against, and utterly impracticable; for should the surgeon, urged by his own necessities, and the pressing wants of a provincial district, resolve on foregoing his license in preference for what would much more materially serve his immediate interests, he would soon find the establishment of a dispensary opposed by another chartered body, the company of apothecaries, who would prohibit his practice in this line unless he were to become a member of their body, a matter, by the way utterly unattainable by such practitioner, inasmuch as it requires a long apprenticeship to pharmacy, as well as examination, in order to accomplish it. Thus, in their zeal to maintain the dignity of surgery, and to hold an equal rank in society with the physicians, they have overlooked altogether the wants of the public at large for a ge-: neral practitioner, and have actually imposed on the apothecaries a positive necessity for assuming the character, with what advantages to the community I need not descant on. That these have supplied the want in the best way that the case admitted of, I readily grant, and if any reproach attaches to their manifold incapacities, I am far from imputing an atom of the blame thereof to the apothecaries. They only fulfilled the wishes of the public in becoming general practitioners; and if this class has in Ireland been exclusively formed by superadding to pharmacy the practice of physic and surgery, without any qualification in these latter departments being ensured or attested, instead of the more rational mode adopted by the London College of Surgeons, of leaving the practice of pharmacy open to the well-informed surgeons whenever the nature of the population rendered a union of the departments necessary, the blame must rest any where rather than with the apothecaries. They are now a respectable and deserving body of men, and may well feel some indignation at the supercilious treatment of their more dignified competitors.

But while I appreciate their merits, and vindicate their character, I by no means intend to offer a single plea for this department of medical practice being resigned to them. On the contrary, I conceive it a matter of actual necessity that it be transferred to other and more competent hands; and if the Dublin College of Surgeons will only emulate the liberality and sound policy of the London, and empower their licentiates to combine pharmacy whenever the wants of society render it expedient, the control of the Apothecaries Company being at the same time removed, there can be no doubt but that this change would take place by a silent and unperceived, though certain and progressive operation, without any individual injustice being exercised, or

any interruption taking place in the necessary attendance on the public. As one body of practitioners increases, the other will insensibly decline. Young men entering the profession will naturally qualify themselves for that line which is likely to prove both most lucrative and most respectable, and thus a body of practitioners will in due time arise, for each and every one of whom the public will have a full assurance of regular education, and perfect qualification.

Were such the condition of the general practitioners, we should soon cease to hear of their murmurings or complaints at receiving inadequate remuneration; complaints which proceed from the excessive numbers and disorganised state of the profession at large, which has engendered a most disgraceful species of competition among the rival practitioners, and by inducing the worst among them to advance themselves by underselling their opponents, establishes them on the ruins of the more meritorious members, and finally vilifies and degrades the whole,

I have dwelt long on this subject, both in this place, and when treating of the London College of Surgeons; and I do so the more readily, because I conceive it to be the point on which the establishment of a competent body of general practitioners must depend. It is one too on which much prejudice prevails, even among enlightened men; and on this account I am the more anxious that its real merits should be thoroughly understood, and that the sources of fallacy which have heretofore obscured the reasonings, and clouded the judgments of those who have considered it, should be detected and exposed.

The two great obstacles to the arrangement which I advocate, are, an impression on the minds of surgeons that their dignity would be compromised by allowing their members to conjoin pharmacy with surgery in their practice; and a sort of indistinct and unsettled notion in the minds of the reflecting part of the public, that such combination must necessarily engender in the mind of such mixed practitioner a constant struggle between self-interest and moral principle.

On both these heads I shall now offer a few remarks, and then dismiss the subject altogether.

That the dignity or real respectability of any profession shall be lessened by that which materially increases its usefulness, is a position which will not be easily maintained; and, though that of the individual members who hold the highest stations might suffer were they to continue to dispense medicines when so elevated; it does not appear consistent either with reason or fact to conceive that these can be affected in

any

any such way by the dispensing of medicines by the subordinate members; and, as I can show pretty clearly, by reference to facts, that this consequence does not result from such combination, I shall be satisfied to try the question by this test alone, as being that concerning which there can be the least cavilling or disputation.

The London College of Surgeons grant their highest license to men who practise pharmacy, yet it does not appear that any disrepute in consequence attaches at the present day to the names of Cline, or Cooper, or Abernethy, or any of the almost endless train of scientific and enlightened practitioners whom it has the honor of claiming as members of its body. I appeal to general experience too, whether the independant surgeons who are to be met with in all the larger towns of England are not to the full as respected, and respectable, as any members of the Irish College. Nay I may carry my argument still further, and show that even the dispensing of medicine by the individuals themselves is no bar to their arriving at high eminence, or attaining the first respectability; and, in proof of the position, I may confidently appeal to our third metropolis, in which all the very highest members of the profession of surgery keep their own shops and dispense their own medicines; yet it does not appear that the names of Bell, of Russel, of Wardrop, of Wood, or of Thomson, or any of the enlightened and liberal practitioners in surgery with which the city of Edinburgh abounds, are either the less respected by the public, or the less esteemed in private society. It is surely unnecessary to go beyond these proofs, or to advert to the almost universal practice of the American physicians, with whom, if I mistake not, it is even a matter of legal injunction to combine pharmacy with the practice of physic.

