330 MEMORIAL 01< THE APOTHECARIES OF LONDON. 
To the Right Honourable SlR GEORGE Grey, Bart . Her Majesty's 
Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department. 
The Memorial of the Master Wardens and Society of the Art and 
Mystery of Apothearies of the City of London, 
Sheweth, 
That the Society of Apothecaries were entrusted by the Legis- 
lature in the year 1815 with the duty of regulating the course of 
study, and deciding upon the qualifications, of all who should 
thereafter propose to engage in that branch of medical practice. 
That the Society do not hesitate to affirm, that they and their 
predecessors have discharged that duty, for a period of five and 
thirty years, zealously and faithfully, and, as they confidently 
believe, with advantage to the public. 
That they have laboured incessantly to render the Medical 
Attendant of the great mass of the people of this country 
thoroughly competent to the discharge of the important duties 
which devolve upon him ; and they have striven, to the extent of 
their powers, to elevate the professional and social status of the 
large body of practitioners who have been educated under their 
auspices. 
That the Society have been long sensible of the necessity which 
exists for a revision of the laws affecting the Medical Profession 
generally ; and they have omitted no fitting opportunity of repre- 
senting to the Government the changes which are required in the 
Act of Parliament under which the functions of this Society are 
exercised. 
That they have aided, to the best of their ability, the efforts 
which have been made of late years to render the Medical In- 
stitutions of this country better adapted for the discharge of their 
respective functions. 
That, irrespectively of all personal considerations, and with a 
single desire to promote any arrangement which gave reasonable 
promise of an improvement in the medical polity of the country; 
and in the hope that an Incorporation of the General Practitioners 
in Medicine, Surgery, and Midwifery, possessing an unrestricted 
right of examination in every branch of professional knowledge, 
would result in such an improvement; and in the belief that such 
an Incorporation was, in fact, desired by a large proportion of 
the General Practitioners themselves, the Society consented to 
relinquish the performance of the duties in which they had been 
so long engaged. 
That the conferences which took place between the Govern- 
