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THE VETERINARIAN, MARCH 1, 1847. 
Ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat. — Cicero. 
The Medical Registration Bill of 1847, published in the 
Lancet, is a document our members of Council will do well to 
thoughtfully peruse ; in order that they, when the time shall 
arrive for them to go to Parliament with some similar bill, may 
be prepared to state what their requirements are, and, by watching 
the progress and fate of the medical bill, may also be in a situ- 
ation to anticipate what of such requirements they are likely 
to obtain. The great and crying evil with the medical people, as 
with us, is, that their profession is over-run by unqualified prac- 
titioners, who, while they are taking the bread out of the mouths 
of the qualified, are working an incalculable amount of injury upon 
the public — “ incalculable/’ we say, because not a tithe of their 
hidden misdeeds comes to light. We need not to be told that, 
throughout the country, there are many worthy, clever practition- 
ers, both of human and veterinary medicine, who are not duly 
licensed, or, in other words, not “ members of the College,” either 
of surgeons or veterinary surgeons, or of the Apothecaries’ Com- 
pany : these, however, constitute but exceptions to the host of 
quacks and impostors by which both professions are over-run, and 
which it is one main object of the present Medical Registration Bill 
to put down. Such a bill, passing the legislature, cannot fail to 
work a great and wholesome reform in the medical world : it will 
do more for surgeons than has ever yet been done for them by the 
government of their country ; and it will, as a precedent, to us hold 
out at least fair prospects of being one day similarly done by. We, 
therefore, cordially wish the supporters of the present bill success 
in their undertaking ; that they deserve it, we, for our part, think 
cannot be better shewn than by the perusal of the bill itself ; of 
which, so far as concerns ourselves, we purpose giving an outline 
here, seeing that some of our subscribers in the country may not 
have an opportunity of referring to it. 
