sub-registrars, and proposed taxing the
doctors for the means of paying its expenses. It
proposed to get up a medical council for
each of the three parts of the United Kingdom;
in each council there were to be thirty-six
men; in each thirty-six there were to be
four-and-twenty representatives chosen by
universal suffrage of the registered
practitioners, &c., &c.; also there was to be a
general election of six every year, &c., &c.
There was to be a medical senate, as there
is a clerical senate (a senate among senates),
and then there was to be a new college of
medicine. We need not go into details.
It is not at all surprising to us, that the
medical profession could not make up its
mind that this was the bill of bills.

In the year following, Mr. Hawes, Mr.
Evart, and Mr. Hutton introduced this bill
again, with variations of detail; the chief
variation being the extinction of the idea of
another college. There was to be general
registration. Bolus and Scalpel were to take
out annual certificates, and pay for them.
There was to be a Scotch council, an Irish
council, and an English council, of twenty in
each, the members elected by ballot. They
were to form a lower house; and there was
to be formed of its select men an upper
house or medical senate. The profession
naturally did not care greatly to be bothered with
the addition of this new machinery to the
clogs already tied about its body.

We jump to the years forty-four and forty-five,
during which Sir James Graham was
engaged in compounding a pill for the
doctors. Forty-five was a great year for
measures and amended measures. Sir James,
in a second version of a former device of his
own, proposed a new council of health, with
one of Her Majesty's principal Secretaries of
State for president, the medical Regius
Professor, and certain other persons for the
members. The council was to see that a
register was kept, to see that examinations
were of the right sort, and to protect as
well as meddle with existing medical
corporations, leaving them their monopolies to
all intents and purposes intact. This bill
was taken into a committee room, whence it
emerged with a new royal college of general
practitioners fastened to its tail. But the
profession didn't really care about state
councils and royal colleges. The bill was
torn down; and, in the succeeding year, a new
bill was pasted over it by Mr. Wakley and Mr.
Warburton. This bill aimed simply at securing
registration. It went into committee and
came out an amended bill; of which the
purport was that all qualified surgeons were to
be compelled to take in, as a sort of annual,
price five shillings, their marriage lines to
the profession whereto they were joined, and
be able to prove by them, and by them only,
that they were wedded to it lawfully. The
doctors didn't care very much about these
marriage lines. They were proposed to them
again in the year following, with the addition
of some machinery for enabling a "said
Secretary of State" to secure uniformity of
qualification among doctors. The profession
didn't believe in this bill either. We break
off the catalogue and come at once to the
time present,—which begins last year.

Mr. Headlam introduced last year a new
medical bill, which suffered metamorphosis
in a committee of the House of Commons.
This year the metamorphosed bill appears in
the House under Lord Elcho's guardianship,
and the unaltered bill also appears in the
House, it being again brought forward by
Mr. Headlam.

Before we describe the substance of the two
new propositions, we must state one very
essential fact; because, in the different modes
of dealing with this fact, there lies the real
difference between the spirit of the one bill and
the spirit of the other. There are two sets of
examining bodies in Great Britain, first, the
corporations of physicians, of surgeons, and of
apothecaries; second, the several universities.
The universities can grant degrees, of which
some do and some do not convey the right
of practice, and some give the right of
practising only within a given area. The general
spirit of Mr. Headlam's bill is to protect the
corporations and keep down the universities;
the general spirit of the other bill is to
protect the universities and keep down some, at
least, of the corporations. Each, at the same
time, sets up a medical council and a scheme
of registration.

So we have in the new bills a strong
family likeness to the whole gallery of their
predecessors. Medical reform is still held
to be the destroying of something that does
exist and the creating of something that does
not exist. As commonly proposed, it is the
destruction of some bit of life and the creation
of some bit of machinery in place of it.

But the thing really wanted is more
fulness of life and less restriction. While the
bandaging of the afflicted profession has been
discussed year after year in Parliament,
the afflicted profession itself, restive or
indifferent about every such proposal, has been
developing fast, and working its way nobly
forward to a higher life. Except the London
College of Physicians, there is scarcely a
medical examining body in the kingdom that
has not made more or less rapid advance in
its demands on the wit of candidates for its
approval; and in the very front of this great
forward movement there now stands the
University of London. It is, we think,
simply absurd to propose the delivery of this
young giant of a calling, tied and bound, into
the hands of any single state council, or of
any corporation. To deliver up the profession
of physic in England as serf to the
London College of Physicians—one
consequence of Mr. Headlam's propositions—is of
all conceivable mistakes the worst. That
body includes many very able men; but, as a