Page:KIdd 1841 Observations on medical reform.djvu/22

 utility and efficiency, in considering them henceforth as independent scientific societies; which, retaining all their present members and internal laws, might henceforward admit new members by the same mode as new members are customarily admitted to the Royal, Linnean, and other scientific societies. Each of the existing institutions might still have its own library and museum, and its own lectures; each might have its own meetings, and publish its own transactions; and all, vying with each other in the spirit of a liberal emulation, might continue to benefit both individuals and the public, quite as effectually as under the present system.

And, on the same principle, the several universities which have the right of conferring medical degrees, might still exact a previous public examination of the candidates for those degrees.

To the demand that of every candidate for a medical license, such an examination should be required as might shew a due qualification to practise either as a "physician," or a "surgeon," or as a "general practitioner," there does not seem any reasonable objection; nay, it is quite expedient that every candidate for a medical license should be so qualified. For, although it is true, as is observed in a very judicious and candid article on Medical Reform in the "Quarterly Review" of December 1840, that very few physicians practise surgery in this country; yet, as might have been justly added, had it occurred to the writer of that article, it is also true that every physician ought to be acquainted