school, as Edinburgh, Paris, or Dublin, are stigmatized by the name of 

 " Licentiates" (permissi), and are shut out from any voice in the 

 management of the affairs of the college, probably out of revenge for 

 the latter bearing off so large a proportion of practice, and of course of 

 fees. The charter of the college does not, however, interdict receiving 

 into communion the graduates of any university; it is a mere bye-law, 

 which restricts the privilege to those of Oxford and Cambridge. What 

 can be urged in defence of this invidious and ridiculous regulation ? 

 Nothing. Why then is it persevered in ? Are " the Fellows" blind to 

 the signs of the times ? Is the gift of prophecy required to foretel that 

 the same power which transferred to Manchester and Sheffield, Bir- 

 mingham and Leeds, the privileges vested in the proprietors of Gatton 

 and Sarum, of Corfe Castle and Callington, will also be exerted to open 

 the gates of the esculapian temple in Pall Mall to all British graduates 

 of unexceptionable character, and of competent knowledge, whether 

 they have studied on the banks of the Cam or the Clyde, on those of the 

 Isis or the Forth. 



Turn we now to the consideration of the charter of the College of 

 Surgeons, which indeed is nothing less than a license granted to a few 

 individuals, by which they are enabled to pilfer enormous sums of 

 money from the public with impunity, under the pretence of teaching 

 medical science. Its provisions are so utterly at variance with every 

 principle of right, that it must be entirely done away with before any 

 salutary change can be effected in the government of this college ; for 

 although its close nominated and self-electing executive might be 

 exercised with liberality and judgment (which assuredly never yet has 

 been the case), there is no controlling power to compel a continuance of 

 measures so founded. Let us look at the legislative acts of this self- 

 elected and irresponsible Council upon one subject only, on the regu- 

 lations of the course of study imposed on candidates for admission as 

 members. This Council, having the privilege of precribing the course 

 of study, nay, the power of dictating when and where it shall be pur- 

 sued, and of naming the very individuals from whom knowledge must 

 be obtained by candidates for examination, consists of twenty-one indi- 

 viduals, all of whom are teachers of some branch of medical science, 

 four-fifths of them being at the same time hospital-surgeons, and more- 

 over are men of fashion, delighting during the summer months in tf cot- 

 tage ornees," or gay watering-places. These facts must be steadily kept 

 in view, because they explain extraordinary and otherwise unaccountable 

 circumstances. 



It is somewhere observed, that " an examination of the laws of a 

 people will show which class has made them. If in the case of high- 

 roads, it be forbidden that a plantation should grow by the hedge-side 

 in a common farm, but the same plantation be permitted in a park to 

 the injury of the road, it is thence clear the park owners have made the 

 law. If privileges are accumulated by any particular set, we may be 

 sure it is this set which has been employed in law-making." 



Should we find then in the regulations of the Council of the College 

 of Surgeons, that a course of lectures attended from June to September 

 is rejected, while a similar course from October to January, or from 

 February to May, is received; that knowledge obtained in one place, even 

 although picked up in winter or spring, is deemed worthless, compared 

 with the acquisition of the. same knowledge in another place ; that lee- 



