328 STATE AND THE MEDICAL PROFESSION xill 



fess to have the State qualification when, in point 

 of fact, they do not possess it. They are simply 

 cheats and swindlers, like other people who profess 

 to be what they are not, and should be punished 

 as such. 



But supposing we are agreed about the justifica- 

 tion of State intervention in medical affairs, new 

 questions arise as to the manner in which that 

 intervention should take place and the extent to 

 which it should go, on which the divergence of 

 opinion is even greater than it is on the general 

 question of intervention. 



It is now, I am sorry to say, something over 

 forty years since I began my medical studies ; and, 

 at that time, the state of affairs was extremely 

 singular. I should think it hardly possible that 

 it could have obtained anywhere but in such a 

 country as England, which cherishes a fine old 

 crusted abuse as much as it does its port wine. 

 At that time there were twenty- one licensing 

 bodies that is to say, bodies whose certificate 

 was received by the State as evidence that the 

 persons who possessed that certificate were medical 

 experts. How these bodies came to possess these 

 powers is a very curious chapter in history, in 

 which it would be out of place to enlarge. They 

 were partly universities, partly medical guilds and 

 corporations, partly the Archbishop of Canterbury. 

 Those were the three sources from which the 

 licence to practice came in that day. There was 





