COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS. (Hansard, 13 March 1834)

§ The Earl of Durham
wished to call the attention of the House to a Petition of which he had given notice, and which he conceived to be well deserving of their Lordships' serious consideration. It was a Petition from the Physicians practising in London under the title of Licentiates. As he should move, that the Petition be read at length, he should only state in general that it complained of the bye laws of the College of Physicians, which excluded Licentiates from their share in the government of the College, in the emoluments of it, and in the privileges attached to it, and prayed for a general inquiry into, and remedy of, the existing bad state of the law relating to the medical profession. He had also a Petition from the practising Surgeons and Apothecaries of the Metropolis on a similar subject, which he should present on a future occasion. The Petition he now held in his hand was signed by seventy-six Licentiate Physicians, being more than one-half of those who practised in London. In the College-list of 1832, there were 126 Fellows of the College and 272 Licentiates. Of those, sixty-five Fellows and 138 Licentiates were in London. These together made up a number of 203, and out of that number 180 only practised in London and within seven miles round it, in which the population amounted to 1,500,000 persons. With a view of forming some opinion on the subject, it would be curious to know the proportion of Physicians in Berlin and Paris, as compared to the population of those cities, and then to see whether the opinion was borne out, that the effect of the bye laws of the College of Physicians was to prevent London from enjoying a sufficient supply of medical men of the first rank and class. The propositions were these:—In Berlin, where there was a population of 249,000, there were 228 Physicians. In Paris, where the population amounted to 935,000, there were 925 Physicians; while, in London, where the population was 1,500,000, there were only 180 practising Physicians. Again, in Berlin there were 174 surgeons and apothecaries; in Paris there were 159; and in London 2,000. It was not now a question whether there were too many surgeons and apothecaries, but whether the demand of the people for medical aid of the first order was fully complied with, and whether the bye laws of the College of Phy- 123 sicians did not compel the people to have recourse to an inferior grade of practitioners. There were throughout the rest of the country 150 Physicians who were members of the College; and twenty-five Licentiates for the whole of England and Wales. The complaints against the laws now regulating the medical profession were, that no person could practise in London unless he had passed an examination at the College, and that no person could pass an examination there unless he had graduated at Oxford or Cambridge, where the medical schools were of an inferior kind; that the College did not possess the power of protecting those whom it licensed, for that its Statutes were not penal; that any person whatever might practise as a surgeon; that with respect to that branch of the profession, there was required an Act similar to that passed in 1815, with regard to apothecaries, in which branch great improvements had taken place since the passing of the Act in question. The petition went on to state, that the Charter was granted in the tenth year of the reign of Henry 8th.; that the restrictions imposed on that Charter were proper enough at the time it was granted, but that the bye laws which had since been made were of such a nature, that the original intention and object of the Charter were evaded. The result of these bye laws he believed to be, that the bulk of the medical men of the highest skill and attainments had been excluded from those advantages and privileges, the enjoyment of which was unjustly confined to a very small number. In consequence of this exclusion, dissensions had arisen in the medical profession, and the people were deprived of enjoying all the benefit that the advanced state of medical science ought to be able to confer upon them. In the 300 years during which the Charter had been in existence, the College of Physicians had only published eighteen volumes of their transactions, while on the Continent the Medical and Chirurgical bodies answering to our College of Physicians, had, during the last thirty years, published eighty volumes of transactions. It was only on public grounds that he had brought this subject under the consideration of their Lordships, for in private he knew and esteemed some of the members of the College of Physicians, in whose hands these bye laws placed the enjoyment of 124 what he conceived to be unjust and improper privileges. He thought there ought to be a less restricted right of admission to all the privileges of the College, and a power of exercising a superintendence over its management, and that there should be added to the list of its privileged members a sufficient supply of the best and purest names of the profession. He moved that the Petition be brought up and read.

§ Viscount Melbourne
, without giving any opinion on this subject, owed it to the medical body at large to say, that he was satisfied that a general inquiry into the laws of the medical profession was highly expedient, and that considerable advantages might be expected from it. He did not, however, sec that there was any actual necessity for their Lordships to enter into such an inquiry, since a Committee had been appointed in the House of Commons to take the whole matter into consideration. If, however, his noble friend was desirous of embarking in an inquiry of the same kind, and would himself undertake the task of conducting it, he should offer a Motion for appointing a Committee, no opposition.

§ The Earl of Durham
did not know whether the medical body would or would not be satisfied with the inquiry established by the House of Commons. When they came to him to ask him to present this petition, he stated the fact of the appointment of a Committee in the House of Commons, but they did not on that account withdraw their petition to the House of Lords, but desired that their case should be brought under the consideration of their Lordships' House.

Lord Ellenborough
had no objection whatever to the appointment of a Committee, but, from the statement made by the noble Lord opposite, it appeared to him that this grievance was rather of an individual, than of a public nature; but he must, in justice to the medical profession of this metropolis, say, that whether chiefly composed of men of the higher or the inferior classes of the profession, they appeared to be more successful in their treatment of diseases than the medical professors of the cities with which they had been compared, for the average mortality in London was much smaller than in either Berlin or Paris. The aver- 125 age mortality in London was supposed to be one in forty; in Paris it was one in thirty-two, and in Berlin one in thirty-five.

§ The Earl of Durham
observed, that if the argument of the noble Lord was pushed to its full extent, the whole of the medical profession ought to be composed of apothecaries.

Lord Ellenborough
was happy to say that he was not competent, from his own experience, to form an opinion on the subject, as he had never consulted a Physician in his life.