Royal College of Surgeons of England

“ In this year certain Ordinances were made by the Mayor (Sir William Walderne) and Court of Aldermen which are entered in Letter-Book K. 6B. This record relates to what Mr. D’Arcy Power, in his “Memorials of the Craft of Surgery,” has termed a “Conjoint College” of the Physicians and Surgeons, and has little to do with our Company, beyond the fact that the scrutiny and oversight of persons practising Surgery is given to the Masters of the Surgeons’ Guild. The subject of these Ordinances and many very interesting remarks thereon and on the Conjoint College may be seen at p. ”

“ His school grew still more notable, notwithstanding the obstacles put in the way of the students by hospital surgeons in London, especially those composing the council of the College of Surgeons (see Lancet, 18 Feb. 1865, p. 190) . ”

“ Much as we owe to the College of Physicians, we owe even more to the early surgeons, and there is certainly no spot in this city which has a greater interest for us as students of medicine than the hall of the Barbers’ Company in Monkwell Street, a street not far from the General Post Office. ”

“ In the hurry and confusion of a war, and amidst the pressure of hundreds of new cases in a day, what can the surgeons of the hospital be expected to do for science, or even for the improvement of medical and surgical practice?—The answer is seen in the new arrangements in England, where a statistical branch has been established in the Army Medical Department. Of course, no one but the practising surgeon or physician can furnish the pathological facts in each individual case; but this is what every active and earnest practitioner does always and everywhere, when he sees reason for it. ”

“ Medicine, proclaimed the Faculty when it suited its purpose, contains the theoretical and the practical side of surgery; a surgeon is therefore but the servant of a physician. If St. Côme sought to provide lectures in surgery, the Faculty, which kept possession of teaching licenses and desired in the surgeon a docile assistant, took the teaching from the college and invited the barbers to lectures of its own. In their duplicity and conceit of caste, physicians of the Faculty condescended even to publish books on surgery, books as arid and as insincere as their lectures. ”

“ Now, no such instance was ever known of an Oxford or Cambridge Doctor, and indeed it would be a degradation, as the English Universities in their Doctorate give a rank above Colonels in the army, or Captain's of ships." I am ready to admit, that Scotch Doctors sometimes do become Surgeons in the army and navy, at the commencement of their medical career, and doing so, must, as I have before observed, be content with the rank of Surgeon, for the time. ”