ILLEGAL VKACTITJONKKS. 
531 
this honourable way, and is it right that the practitioner who has 
gone through a regular routine of study should receive no more 
protection than the person who, without education, and without 
any test of his capabilities, assumes the character of a medical 
man? Common justice requires that a difference should be 
made between the two, and that the difference should not be 
confined to a simple discountenancing of the pretender, but 
should be effected by the institution of active laws against him. 
The example of the College of Surgeons is upheld as shew- 
ing the advantage of making examinations honorary and volun- 
tary. It is well known that the medical man gains little or no 
legal protection by his admission as a member of that corpora- 
tion. Nevertheless, there are hundreds of young men annually 
presenting themselves for their diplomas ; and the practitioner is 
not lcoked upon as orthodox without it. But those who con- 
sider the working of the voluntary system, in this instance, to 
afford an evidence of the propriety of remitting all compulsion 
in medical examinations, forget that hitherto the Company of 
Apothecaries, whose license, in a legal point of view, has been 
of more importance, have enforced on all the candidates for 
their diploma a certain course of study; and this being the 
same as that required by the College of Surgeons, students 
have been able to kill two birds with one stone, and obtain 
both diplomas with the same expenditure of time that was 
required for the one. But remove the regulations of the Apo- 
thecaries’ Company, and substitute no others equally binding, 
and we shall find that the number of men presenting themselves 
for examination at the College will sensibly diminish. The time 
and expense required to pursue a regular routine of study, and 
to attach themselves to one or other of the Colleges, will, it is to 
be feared, be a sufficient temptation to many to think lightly of 
honorary diplomas. Irregular practitioners will become much 
more common, and, having been at less expense in their educa- 
tion, will be able to make their charges at a lower rate, and so 
beat the authorized medical man out of the field. 
The ability to sue for charges in a court of law, and the 
qualification to hold public appointments and grant recognized 
testimonials, arc, no doubt, inducements to go through the re- 