I trust I have sufficiently shown that the wants of society clearly require such combination; that it is infinitely preferable to effect this by conjoining pharmacy with surgery and physic, rather than by suffering these branches to be assumed without proof of qualification, by the mere practitioner in pharmacy; and finally, that it does not derogate from the real dignity of a Royal College, or impair the respectability of its members, to admit of and authorise such combination.

To argue at length the question whether the science of medicine has been benefited by the subdivisions of its practice, and whether and to what extent it would be desirable or practicable to re-unite them, would lead me far beyond my present purpose. The position that such subdivision has conduced either to its improvement as a science, or to

its beneficial application in practice, is one which I am convinced may be satisfactorily refuted.

It is not many years since this question became the subject of a prize essay in a German academy, and produced fourteen answers, of which thirteen were in favor of the reunion and one against it; yet so inveterate are long-established prejudices, and so ineffectual the light of reason in dispelling the mists with which their objects become enveloped, that to this one the prize was adjudged, although in every page the author is seen to struggle against the suggestions of his better reason, and is finally found to negative, not the direct question of the academy, but a peculiar modification of it by himself. I need hardly refer my readers to the Edinburgh Medical Journal for January 1807, for a further account of this interesting discussion, as the book must be in all their hands, and the paper 1 allude to familiarly known to them.

Of the apothecaries of Ireland I need say but little. They are in part the general practitioners of the country; but the surgeons, who are become numerous, successfully dispute this ground with them, and notwithstanding the disadvantage of not being allowed to combine pharmacy with their own profession, they yet are very extensively employed in the practice of physic, and hold as it were a middle place between the physicians and apothecaries. Still these latter engross a very large proportion of both medical and surgical practice, and their encroachments have been the subjects of loud and lasting complaints by both surgeons and physicians.

In short, so strangely perverted and unharmonised has the whole medical profession become in this country, that it is impossible to conceive any change that could be productive. of equal recrimination. The surgeon exclaims against the apothecary, the physician accuses both, the apothecary retorts, and thus they go on mutually exasperating each other by every vilifying epithet and opprobrious insinuation, until they have rendered life such a scene of heart-burning animosity and contention, that the strongest feeling of every liberal mind must be a desire to escape for ever from the profession and its bickerings, and to seek some Lethean balm by which his wounded spirit may be healed, and rendered oblivious of all the harassing and depressing cares with which professional life is so thickly beset.

The apothecaries have a corporation which superintends the education and practice of pharmacy, its control extending all over the kingdom. It affords no assurance, however, either of medical or surgical attainments on the part of those examined,

examined, although they are necessarily destined to practise extensively in both departments. This corporation is also a joint stock company, and divides a large per centage, from the profits of drugs sold at the Apothecaries' Hall.

I shall now briefly advert to the state of medical education and practice in Scotland, and then conclude with a few observations relative to those measures which would tend most to improve the general condition of the profession, and which should, consequently, form the basis of any legis lative enactments that might be intended to accomplish this desirable purpose.

The university of Edinburgh provides a complete course of medical instruction, and confers degrees in physic after resident study and examination.

That of Glasgow does the same.

The universities of Aberdeen and St. Andrew's possess no schools of physic, but they confer degrees in physic, notwithstanding, on those who bring certain certificates from individual practitioners, and who pay the fees, amounting to twenty-four pounds. Such is the present price, as officially notified by a letter from St. Andrew's, now before me, dated in the present year; but it seems to have been enhanced of late years, for, unless I am much mistaken, the cost of such degree was formerly but thirteen pounds.

The Edinburgh College of Physicians are obliged to admit all doctors of the Scottish universities to their association without examination, and only on paying the necessary fees. They may examine graduates from England, Ireland, or foreign universities; but I rather think their practice is to be satisfied with inquiring into the education and previous qualifications of such candidates, and that, finding them to have been regular and complete, they grant their license without further difficulty.

The surgeons of Edinburgh examine their candidates both in surgery and pharmacy, and they even require specimens of compound medicines prepared by the candidate, to be exhibited in proof of his practical acquaintance with the art. How far they inquire into his medical attainments, I am not prepared to say. They thus provide a general practitioner equally proved as to his qualifications for general practice as is the surgeon-apothecary of England, and equally combining in his own person the several departments. From this source the general practitioners of Scotland seem to be principally derived, nor do I find that mere apothecaries prevail among them. They are certainly not sustained by any corporate rights, nor do they seem to claim any particular attention,

The