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charter of incorporation, though it divided the 

 physicians of London into two classes, members 

 of the corporation and licentiates, demanded 

 however the same learning from both ; and that 

 the college would act contrary to their duty, if 

 they gave equal liberty to practise medicine to 

 descriptions of men possessing unequal degrees 

 of ability*. But, nine years previously to my 

 being proposed by Dr. Pitcairn, I had under- 

 gone the trials of fitness, to which licentiates 

 are subjected before admission to practise, and 

 if I may venture to credit what was said by Sir 



* This is a dictate of common sense ; but though found 

 by the counsel of the college, in the charter which was 

 granted to them nearly three hundred years ago, its justness 

 was not acknowledged when the late Dr. Fothergill became 

 a licentiate ; for he was permitted to exercise his profession in 

 London, under a by-law which declared, that one reason for 

 constituting a class of licentiates was, that many persons who 

 were fit to practise medicine, had not, however, sufficient 

 learning to be fellows. But there is reason to believe, that 

 the late admission, on the part of the college, of equality in 

 point of learning between the fellows and licentiates, was 

 merely to serve a particular purpose during the trial of Dr. 

 Stanger's cause. For in the testimonials of fitness to prac- 

 tise, which they give to licentiates, they still refuse to style 

 them doctors of physic, though they constantly bestow that 

 title on fellows j and it was, I suppose, in consequence of 

 this distinction, that a president of the college had the 

 effrontery to tell a learned professor of Gottingen, when upon 

 a visit to this country a few years ago, that the licentiates of 

 the college were not proper physicians. 



