REPORT ON MEDICAL EDUCATION, &C. 
163 
which other parties, oftentimes interested parties, choose to 
lay before it, is not this the result, that prosecutions fall upon 
the heads, not so much of the most incompetent as of the 
most successful unqualified practitioners ? I think that such 
men have seldom or never been selected for prosecution, and 
the returns made to this committee, as to the number of the 
penalties recovered, would establish that point. I believe 
that the Society have received but £130 in penalties, from 
the first passing of the act of Parliament; therefore they could 
not be men of very considerable eminence, or of very great 
reputation who were prosecuted." 
An extract is then produced of a letter from a country 
practitioner, who after having received a respectable medical 
education for the time, but not, as far as appears from the 
document, having undergone any examination, was, after 
being nine years settled in practice, prosecuted and convicted 
and subjected to a penalty of £20 and costs, the latter being 
£400. To enable him to dispense with impunity he took a 
qualified partner, but notwithstanding this, he was at the date 
of writing, threatened with another action. The examination 
then proceeds as follows: — 
" If the statement in this letter is to be believed, it would 
appear that this gentleman underwent a very respectable 
course of medical education, and that the Society, therefore, 
does not confine its prosecutions to the most ignorant and 
incompetent of the persons exercising the functions of an 
apothecary without a qualification ? That may be true, but 
we have no means of knowing, in the first instance, what the 
qualifications are, of such individuals. Informations are sent 
up to us by other professional gentlemen in the neighbourhood, 
who represent the hardship of a man, of perhaps an active 
and intelligent mind in other respects, running away with 
the business that formerly belonged to them; and therefore 
calling upon the society to protect them under those circum- 
stances. The Society have no alternative, but of proceeding 
at once against a man, where the clearest evidence exists of 
his being an irregular practitioner. But considering that the 
object of the Act is to protect the public against the wholly 
