1447

1880 he holds the Diploma of Public Health of CambridgeUniversity and is a Fellow of the Chemical Society of

London. __

ONE OF THE LAST OF THE CHARTISTPRISONERS.

THE Rev. Arthur O’Neill, who died at Birmingham on I,May 14th, was born at Chelmsford in 1819, and in 1835 com- menced the study of medicine in Glasgow University, butsoon abandoned medicine for divinity. He also joined theChartist movement, and in 1842 was charged with seditionand imprisoned in Stafford Gaol for nearly twelve months.He was for more than forty years pastor of a Baptist chapelin Birmingham. There is probably now only one survivorof the Chartist prisoners.

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THE Council of the Hospital Sunday Fund ask us to statethat they do not give their sanction to, or approve of, boxesbeing carried about the streets soliciting donations in aid ofthis Fund. The proper places for making collections arethe several places of public worship, to which payments bythose unable to attend may be sent. Payments may also bemade directly to the Lord Mayor, who is the treasurer of theFund, at the Mansion House. The collection will take placethis year on Sunday, June 14th.

THE committee of the Howard Association have adopted aresolution to the effect that the clauses in the Education Bill

concerning pauper children do not contain sufficient safe-guards against the abuse of the boarding-out system. We

earnestly hope that if the clause in question is as inadequateas the resolution of the Howard Association seems to implymeasures will be taken in committee to meet the deficiency.

WE have received a copy of a leaflet issued by a bodycalled the Church Anti-vivisection League. It accuses the

Clergy of subsidising vivisection and of alienating the

laity. It also begs the clergy not to give any offertory to ahospital that has a vivisectional laboratory attached."We hope to return to this subject next week.

THE Colonial Office has been informed by telegram fromthe Governor of Hong-Kong that seventy fresh cases of

bubonic plague occurred in the colony in the week endingMay 19th, and that the number of deaths from the plague inthe same period was ninety-one.

THE QUEEN has been pleased to sanction the followingappointments to the Order of the Hospital of St. John ofJerusalem in England. To be Knights of Grace : SirWm. MacCormac, F.R.C.S. Eng., and Mr. Samuel Osborn,F.R.C.S. Eng. -

THE EMPEROR FRANCIS JOSEPH has conferred the honorarydegree of Doctor of Medicine on Sir Joseph Lister, Presidentof the Royal Society, on the occasion of the celebration ofthe Hungarian Millennium.

MADAME ADELINA PATTI has arranged to give anothergrand morning concert at Swansea in aid of the SwanseaHospital and the poor of the district round Craig-y-Nos. Thedate fixed is Aug. 6th.

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THE Sanitary Institute have accepted an invitation fromthe city and county of Newcastle-upon-Tyne to hold a

sanitary congress and health exhibition in that city in theautumn of this year.

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THE festival dinner at the Imperial Institute on June 10thin aid of the re-endowment of Guy’s Hospital, at which thEPrince of Wales is to preside, will be followed by a reception,

THOMAS WAKLEY,THE FOUNDER OF "THE LANCET. "

A BIOGRAPHY.

CHAPTER XX,

Tlte First Public Meeting of Members of the Royal College,of Surgeons of England.-Mr. Lawrence’s Speech from theC7tair.-Tlte Condemnatory Resolutions.-Wakley’s Amend-ment.-Successful Oratory. .ON Saturday, Feb. 18th, 1826, the first public meeting of

Members of the Royal College of Surgeons of England washeld at the Freemasons’ Tavern. For the first twenty years,following the granting of the Charter there had been opendissatisfaction amongst the Members, who, be it remembered,comprised the flower of the general practitioners of England.Until 1815 it was not necessary for a medical man to hold

any qualifications whatever. No government licence, no

diploma from a state-supported or state-recognised body wasnecessary, and, afortiori, no university degree. Thereforea large proportion of the medical men in the countrywere what nowadays would be termed " unqualified."They possessed qualifications to practise, certainly-forexample, they had generally served several years of appren-ticeship to men grown grey in the pursuit of the healingart, and they were mostly sound obstetricians, expertprescribers, and accurate dispensers ; but of all standingderived from the successful endurance of the tests of exa-mination they were guiltless. This was the plight of manyof the English practitioners before 1815 ; and even after-that date, inasmuch as the Apothecaries Act was not aretrospective one, there were as many unqualified as

qualified practitioners in the country. But those who were

qualified had generally received their diploma from theRoyal College of Surgeons of England and represented theflower of their order-the men who had gone through arecognised training at a general hospital and had satisfiedindependent examiners that they had made good use of their-time while walking the wards.

It must be remembered that these men were in many cases

actually the same individuals who had prevented the oldCorporation from obtaining at the hands of Parliament a

legalisation of its Acts and a consequent re-establishmentby their well-timed request to Lord Thurlow to come to

their assistance. It was the outcome of their decided

and united action that the House of Lords had been putupon its guard against the schemes of a few interested

members of the Court of Assistants and had in 1797refused to pass a bill sanctioning the re-constitution of

the old Barber-Surgeon Company while all the abuses thathad crept into it during its centuries of somewhat precariousand ill-established existence made an integral part and animportant parcel of its programme for a new life. These

rightly recalcitrant Members had observed with pleasure thedissection by the great Lord Thurlow of the plans of theirwould-be masters and the consequent rejection of the sameby the country. When, therefore, the Court of Assistantsreceived three years later from King George III. a royalcharter giving them in addition to a dignified position all the-unwarrantable rights for themselves that they had previouslyunsuccessfully demanded from Parliament, the wrongedMembers knew all the arguments against the granting of the-charter by heart. Yet although they were disaffected,

1 Chapters I., II., III., IV., V., VI., VII., VIII., IX., X., XI., XII.,XIII., XIV., XV., XVI., XVII., XVIII., and XIX. were published inTHE LANCET, Jan. 4th, 11th, 18th, and 25th, Feb. 1st, 8th, 15th, 22nd,and 29th, March 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th, April 4th, 11th, 18th, and25th, May 2nd, and 16th respectively.