demonstration in Morrison's Hotel during June, 1841, exhibits; and since then many fellows of the College of Surgeons, and foremost among them Dr. Mackesy, have urged the matter. Acts of parliament making has been heretofore regarded as the exclusive province of the politician and the lawyer, but many of them concerning the duties of medical men indicate the want of intelligent supervision which our profession alone could give. The glaring defect of our system of legislation is, that fragmentary measures, called for by some passing necessity or temporary alarm, are enacted; the Act for controlling the sale of arsenic and the Bill in 1853 for the "prevention of glanders," may be taken as examples, from which it might be inferred that there were no other poisons or no other contagion to be guarded against.

There is no just reason why eminent scientific services and the benevolent exercise of the healing art throughout a whole life should not be rewarded with even the highest position in the gift of the State. Eminent divines, great lawyers, brave soldiers, rich and powerful citizens. in scores, and one popular author, have been ennobled, but no physician has been thus rewarded by his sovereign. Some years ago, the elevation of Sir B. Brodie, then the illustrious President of the Medical Council and of the Royal Society, to the peerage was advocated, and would have been received by the public, as well as 20,000 members of an enlightened profession, with the greatest satisfaction. It has been objected that such an hereditary honour should not be conferred, inasmuch as the title might descend on a successor who, in wealth and other endowments, could not fitly sustain the dignity. This argument, if it have any weight, applies with equal force to peerages conferred for eager partizanship, senatorial ability, forensic talent, or military achievements, as it cannot be ensured that these peculiar powers will be hereditarily transmitted. However, in the special instance just named, no such excuse could have

PEERAGE. FIRST CHARTER.

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availed, as the President's eldest son, Mr. B. C. Brodie, Aldrichian Professor of Chemistry at Oxford, might have worthily inherited his father's honours.

Peerages for life only, if not considered impolitic on other grounds, might be instituted. On the Continent many such names as Dupuytren, Larrey, Boyer, Humboldt, and Liebig have graced the peerage. Although no one would ceny such dignities to the bar in this country, yet it may be questioned whether Lords Sidmouth, Cullen, Denman, and Kingsdown more efficiently served their country than their fathers, illustrious medical men, and therefore more fully deserved its gratitude and highest honours. While there is no instance of a member of the profession having been elevated to the peerage for service in that calling, the instances of Lords Glenbervie and Langdale may be cited as examples of doctors who so raised themselves by adopting law as the ladder; and Dr. Smithson's elevation to the Dukedom of Northumberland in 1766 may be attributed to an aristocratic marriage. His grandson was a munificent benefactor to the museum of the College of Surgeons when Lord Lieutenant.

FIRST CHARTER.

Before tracing the efforts of the profession to obtain reform, it will be necessary to display the disorganised state into which it had fallen. It is not within the scope of this essay to dwell on the history of medicine, which would be necessarily a record of the successive discoveries and brilliant lights of this science which centuries have produced, but rather to review the enactments and charters which have influenced its progress.

The practice of medicine and surgery, professed by the ministers of religion from the early ages, had been regarded as one indivisible art, and the works of those most wonderful writers of ancient times, Hippocrates, Galen, and Celsus, treat of all diseases and accidents alike. An act passed in the third year of the reign of

