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Untitled Article
The students in surgery have to pass their examination before ten members of Council , selected according to seniority , and as they are appointed for life , it has actually happen ^ that some of the examiners have been eighty and even ninety years of age . It would be unreasonable to expect that they should encounter the labour of keeping up with the progress of science . Accordingly , —
" Some facts have come out in evidence sufficiently illustrative of the consequences of imposing this task on these * ancient gentlemen ; ' for ex * ample , the details are given of the case of a young man of exemplary diligence and high talent , who suffered the stigma of rejection in consequence of the examiner ' s ignorance of the principles of modern surgery . That student was rejected for giving an answer in accordance with the received doctrine of modern surgery . ' He stated the circumstance to ine , ' says the witness ( R . D . Grainger , Esq . ) , and I recommended him ip go to the President of the Council , at that time Mr Abernethy , which
be did the next morning . Mr Abernethy told him that his answer was perfectly right ; but that since he ( the student ) had acquiesced in the judgment of the court by not appealing , there was no remedy . "—London Review , No . vii , p . 82 . To detail the sins of omission and commission of the College of Surgeons would be very like repetition of those of the College of Physicians . Our limits will only permit us to allude to a late instance of its neglect , truly characterized by the writer in the ' London Review as a " flagrant and deplorable "
breach of trust . We mean , the destruction of the manuscripts of John Hunter . These valuable papers , amounting to ten folio volumes , which , together with his splendid museum , were purchased by Government , and given in trust for the country to the College of Surgeons , were burnt by Sir Everard Home , " An opinion may be formed of the mode in which this transaction
was viewed by the Council from the recent observations upon it by the late President : — u * I believe Sir Everard Home { if we must make a culprit of him after he is dead ) , destroyed little which was valuable . / believe he made use of it , and did not wish the record to remain behind him after he hoA made such use of it . I do not think there was much of very essential matter destroyed ; at least if there was , we have no positive fcnpwledge of it , and it is now too late to rectify it . "—London Review , No . vii , p . 86 .
Sir Everard Home remained a member of Council ( till near the day of his death ; and he died a Trustee of the Museum , where the College placed his bust , and where it still remains ! The formation of the « Society of Apothecaries ' was an improvement in that class of practitioners . It has been steadily progressing ever since . But it is needless to say , that so important a task as the government of any portion of the medi * 3 & 1 body cannot safely be trusted in its hands .
Untitled Article
89 Reform of the Medical Practice .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 1, 1837, page 82, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1828/page/35/
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