[7] Without referring to what may be considered rare--the sale of poison for the purposes of intended homicide, I may remind the reader of the very dreadful facts collected by the Commissioners on Trades and Manufactures, as to the immense sales of opium in our principal manufacturing towns, for the purpose of quieting--and with the effect of killing, children, while their poor mothers are absent from home in their several occupations.
Within his province, likewise, it would fall to be cognisant of all that relates to the constitution of the Medical Profession. The difficulties which have baffled successive Home-Secretaries might soon find their solution in the less divided attention which he could bring to their study. Amid conflicting opinions and an apparent scramble for power, he would soon distinguish where might be the strife of jealousy and covetousness, where a truthful zeal for the honour and efficiency of medicine. I think he could not be long in curing our more scandalous anomalies. Probably--unless human bowels require other doctoring in London than in Manchester, he would manage that a doctor there should be a doctor also here; that no licence for the partial practice of medicine should be recognised--no licence admitting a man to do in Edinburgh what it would be a misdemeanour for him to do in Greenwich. And obviously, in order to this--since a professional diploma is the only criterion by which the public can measure the competence of those who seek their patronage, he would see that, as far as may be, the various licensing bodies exact from their candidates equal and sufficient qualifications; that the diploma entitling a man to call himself Surgeon or Physician, Accoucheur or Apothecary, mean the same thing--imply the same education, whether it be got in Scotland, Ireland, or England; and that any falsification of such diploma, or any unauthorised assumption of the title which implies its possession, be promptly punishable at law.[8]
[8] This check at least seems indispensable, for the reason above given, that a professional diploma is the only criterion by which the public can measure professional competence; and for the validity of such a criterion, it therefore, I think, becomes the duty of a government, on behalf of the public, to provide. For anything beyond this (except in one particular case) the matter might take its natural course. No law can supersede a necessity for common sense in the subject; and medicine, I think, requires no _protection_. Let my neighbour, by all means, if he desire it, send for a green-grocer to reduce his dislocation or assuage his gout! and let him take the consequences of his folly, in a spoilt limb or in a hair’s breadth escape with his life. Only--let the green-grocer be punishable, if he seek this office under false pretences, calling himself by any title which implies a professional qualification. And, for what harm he may do--let him of course (as would, if necessary, the presidents of our colleges) be prepared to abide before judge and jury his trial for malpractice. But, in strict adhesion to the principle I have professed, that protection is wanted, not for the profession, but for the public, I would suggest one exception to what otherwise might be universal free-trade in medicine. I refer to the case of druggists; who, whenever the Legislature may awake to the necessity of regulating their trade, ought, I think, to be expressly prohibited from the treatment of disease. To an immense majority of our population--to all the under-educated classes, the druggist’s shop appears an emporium for medical skill, as well as for medical appliances. They probably have some vague overestimate of our art of healing, and think perhaps that the several bottles on the shelf correspond to the several ailments they can specifically cure. They ask for something “good for a dropsy,” or “good for a wasting,” or “good for a palpitation;” not knowing how much skill may be requisite to interpret the symptom; not knowing that, to our highest skill, there is no medicine thus indiscriminately, or even generally, “good.” At present almost universally, druggists, with no medical qualification, are tampering more or less with serious medical responsibilities; and the mischief thus occasioned--especially among the poorer classes, is a matter of notoriety, on which persons engaged in hospital practice would be competent and tolerably impartial witnesses. It is because this evil arises in the _almost inevitable ignorance_ of those who chiefly suffer from it, that, in accordance with the principle above suggested, I think it deserves consideration from the Legislature.