practitioners, nor be blinded to its utter incompetency for ensuring to the public the due qualification of each individual candidate for practice who may come forward under its auspices.

No degree of individual merit can possibly atone for the general inferiority of this class of practitioners to that of the surgeon-apothecaries; nor should any false estimate of their supposed equality mislead us for a moment into sanctioning any system which should tend to give perpetuity to this body, by legalising their practice, or encouraging their increase. If left to the natural influence of time and of causes continually though silently operating, they will, I doubt not, in due course give way to their better qualified rivals; a change which has to a considerable degree already taken place, which is still in full progress, and which, if not interrupted by injudicious legislation, will assuredly establish the surgeon-apothecary eventually as the general practitioner all over the kingdom; and it will accomplish this without occasioning a single instance of individual injustice, or in any respect oppressing that body whom it is intended to displace. How such salutary change may be best promoted, so as neither to affect individual interests, nor hazard the retardation of the natural progress of events, must be further discussed when we come ultimately to speak of those amendments of the profession in which the aid of the legislature may be beneficially employed.

I come next to notice the medical corporations of each of our other metropolises; and it is the more necessary to display the peculiar attributes of each, as a knowledge thereof must greatly tend to facilitate that free and reciprocal intercourse which ought assuredly to exist between the several parts of the same empire.

The university of Dublin, as I before observed, grants degrees in physic on two foundations: the one that of their charter, which having been granted at a time when medical science was but in its infancy, does not make provision for the due information of the candidate. It is accessible only to the literary graduates or under graduates of the university, or to those who may be admitted to degrees ad cundem in Trinity College, Dublin, by a bene decepit from Oxford or Cambridge. They afford no sufficient proof, however, of a competent medical education or acquirements, and they do not, that I know of, confer any privileges beyond the precincts of the university.

The other medical degree which issues from Trinity College, Dublin, is attainable by candidates who are not literary graduates. It is conferred under the authority of an act of parliament,

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parliament, by which Sir Patrick Dunn, himself a medical practitioner, was empowered to found, in the university of Dublin, a more perfect school of physic, and to endow out of his private property certain professorships that were previously deficient.

To the three medical professorships of the university he added three others, so as to complete the six of which all our principal schools of physic now almost uniformly consist. A course of study is required by this bill nearly similar to that which obtains in Edinburgh and Glasgow: a thesis is published, examinations held, and a degree granted, which, as far as any such instrument can convey the assurance, testifies to the public that the person possessing it has at least gone through a regular medical education. And while I am on this subject, it may not be amiss to observe that the language of a medical degree, the qualifications it vouches for, and the privileges it confers, have been made the subjects of much unmeaning ridicule, and their declarations egregiously misconceived, in consequence of a too literal acceptation of them.

The true extent and import of this instrument are so well explained by the Senatus Academicus of Edinburgh, in the reply given by them to Dr. Harrison in 1807, that I shall make no apology for introducing the extract in this place. The committee appointed by the Senatus Academicus to consider and report on Dr. Harrison's proposals, after some observations on the nature and tendency thereof, proceed to remark, that "they need not mention the origin, and the reasons of conferring degrees in physic, a practice which has been long followed in Europe, and of which the expediency and even necessity are now universally acknowledged. They beg leave, however, to observe, that it has never been intended to declare to the public, that the person upon whom a university confers a degree of Doctor of Physic, has acquired a complete knowledge of medicine; but to an nounce to the world in the most public manner, that he has been regularly educated, that he has studied during a university period all the branches of medicine, and that he has acquired such a stock of knowledge as in the opinion of competent judges qualifies him for entering upon the practice of physic.

After such an open and candid declaration, neither the quaintness nor turgescence of expression which may appear on the face of a medical degree, can reasonably subject it to either ridicule or reproach. It is possible that a more simple form of words might be devised, more accurately expressive of the degree of approbation due to the candidate; but it

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does not appear that the evil of the present form is of such magnitude to call for innovation in respect of it. The subject indeed is little worth discussing; but, as among other sarcastic and disingenuous reflections cast on this body by their rivals and opponents, with a view to depress them still lower by rendering them the objects of ridicule and contempt, this one has been not unfrequently resorted to, and with some effect on the light-minded and inconsiderate, I thought it not unmeet to place the matter in its proper light, and thus to vindicate the possessors of such degrees from the imputation of an arrogance which they are utter strangers to, and cannot feel.

The Dublin College of Physicians examines for licenses to practice in Dublin, any medical graduate of a university. Unlike the London College, however, which is obliged to admit to its association, without further trial, the doctors of Oxford and Cambridge, the College of Physicians of Dublin recognises no peculiar claim in the medical graduates of their own country, but examines indiscriminately all who come forward to require their license. They further demand the sum of fifty pounds as a fine on admission, to which amount it has been raised within a few years from five-andtwenty, not from any wants of the College for an extension of their funds, but on the alleged principle of increasing, by such increased expenditure of the candidate, the respecta. bility of the profession. By what mode of inference such a conclusion was arrived at, or by what species of logic the reasonings which led to it were conducted or supported, I own myself too dull in intellect to be able to discover.

