Page:Introductory Address on the General Medical Council, its Powers and its Work.djvu/22

 the State to Universities and to certain professional Colleges and Societies within the United Kingdom. Some of the Universities are of great antiquity and repute, like Oxford and Cambridge; others are modern, and filled with high ambition, like Manchester and Birmingham. The professional Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons are all of considerable age, with traditions of service to the cause of medicine that extend over centuries. Altogether there are now twenty-four bodies which are legally entitled to test candidates and to confer diplomas. In England and also in Ireland two of the bodies, and in Scotland three, have combined for examination purposes to form three Conjoint Boards, one in each division of the Kingdom. But for all other purposes the bodies preserve their autonomy, and make their own regulations. To the fifteen Universities it is probable that a sixteenth, namely the University of Wales, will shortly be added.

Each of the twenty-four Licensing Bodies, as they are called, appoints a member of the Medical Council. Five members are appointed directly by the Crown, on the advice of the Privy Council, and five members more are appointed by direct election, under a universal suffrage, by the registered practitioners resident within the Kingdom. The total number of members is thus at present thirty-four. Of these, fourteen only are required by law to be medical practitioners themselves. The Crown and the Universities may appoint lay men if they like. They have not chosen to do so; but the freedom reserved to them illustrates what I have already remarked on, namely, that Parliament in creating the Council had in mind the safeguarding of general public interests, not of professional or scientific interests. Indeed, it was at one time proposed that one of H.M. Secretaries of State should be the President of the Council. One of my predecessors, Sir Henry Acland, used to maintain that the Crown should appoint to the Council lay members of the House of Lords, such as the late Earl of Shaftesbury, as being persons of knowledge and