Henry VIII. (1511) declares "the science and cunning of physic and surgery, to the perfect knowledge whereof be requisite both great learning and ripe experience," to be one and the same. However, an edict of the council of Tours (A.D. 1150) had separated from physic the practice of surgery, avowing amongst other things that the Church abhorred blood. Surgery, thus despised and rejected, was gladly appropriated by the barbers, who tacked it to their humble calling, and actually obtained, in the first year of Edward IV., incorporation as "barber-surgeons." The first public position the great Mead attained was, "Lecturer on Anatomy to the company of barbers and surgeons." This union was not virtually dissolved till 1745 by George II. 18 c. 15. The insignia of their trade are even emblematic of their having retained the practice of phlebotomy, the pole being figurative of the fiddling-stick, the red band round it, of the fillet, and the basin at the end, occasionally retained, representing the vessel to receive the blood. The first body which was incorporated for the licensing of medical practitioners was the Royal College of Physicians, London. On September 23rd, in the tenth year of his reign, Henry VIII., through the influence of Cardinal Wolsey, granted this charter to John Chambre, Thomas Linacre, Ferdinand de Victoria, Nicholas Halsewell, John Francisci, and Robert Yaxley. Before this period, candidates were licensed by the Bishop of London, who might summon four practitioners to assist him in examining them. Any intrusion upon the rights of the licensed was diligently prevented, and even one prohibitory clause is directed against females, who, it would appear from the following passage in the "Fairy Queen,” meddled in chirurgery:

"So prospered the sweet lass, her strength alone Thrust deftly back the dislocated bone,

Then culling curious herbs, of virtue tried,

While her white smock the needful bands supplied,

With many a coil the limb she swathed round,

And nature's strength return'd, nor knew the former wound."

Indeed in the sixteenth century tending the sick was popular among ladies in only a less degree than the fostering of intrigues. Surgery is probably the older branch, for the out-door healthy habits of the early human race must have prevented many diseases; but warfare occasioned many wounds from the earliest dates. The separation it must be allowed is very ancient, for the oath of Hippocrates has the following item-" cutting for the stone I will not meddle with, but leave it to the operators in that way." Celsus on the other hand contends that on account of the "luce operta" surgery is the greater science. The very many bodies which have been chartered have tended to divide most unnaturally the healing art into the two branches, physic and surgery. During the present century their re-union has been often advocated, especially by Mr. Lawrence, and in this country earliest in an introductory lecture at the Richmond Hospital School (1827) by the great Carmichael, with all the enthusiasm of his character. In mentioning for the first time the name of that great man, one of the most noble-hearted who ever graced the profession of medicine, I may be permitted to say, that his contributions to its science were only excelled by his disinterested exertions to elevate it as a calling. He was in truth a legislator in medicine. The constitution of the councils of the Royal Colleges from only metropolitan practitioners, who direct themselves exclusively to one branch of medicine, has also conspired to subdivide the healing art. However, in cities all surgeons practise physic; thus, Sir A. Cooper, the most popular surgeon of this century, had always twice as many medical as surgical patients.

The separate interests of licensing bodies have contributed likewise to this very undesirable result. It is manifest that in the human body, the object of all their care, no such division exists which would warrant the separation of physic from surgery; and diseases, whether

internal or external (or so-called medical or surgical), depend on similar local or much more frequently constitutional causes. If the physician were to treat all cases in which internal or constitutional causes had influence, and the surgeon those dependent on external circumstances alone, the apportionment would be like that of the husband who, in a deed of matrimonial separation, proposed that he should have the inside of the house, his wife the outside!

The striking progress which surgery has made during the last quarter of a century is due much more to the study of disease usually considered medical, than to external manifestations, or to improvements in handicraft. Whether was John Thomson, who successively filled the chairs of surgery and medicine in Edinburgh, a physician or surgeon? and whether have his treatise on "Inflammation," Brodie's " Pathology," Skey's Hysteria," Hilton's "Rest and Pain," served physic or surgery more? Whether were Hunter's and Bell's discoveries medical or surgical? Is epistaxis merely a surgical case? Or what physician has written as able a monograph on croup as Surgeon Porter ?

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There is truly no line of demarcation between the two, and no one would now presume to treat surgical disease or accident without being able to manage the various constitutional or visceral affections which may arise.

In large communities, indeed, the physician may apply himself to the study of one subject or speciality with advantage; but, as in less crowded situations, and anywhere on emergency, he may be called on to exercise any department of the healing art, he should be therefore qualified in all, at least by education. Up to the thirteenth century physic was practised by the clergy alone; but surgery, which was only a most imperfect art, they despised, and it fell to their servants and the barbers. By decrees of the Pope and resolution of the