General Medical Council : on the claim, asserted by the Royal College of Physicians, that the College of itself, apart from any other examining authority, can grant such letters-testimonial or licenses in medicine, surgery and midwifery, as shall be valid diplomas of qualification under Sections 2 and 3 of the Medical Act, 1886 : notes preparatory to legal consultation / by Sir John Simon.

  • Simon, Sir John, 1816-1904.
Date:
[1892]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: General Medical Council : on the claim, asserted by the Royal College of Physicians, that the College of itself, apart from any other examining authority, can grant such letters-testimonial or licenses in medicine, surgery and midwifery, as shall be valid diplomas of qualification under Sections 2 and 3 of the Medical Act, 1886 : notes preparatory to legal consultation / by Sir John Simon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    as Physicians or Surgeons not admitted nor examined after the | tenour of this Act, of five pounds ” “ § (ii) No person out of the said City and Precinct of seven miles of the same, except he have been as is aforesaid approved in the same, take upon him to exercise and occupy as a Physician or Surgeon in any Diocese within this Eealin ; but if he be first examined and approved by the Bishop of the same Diocese, or, he being out of the Diocese, by his Vicar-General; either of them calling to them such expert persons in the said Faculties as their Discretion shall think convenient, and giving their Letters- Testimonial under their seal to him that they shall so approve; upon like pain ” It is necessary to notice in this Act how decidedly its language refers to “ Physick” and “ Surgery ” as two distinct and sevarate “Faculties ” in the Art of Healing; and how expressly the Act provides for differentiation of the re- spective experts who shall examine for Letters-Testimonial in those Faculties. The naming of the two Faculties is without any trace of suggestion that either of the two was to be understood as capable of containing the other ; and, for the purposes of the Act, the two Faculties are regarded as mutually independent. The word “Physick,” therefore, can hardly be interpreted except in the narrower of the two possible senses of the word (see above, section 2); and popular usage would certainly not at that time have construed it in any but the narrower sense. In relation to the marked duality and distinctness of Physic and Surgery, as dealt with in the Act of 1511, it is important to remember that, from early mediseval times, physicians had been chiefly eccle- siastics, and that, under church-ordinances dating from the thirteenth century, the ecclesiastical physicians had been expressly forbidden to take part in surgical practice. On the founding of the Koyal College of Physicians in 1518, at least two of the six Physicians named in the Charter of Incorporation— namely, Chambre and Linacre, if not also others of the number, were beneficed ecclesiastics, apparently within the terms of that prohibition. It is also to be remembered that in 1511 Physic and Surgery were, and long had been, familiarly known to municipal government in England as two faculties independent of each other, and distinct as grocer from baker. In London, though the College of Physicians was not yet incorporated, the