POOR-LAW MEDICAL REFORM.

POOR-LAW MEDICAL REFORM.

Your memorialists most strenuously urge these premises on the consideration of your lordship, and anxiously hope, that such alterations will be made i...

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Your memorialists most strenuously urge these premises on the consideration of your lordship, and anxiously hope, that such alterations will be made in the law early next session of Parliament as will lead to their speedy redress, and memo-

rialists,

as

in

duty bound, will

Signed, Cork, Sept. 23rd,

ever

pray.

behalf of the Association, J. R. HARVEY, President. HARVEY, M.D., M.D., President. H. N. MEADE, M.D., Vice-President. R. CORBETT, M.D., Treasurer. C. ARMSTRONG, M.D., Hon. Sec.

on

1856.

VACCINATION STATIONS AND PUBLIC VACCINATORS. THE

following correspondence has lately taken place :-

Mold, Sept. 17th, 1856. sorry to be so troublesome about the pay for the stations I have been attending, and fixing one at Tryddyn. This is my fourth application without your acknowledging either of my letters. I remain, Gentlemen, yours respectfully, ROBERT PARRY. (Signed) The Board of Guardians, Wrexham. P.S.-Please give me an answer, as I have no power to fix a station.-R, P.

GENTLEMEN,-I am

____

Wrexham Union, Sept. 18th, 1856. to your letter as to providing a vaccination station, I am directed by the Board of Guardians to state that they consider the fees allowed you a sufficient remuneration to enable you to provide your own station. Yours respectfully, THOS. EDGWORTH. Mr. Parry. (Signed per JOHN BURY.)

SIR,-In reply

Mold, Sept. 19th, 1856.

GENTLEMEN, -Herewith I send you a letter received by me this morning from the clerk to the Board of Guardians of the Wrexham Union, with copies of two letters sent by me to the Board, one dated the 14th day of May, 1856, the other dated the 17th inst. The last sent was after I saw an account of their decision in a public paper, called the Wrexham Advertiser, dated the 13th day of September, 1856. I beg to conclude at present with a regret of having occasion to trouble you upon such a subject, as I well know it is the duty of the guardians to appoint a place in each such district for the performance of such vaccination, consequently they are, after appointing the place, bound to pay. I remain, Gentlemen, your obedient servant, ROBERT PARRY, (Signed) To the Poor-law Board. Medical Officer for Hope and Trydden.

(COPY.) Poor-law

Board, Whitehall, Sept. 22nd, 1856,

SIR,-I am directed by the Poor-law Board to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 19th inst., and to forward to you a copy of a letter which they have this day addressed to the Guardians of the Wrexham Union on the subject to which your letter relates. I am,

your obedient servant, R. W. W. GREY, GREY, To R. Parry, Esq., Surgeon, Mold, Mold, near Wrexham.

Sir,

(Signed)

Surgeon,



Secretary.

(COPY.) "

Whitehall, Sept. 22nd, 18s6. directed by the Poor-law Board to state that Poor-law Board,

SIR,-I

am

Mr. Parry, the public vaccinator of the Hope district in the Wrexham Union, has forwarded to them your letter addressed to him on the 18th instant, in which it is stated that the guardians consider that the fees allowed to him for vaccination is sufficient remuneration to enable him to provide his own station. In reference thereto, the Board direct me to point out that, in accordance with their General Order issued on the 30th the guardians are to provide the necessary for the purposes of vaccination and inspection, the vaccinators are not required to provide rooms at their own expense. The cost of the vaccinatian stations must be charged to the common fund of the Union. I am, Sir, your obedient servant, R. R. W. GREY, Secretary. (Signed) Thomas Edgworth, Esq., Clerk of the Board of

November, 1853, rooms

Guardians of the Wrexham Union, Wrexham.

444

POOR-LAW MEDICAL REFORM. To the Editor of THE LANCET. ’

me, through the medium of your valuable the attention of all those members of our pro. fession who are interested in Mr. Griffin’s movement for obtaining "Poor-law Medical Reform" to the great benefit that would result from each one asking some member of Parliament to further the object, when brought before the House. There can scarcely be a medical practitioner to whom some one or other member of the House is unknown. At least 1600 Poorlaw medical officers have signified their approval of appealing to Parliament: were these one and all to ask each the member for whom he last voted, or whom he best knows, to how many would not this bring the question forward, who else would not hear of " Poor-law Medical Reform?" I am, Sir, yours very truly, JAMES JAMES NICHOLLS, M.D. Wiveliscombe, Somerset, Oct. 1856.

SIR,-Allow journal, to call

THE

QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY

IN IRELAND.

To the Editor of THE LANCET. SIR,-It would now be rather late to speak in eulogy of the number of years THE LANCET has watched over, and battled for, the interests of the medical profession, or to say how much that profession is indebted to its pages for a true insight of its proper dignity, and how much the public is interested in promoting and upholding its respectability. Conscious as I am of what THE LANCET has done, being a constant reader of its pages from its first issue, and equally aware of the animus by which it is still directed, I have little doubt but I shall receive the courtesy of making public, through its means, what I conceive injurious in several ways to the medical profession. The Queen’s University in Ireland has done much to depreciate the medical character. I must premise that all that the State could do in the way of expense has been done for the Queen’s Colleges in Ireland, excepting as regards the medical faculty. I am most ready to declare this, not only in justice to the promoters and supporters of the Colleges, but as strengthening the charge I prefer. There are twenty professors in each of these Colleges, of whom five belong to the medical faculty in each. The world is rather prone to set an estimate on a man by his wealth, but, above all, to estimate the public value of an office by its salary. I offer you the data furnished by the State of the relative importance of some of the chairs in the Queen’s Colleges, excepting one who is vice-president. Five of the professors have .6250 per annum, five have .6200, and four £150, while four have but £100 per annum, and these are four out of the five medical professors. Of the recipients of X250 per annum, two of them are teachers of dead languages, now all but obsolete as vehicles of knowledge, and certainly not requiring great mental resources or intense application in their attainment, and these have besides the largest classes, and consequently the greatest amount of fees from students. The two Law professors, whose duties do not require more than a fortnight or three weeks of their time, (generally during vacation,) divide between them £300 per annum in salary; while the teachers of the Practice of Medicine, of the Theory and Practice of Surgery, and of Materia Medica and Pharmacy, whose College duties extend over seven months, divide the same sum, being three in number. The Professor of Celtic Languages, whose course is not obligatory, is the only professor of the Colleges, except the four medical ones, who receives but .6100 per annum. The Registrars of the Colleges have .6200 per annum, and the Bursar and Librarian have .10150 per annum each. Taking the above data as indicators, such is the scale of importance of the subjects taught and a fortiori of the teachers of them. The teacher of Greek or Latin is considered by threefifths a more useful man, and the teacher of French or Italian just of double the public value of the teachers of those branches of knowledge through which the safety of our armies in the field, and of the community throughout the empire, so largely depend. This is the estimate of the teachers of this science, who have spent the best years of their life, and no small capital, to acquire what they are appointed to teach in the Queen’s Colleges, and whose classical as well as professional education must be of a high standard to perform what they undertake-at least it may be so stated in general. Now, the fifth medical professor is that of Anatomy. He is paid £200 per annum, and is allowed to charge one-third more for his lecture , in fees from students, than any other professor, and one-third more for demonstrations, (exclusive of subjects ;) and,