Page:Introductory Address on the General Medical Council, its Powers and its Work.djvu/12

 Dominions, the restriction of practice to the qualified is with general consent and approval enforced by law. Any unqualified person who habitually and for gain practises or holds himself out as practising any branch of medicine is liable to severe penalties. But in these days of "Christian Science" and "Nature Cures" and "Bile Beans," it requires a good deal of optimism, and some resolute ignoring of the signs of the times, to believe that in this free (and easy) country legislation to that effect is either probable or possible in the near future.

The result, foreseen or unforeseen, of Acts passed since 1858 has in fact been rather the other way. An unqualified person can be restrained from using a title, such as "physician" or "dental surgeon," which implies qualification and is reserved by law for qualified men. But if he takes to himself six other persons as unqualified as himself, and registers the compound individual as a joint-stock company, it is held that, in England at least, he can call himself what he likes. He is no longer a "person," but a corporation with the usual and highly-convenient negation of soul or body. Thus the distinction set up by the Medical Act is blurred in the public mind by the operation of the Companies Act. The public may well be excused if they think they are dealing with qualified practitioners when they seek advice at the establishments, legally incorporated, of "Dr Galen Aesculapius Jones, Limited," or "Professor Smith and Co., Consumption Specialists," or "Tooths, Cash Dentists." Strenuous efforts have been made, within and without Parliament, to get this remedied, but so far without much success. The Legislature is in fact very tender towards unqualified practitioners of every kind—so long as they do not presume to practise Law. The lawyers have seen to it that that profession at least is sacred.

I have mentioned that in 1858, when medical men were first officially registered, every one who claimed to have been in practice some forty years before was enrolled, even though he held no diploma or other certificate of