(NO. 173.) THIRD READING. (Hansard, 5 July 1870)

THE MARQUESS OF CLANRICARDE

, in moving that the Bill be read a third time this day three months, said the measure would not be satisfactory to either the profession or the public. At a very large meeting of medical practitioners recently held in London, the Bill in its present shape was condemned, and a Petition against it obtained a 10,000 signatures. The great defect of the Bill was that it did not provide for an adequate representation of the profession on the Medical Council. The medical practitioners of the kingdom had shown themselves willing to make sacrifices in respect of the privileges of their own corporations, in order that the public might be protected against incompetent persons practising as doctors; but the Bill would not give the same protection to the public.

EARL DE GREY AND RIPON

said, the noble Marquess had stated that the Bill in its present shape did not properly protect the public against unauthorized practitioners of medicine. Now, the object of the Bill, both as at first introduced, and as it now stood, was to prevent any person from coming upon the Medical Register unless he had passed a due examination. It was true that the corporations and the Universities had preserved to them under the Bill the barren right of granting degrees; but persons who, having obtained those degrees, attempted to practice medicine for gain without being upon the register would render themselves liable to very severe penalties. He therefore could not admit that the Bill was altered in any of its cardinal principles, and he trusted that their Lordships would not stop its further progress. As to the representation of the medical profession generally in the Medical Council, he had nothing to add to what he had said on that point on the previous night.