A memorial, presented to the medical and surgical officers of the Worcester, Salop, Birmingham, Gloucester, and Hereford, Infirmaries, on the abuses existing in the public Hospitals : with an appendix, containing the answers received from them.

Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A memorial, presented to the medical and surgical officers of the Worcester, Salop, Birmingham, Gloucester, and Hereford, Infirmaries, on the abuses existing in the public Hospitals : with an appendix, containing the answers received from them. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    c If any further argument were desired to prove the necessity of tlieir removing these barriers to the diffusion of medical knowledge, it is to be i found in the petition lately presented to both Houses of Parliament, by the \ majority of the medical and surgical officers of this institution, in conjunction ;| • with other practitioners, in which they bitterly lament the impediments |i ^ thrown in the way of medical science, by the laws relating to anatomy, and ji pray earnestly for their removal, yet have they, by enforcing the before- i mentioned regulation, raised up an obstruction to the progress of the science, i compared with which the former are but as a mole hill to a mountain ! How inconsistent in them to complain of that state of things, which they themselves have assisted in producing, and for which they possess, in some degree at least, an almost instantaneous remedy! !j ,, Conceive the answer that might justly have been returned to this , cfhnEty ! ^ How afflicting to the feelings of those who are connected with this | For, if the present tone and temper of the public mind render it inex- pedient, nay, almost impossible, at present to meddle with these laws relating to dissection, is it not, on that very account, infinitely more im- perative on medical men, to remove those obstacles to the free progress of the arts of medicine and surgery, over which they themselves have com- plete eontroul, and which the very breath of their nostrils is alone able to disperse ? Undoubtedly it is. Is anatomy every thing ? Is the personal observance of the phenomena of disease notlhng to those who are studying medicine ? Will the most intimate acquaintance with the structure of the brain, ot of the lungs, teach the symptoms of phrenitis or of pneumonia, unassisted by opportunities of observing these diseases ? Or do the hospital gentlemen imagitie that the descriptions of disease, | the lectures, with which they occasionally favour the rising generation,— \ do they fancy these more instructive than the lectures Nature herself de- | livers, daily and hourly within the wards of these temples, sacred to I Science complains not so much of the legislature as^those, who, for their own gain (if, indeed, any such there be), would obstruct her in her endeavours to alleviate the miseries of mankind ! For these considerations, therefore, the undersigned begs to suggest to the medical and surgical officers of the Worcester Infirmary, the pro- priety of cancelling this rule, or of so modifying it, as to admit the sons, charity. charity ?