"Let every man who chooses--subject to one common law of manslaughter for all the _crass_ cases--doctor the bodies of all who choose to trust him, and recover payment according to agreement in the courts of law. Provided always that every person practising should be registered at a moderate fee in a register to be republished every six months. "Let the register give the name, address, and asserted qualification of each candidate--as licentiate, or doctor, or what not, of this or that college, hall, university, &c., home or foreign. Let it be competent to any man to describe himself as qualified by study in public schools without a diploma, or by private study, or even by intuition or divine inspiration, if he please. But whatever he holds his qualification to be, that let him declare. Let all qualification {269} which of its own nature admits of proof be proved, as by the diploma or certificate, &c., leaving things which cannot be proved, as asserted private study, intuition, inspiration, &c., to work their own way. "Let it be highly penal to assert to the patient any qualification which is not in the register, and let the register be sold very cheap. Let the registrar give each registered practitioner a copy of the register in his own case; let any patient have the power to demand a sight of this copy; and let no money for attendance be recoverable in any case in which there has been false representation. "Let any party in any suit have a right to produce what medical testimony he pleases. Let the medical witness produce his register, and let his evidence be for the jury, as is that of an engineer or a practitioner of any art which is not attested by diplomas. "Let any man who practises without venturing to put his name on the register be liable to fine and imprisonment. "The consequence would be that, as now, anybody who pleases might practise; for the medical world is well aware that there is no power of preventing what they call quacks from practising. But very different from what is now, every man who practises would be obliged to tell the whole world what his claim is, and would run a great risk if he dared to tell his patient in private anything different from what he had told the whole world. "The consequence would be that a real education in anatomy, physiology, chemistry, surgery, and what is known of the thing called medicine, would acquire more importance than it now has.