Medical Jurisprudence, Volume 3 (of 3)Paris, John Ayrton
Science
Medical Jurisprudence, Volume 3 (of 3)
Paris, John Ayrton
Medical laws and legislation -- Great Britain
LAWRENCE, J. This is an application for a mandamus to compel the College
of Physicians to examine Dr. _Stanger_ in order that he may be admitted
a fellow; and the foundation of the application is that he has been
admitted to the practise of physic and is one of the _homines
facultatis_ within the meaning of the charter; which (it is said) gives
him a right to admission, if on examination he shall be found fit; and
that all the bye-laws militating against such right are illegal. His
counsel have been under the necessity of insisting on the licence giving
him a right to examination; for if the being admitted a member of the
body be matter of election, it is immaterial whether the bye-laws be
good or bad. It seems to me that the insufficiency of the provisions of
the statute 3 _Hen._ 8. probably gave rise to this charter; the object
of which was to establish a better mode of determining who were proper
persons to be licensed to practise physic, and to prevent the practice
of ignorant empirics; and if so, it was not necessary that all men of
the faculty should be members of the body. All that was necessary was
that it should be composed of a sufficient number of learned and
discrete practisers of physic, who should have a power of continuing the
succession in such persons as themselves, and that they should license
proper persons and restrain unfit persons from the practice of it. If
this were the object, is it natural to construe the charter as giving a
right to all men of the faculty to become members of this body, when the
charter speaks of men of the faculty in a sense contradistinguished from
the members of the body; or to suppose that the Crown meant to
incorporate all, when the charter was made for the government of some,
who, if all were incorporated, could not exist? It is admitted that
there were two distinct classes under the charter, and according to Dr.
_Stanger’s_ construction one class, that of the governed, would be
extinguished. Another mode of construing the charter in the argument was
by considering the words _omnes homines ejudem facultatis_ to mean the
individual members of the corporation: but if so, there would be no
power given to make bye-laws to affect the licentiates; and the clause
in the charter that gives the exemption from serving on juries speaks of
the person exercising the faculty as contradistinguished from the
members of the college; “_nec presidens nec aliquis de collegio prædicto
medicorum, nec successores sui, nec eorum aliquis exercens facultatem
illam_.” Therefore it seems to me that the _homines facultatis_ are not
the individual members of the college. Then it was said that there might
be some persons who might not choose to become corporators, and that
this would make a class to be governed: but that is improbable; it is
not to be supposed that, as the principal object of the charter was to
incorporate those who were skilled in physic and to prevent those from
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