PREFACE. XXV 



of the House of Lords, whether all dealers in medicines have 

 not the same right to recommend the use of them to purchasers, 

 and to go to their houses to receive orders, in the same manner 

 as the dealers in other commodities. It were to be wished that 

 the Barbers' Company of London would form a point of union 

 for those practitioners to whom it is inconvenient to apply to the 

 Society of Apothecaries for a licence. 



The use of the licence of the College of Physicians being cer- 

 tainly to assure the public that if a patient should send for a 

 licentiate, who is not known to him or his friends, there is a 

 moral probability that this person, practising under the title of 

 a physician, will be found deserving of their confidence ; so it 

 should seem that the object of the Apothecaries Act is certainly 

 to give the public a similar assurance, that a person who exer- 

 cises the medical profession under the title of an apothecary, has 

 gone through a certain routine of education, and may therefore 

 be reasonably judged capable of performing what is required 

 from him in that profession ; whereas, in committing themselves 

 to the care of those who practise under other titles, patients do it 

 at their own j)eril, and are guarded only by the general respon- 

 sibility of all practitioners to the common law of the land, which 

 ves damages to those injured through their gross neglect. As 

 e privileges of the College of Physicians do not hinder apothe- 

 ies^ according to the above decision of the House of Lords, 

 m practising under a different title, in order that the public 

 ay not mistake the proper rank of the practitioner, so it seems 

 robable, especially since the repeated rejection of the Surgeons' 

 Hill, that although the courts of law, sticking to the letter and 

 neglecting the spirit of the law, may grant verdicts in many cases 

 against retailers who have incautiously visited sick persons, the 

 legislature neither does nor will become a party to establish a 

 medical monopoly throughout the country, but intends to leave 

 the practice of medicine and surgery open to free and honourable 

 competition, only preventing persons from practising under the 

 ^Mover of titles by which they are liable to be confounded with 

 ^^khers who have gone through a certain course of study. Indeed, 

 ^Hfae obliging persons who have a strong natural genius for medi-> 

 ^Bine to transport themselves to some foreign dime, because the 



