COMMITTEE. (Hansard, 20 July 1858)

THE EARL OF CARNARVON

said, that it was probably too much to expect that this Bill would please everybody; but almost all the leading medical corporate bodies in the kingdom were, with very little difference, agreed in its favour, with the exception, he was sorry to say, of the College of Physicians. The state of things which it was the intention of the Bill to remedy was very anomalous. They had a variety of medical interests existing throughout the country, each, mutatis mutandis, with a separate and distinct jurisdiction. The College of Physicians claimed an exclusive privilege seven miles round London, and the College of Surgeons and Apothecaries' Hall claimed similar privileges with regard to conferring power on practitioners; and they existed together with similar institutions in Scotland and Ireland without any reciprocity whatever. The most eminent Scotch physician had no right to practise in London; the most eminent physician had no right to practise in Scotland, and the same question arose regarding Irish practitioners. The Bill before their Lordships would tend to remove those complications and anomalies that had grown up in the course of centuries. The Bill was no destructive Bill, because, while it remedied existing anomalies and evils, it kept alive the twenty-two corporate bodies that now existed in this country. Its further object was to improve the position of the medical profession, to infuse fresh life into these institutions, and to preserve them in their efficiency, besides instituting a complete reciprocity between them. To effect this it proposed to establish one General Council of Supervision for the kingdom, with branch Councils and Subordinate Committees. The Council would have the power of investigating and determining as to the standard of examination. The Council would have the controlling and regulating power over the working of the system, and there would be a virtual power of suspension by appeal to the Privy Council. The Bill contained an important provision relative to the much-desired power of registration, for which at present there was no 1783 official means of reference. The Bill, he thought, would be productive of great benefit both to the medical profession and to the public.

§ LORD EBURY

said, the ostensible object of the Bill was to remedy the anomalies that at present existed in the medical profession of this country; but the real effect of it would be to secure a monopoly to these various associations. The only petitions in favour of the Bill had come from the medical bodies themselves, and not from the qualified practitioners. It was, in point of fact, a doctors' Bill. He should object to clauses in Committee. What, he would ask, was the state of the practice of medicine in this country? They were going by this Bill to confer a monopoly in the practice of medicine in this country upon persons who themselves said that they had no confidence whatever in that practice. What said Dr. Bailey just before he died—"He feared that he had done more harm than good." What said Dr. Chalmers in his funeral oration over Dr. Williams? Why, that he had no confidence in medicine. What said Dr. Forbes? Why, that the present practice of medicine was so entirely unsatisfactory that he hoped some new school would be set on foot. In the Bill before the House they were going to confer a monopoly of the medical practice of this country on a set of men who declared they had no confidence in the system.