Medical Jurisprudence, Volume 1 (of 3) — John Shaqi
Medical Jurisprudence, Volume 1 (of 3)Paris, John Ayrton
Science
Medical Jurisprudence, Volume 1 (of 3)
Paris, John Ayrton
Medical laws and legislation -- Great Britain
the collateral lights of natural philosophy and erudition, are required;
while for its successful practice as an art, the physician should
possess those high qualifications of mind, and have received that moral
cultivation which a mere technical education can never bestow. We are
willing to admit that “the curative art cannot be learnt on the
sequestered banks of the Cam or the Isis, as well as amid the distress
and sickness of a great city;” but we assert with equal confidence, that
the liberal pursuits, and wholesome discipline of an English university,
can best prepare the mind for the full and extensive benefits, which the
pupil is afterwards to derive from his professional studies in the
metropolis; and if it be essential to encourage a liberal education
amongst those who are destined to move in the higher walks of physic, we
would ask whether any plan could be derived more likely to ensure our
object, than that fair and honourable reward which is held out by this
unjustly reviled bye-law of the College of Physicians. It has been
urged, that the education of a physician is thus rendered materially and
unnecessarily expensive; and that the delay of twelve years, which are
required for the full completion of the highest medical degree, proves
another great and vexatious hardship;—to all this we reply, that we
should politically resist any measure that had the least tendency to
divest medical education of its pecuniary sacrifices, and to open the
temple to a crowd of needy and half-educated adventurers. Tissot seems
to have entertained the same sentiment, and he observes that, for these
reasons, no person ought to be allowed to study physic in his native
city: the operation of this bye-law will therefore furnish the surest
guarantee of professional respectability, and the College of Physicians
will continue to enroll names distinguished for science and erudition,
men who will cast a lustre on the profession, over which they preside:
let then the practitioner in medicine beware how he attempts to
depreciate the dignity and importance of this ancient institution, or to
deny the rights and privileges to which the corporate body is legally
and morally entitled, for to the College of Physicians, as it regards
the whole profession of physic, we may address the same emphatic words
that Cicero applied to Torquatus with reference to the state, “TIBI,
NULLUM PERICULUM ESSE PERSPICIO, QUOD QUIDEM SEJUNCTUM SIT AB OMNIUM
INTERITU.”
Nor is the College singular or invidious, as may at first sight appear,
in adopting this rule; by far the greater number, if not all, of the
Bishops require a similar qualification for the Church; and the Inns of
Court, though they do not exclude others, grant some indulgence to
members of the University on entering their respective societies, and
remit two years of the usual term of probation to those who have taken
the degree of Master of Arts or Bachelor of Laws previously to their
call to the Bar.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account