400 THE LIFE OF JAMES D. FORBES. [CHAP. 



Commissioners were understood to regard with no friendly 

 eye. This source was the granting^)? medical degrees a 

 function which St. Andrews, though it possessed no tho- 

 roughly equipped medical school, had yet, in virtue of its 

 original charter, been accustomed to exercise time out of 

 mind. It is said that there had been a time, extending 

 down to the early years of this century, when these degrees 

 had been granted, without sufficient examination, to per- 

 sons but poorly qualified. This practice, indefensible if 

 it ever existed, had, however, long ceased, and under the 

 able management of the late Dr. Reid and the late Dr. 

 Day successive occupants of the Chair of Medicine in 

 the United College a system of examination had been 

 instituted in which the candidates were thoroughly tested, 

 and the granting of degrees to none but duly qualified 

 persons was adequately secured. With the St. Andrews 

 Medical Professor as Chairman, a Board of able examiners, 

 sanctioned by the University, had been got together, 

 consisting of the best of the extra-academical medical 

 lecturers in Edinburgh and Glasgow. To the half-yearly 

 meetings of this Board flocked, in ever increasing numbers, 

 medical men from England, who, having begun practice 

 without possessing the degree of M.D., found by expe- 

 rience the advantage they would derive from such an 

 addition to their name. In later years the candidates 

 were numbered by hundreds, of whom, while a sufficient 

 percentage were rejected, not a few out of the majority 

 who passed now stand high in the medical world of London 

 and elsewhere. 



At the date of the Commission, and for a long time 

 before it, the examination was such that no fault could 

 be found with it. Still it was so far an anomaly in the 

 Scottish system, that in all other cases candidates for 

 degrees of any kind were required to have studied at the 

 University in which they graduated. Traditions, too, of a 

 bygone time and a laxer state of things were freely urged 

 by its opponents to discredit the improved system. To 

 Edinburgh medical Professors especially, the existence of 

 the St. Andrews privilege had long been a standing offence. 