This College has never been called on to examine country practitioners, nor do I believe the expedient of granting extra licenses has yet occurred to them. There are some further circumstances, however, respecting this body, so illustrative of the general interests of the profession of physic, and so expressive of the spirit with which corporate powers are so prone to be exercised, that it cannot be a waste of time to expose these a little further.

The management of this corporation rests solely with the fellows, and does not extend to the licentiates. These fellows elect from among the licentiates as they think fit. Conceiving themselves, as they naturally did, to be placed at the head of their profession, and invested with such power of limiting their numbers, it was hardly to be expected that they would have the virtue to withstand the temptations to selfish and sinister proceedings thus offered to them, nor that they should not lend an ear to that specious but delusive reasoning, which whispered to them, that as holding

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the highest rank in the profession they must consequently be the most esteemed of medical practitioners, and that the amount of business and emoluments engrossed by them, was very likely to be in the inverse ratio of their numbers.

How far this affords a correct elucidation of their conduct in this particular, I shall not pretend to aver; but the fact is certain, that when Dr. Harrison first called the attention of the profession to its manifold grievances and abuses, the fellows of this body resident in Dublin, and exercising all its rights and privileges, were reduced to ten only.

At this period the licentiates of the College were between thirty and forty in number, and might constitute about one half of the practising physicians of the city, the remaining part consisting of graduate physicians of different universities, who for divers reasons had not become attached in any way to the College, but continued to practise independent of its sanction. And it is not a little curious to develope the motives by which so large a body of practitioners were withheld from incorporating themselves with the College by obtaining their license. Some of high minds felt averse to submitting themselves to the overbearing spirit by which this little conclave was obviously influenced; others dreaded the power which might be exercised over them at examinations by men whose obvious policy it was to narrow the profession, and exclude from its pale; others again were either unwilling or unable to pay the advanced fine of fifty pounds, more especially as they knew its destination was to be expended not on objects of science, but in drinking and carousing. The latter of these, indeed, those who pleaded inability, the College most liberally offered to compromise with, by agreeing to accept half their demand in cash, and the remainder in approved bills at twelve months date. But I have not been able to learn that this generous tender was received with the gratitude it was so justly entitled to.

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It is further worthy of remark, that although this College were empowered by their charter to fine all such physicians as should be found practising in the city without their license, these unlicensed men whom I have been noticing were left unmolested, and suffered to practise on an equal footing with the licentiates, who had yet been obliged to purchase their privilege by undergoing an examination, and paying the sum of fifty pounds.

Shortly after the period I have been adverting to, the unlicensed physicians of Dublin entered into an association with certain of the licentiates, for the purpose of procuring some amelioration in the management of the affairs of the No. 176. College,

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College, with regard to the examinations for licenses, and the fines demanded on obtaining them. Unsupported, however, in their endeavors, and despondent of success, this association, after several communications with the College, in which nothing definitive was determined on, became insensibly dissolved, some members being admitted to licenses unexamined, others consenting to undergo examination, while several still maintained a proud and stubborn independence, holding out equally against the concessions of the College as against their more rigid demands.

The measure of association, however, has not been wholly unproductive of good, for since that period the College has considerably increased the number of its fellows, but without entering into any regulations for altering the mode of electing them, or providing any security against the effects of a monopolising spirit, whenever this shall again spring up among them.

In the Dublin College of Surgeons, though I find somewhat to condemn, yet I have infinitely more to approve of than in the sister corporation. And it is interesting to observe, that both here and in London, the institution of recent establishment evinces much more both of liberal sentiment and sound judgment, than that which claims so much higher an antiquity.

This College examines for surgical licenses all who have undergone the necessary apprenticeship, and attended the necessary lectures and dissections. The examination for a license is their principal one. They examine, however, both surgeons and mates for the army and navy, and supply to both a large number of medical practitioners.

The licentiate, in two years from his examination, is eligible as a member of the College; and unless he is chargeable with some instance of medical or moral delinquency, he is elected on a simple application, and admitted on paying a further inconsiderable fee.

To this body is Ireland indebted for furnishing its popu lation with an abundance of surgical practitioners, well grounded in anatomy, and the knowledge of surgical diseases. The errors of this establishment are, that affecting an equal elevation to that of the physician, and endeavoring to preserve between the several departments of physic a forced and unnatural distinctness, they have disdained too much the conjunction of pharmacy with the practice of their art, and on most mistaken principles have prohibited their li centiates therefrom on pain of expulsion.

And indeed the combination of pharmacy with surgery in the person of the surgeon, seems in Ireland doubly guarded

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against,