Excerpt from The Medical Times and Gazette, Vol. 2: A Journal of Medical Science, Literature, Criticism, and News, for 1870

The Colleges and Faculty would therefore protest against the proposed exemption of candidates for university degrees from any part of the conjoint licence examination. They trust that they have shown that for such a claim there exists no valid reason whatever, and it would be obviously invidious as regards other bodies. They might also press one further 00n sideration on the Legislature - via, this, that in according a privilege to all the universities their claim to it must be esti mated by ah anticipation of how it will be used, not by the highest of the universities, but by the lowest of them. On this point, however, they will not enlarge.

But besides claiming that their graduates shall be exempted from examination on what they call the fundamental Medical sciences, ' they demand that they shall be examined by the con joint board ou the practical branches on payment of a fee, which any calculation will show to be utterly inadequate to meet the expenses of that part of the examination, The Colleges and the Faculty trust that a claim so unfair will meet with no consideration from the Legislature. But not content with thi some of the Scottish universities are doing what they can to have withdrawn from the Bill a clause-which provides that the surplus of fees to be paid by candidates for the licence (after the examination expenses have been defrayed) shall be apportioned equitably among the corporations for the main tenance of their great museums, libraries, examination-halls, and other public purposes, which benefit the Profession as well as the public. The withdrawal of this clause would probably involve the ruin of the corporations, and the Colleges and Faculty cannot believe that the Legislature, at the instigation of the universities, will take such action as this, which would materially cripple, if not utterly destroy, such time-honoured institutions as the Medical corporations, which are pecu liarly British institutions, and play an important part now, as they have long done, in the organisation of the Profession. The universities are of course quite en titled to defend and. Maintain their own rights and privi leges, and the Colleges and Faculty would not desire to see anything done to interfere with their efficiency. But it is surely unworthy of these great bodies, in their desire to pre serve their own privileges and funds, to endeavour to do so at the expense of those who should be their natural allies, and not their antagonists. The. Scottish universities, some of whom would object to any part of the fees of candidates for licence being allocated among the corporations for the public Professional purposes above-named, themselves receive from the fees of their Medical graduates between £3000 and £4000 annually, which are appropriated, not for the specially Medical, but for the general purposes of the universities. It would be easy, by reference to the past history of the Profession, to show that some of the bodies which the universities would thus deterio rate, in not a few most important instances, both as regards general and Professional education, have taken steps in advance, which some of these universities have been slow to follow.

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