646 UNQUALIFIED MEDICAL PRACTITIONERS. 
distortion of facts, and consequently to unsound conclusions. 
As regards quarantine, correct views on the dissemination of 
disease, whether by contagion or infection, must be at the 
basis of sound legislation. Obsolete notions, and laws 
founded thereon, should be no impediment to wise pre- 
cautions for the future, and more mischief might possibly 
arise from unrestricted intercourse of the sick and infected 
w T ith the healthy and intact, than could ever be repaired by 
all the savings arising out of commercial convenience. It 
was possible, by a comprehensive and unbiassed conception 
of the whole subject, that a maximum of security might be 
attained with a minimum of inconvenience. In the social 
position of medical men, uniformity of opinion on this 
question was much to be desired, — divisions led to merited 
opprobia. He concluded by referring to an observation 
made by Lord Campbell in the House of Lords, to the effect, 
that, if the question as to what were infectious diseases came 
before the judges, “he suspected that seven of them might 
be found on one side, and eight on the other.” This fact 
alone was indicative of a w T ork to be done — an end to be 
accomplished. 
UNQUALIFIED MEDICAL PRACTITIONERS. 
In England, it is a misdemeanour to personate a clergy- 
man, a solicitor, a soldier, a policeman, or to appear in the 
garb of one of the opposite sex. The divine, the lawyer, the 
military, and the police, are all protected against the assump- 
tions of the quack and the pretender. Yet, strange to say, 
in the matter of health and disease, of life or death, the 
greatest laxity and indifference prevail. The man who 
rejoices in no one qualification but impudence, and in no 
possessions save his quack handbills, may plaster every 
corner of London with indecent announcements ; while any 
irreclaimable vagabond of the London streets may vend his 
confectioneries, his pills, powders, or ointments ; any woman 
who has once been a mother, or once attended at a birth, 
may forthwith establish herself as a midwife; and the young 
stripling behind a druggist’s counter, who has just got over 
the timidity caused by the hieroglyphics on his master’s 
show-bottles, may advise the mother, and compound a 
draught for her sickly infant, which, however pernicious, so 
long as death does not immediately result, the law is satisfied, 
the Legislature supine. Passing over the injustice of such 
laxity as affecting qualified medical men, who are confounded 
