The General Council appoints a registrar, who acts as secretary and treasurer.
Branch councils are also appointed for Scotland and Ireland, who have each a registrar, and other officers and clerks.
The act then provides for the registration of every person holding one or more qualifications from the following bodies. Tho Colleges of Physicians of London, Edinburgh, and Ireland. The Colleges of Surgeons of England, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Ireland, the Apothecaries Society of London, and the Apothecaries Hall of Dublin, graduates in medicine of any university in the United Kingdom, and graduates of any foreign or colonial university or college practising as a physician pravions to the first day of October, 1858. Tho fee charged for registration under this act is two pounds. The register containing the names and qualifications of all registered practitioners is published yearly.
The Council is given power to require that every university, corporation, or college, whose graduates, members or licenciates are entitled to register, shall cause them to go through such a course of education and examination as shall secure to persons obtaining such qualification the requisite knowledge and skill for the efficient practice of their profession.
Every person registered under this net is entitled according to his qualification or qualifications, to practise medicine or surgery, or medicine and surgery as the case may be, in any part of her Majesty 'e dominions, and to demand and recover in any court of law with full vest of suit, reasonable charges for professional aid, advice, and visits, and the cunt of any mediclues or other medical or surgical appliances rendered and supplied by him to his patient. A proviso is made, that it shall be lawful for auy college of physicians to pass a bye law to the effect that no one of their fellows or members shall be entitled to sue in manner aforesaid in any court of law, and thereupon such bye law may be pleaded in bar to any action fez the purposes aforesaid commenced by any fellow or member of such college.
A clause in this act defines the terms "legally qualified" and "duly qualified" medical practitiuner, as meaning a person registered under this act.
Another important provision of this act is in reference to the publication of a common Pharmacopoeia for the three kingdoms. Hitherto the Colleges of Physicians of London, Dublin and Edinburgh, have published from time to timo their own Pharmacoserias, but the act provides that the General Council shall cause to be published under their direction a book, containing a list of medicines and com pounds, and the manner of preparing them, together with the true weight and measures by which they are to be prepared and mixed, and containing such other matter and things relating thereto, as the General Council shall think fit, to be called the ' British Pharmacopoeia; and the General Council shall cause to be altered, amended and republished, such Pharmacopoeia as often as they shall deem it necessary.
The passing of this act has caused a very considerable movement in the medical profession. The large body of men who practise in England as general practitioners are members of the College of Surgeons, and practise as and call themselves surgeons. They practise however not only surgery but medicine, and they claim as practitioners of medicine the style and title of phyeicians. Up to the time of the passing of the medical act the College of Physicians of London had repudiated the granting their diploma to those who sent out their medicines or practised surgery. But on the passing of this act, those who were registered as- physicians by the diplomas of the Colleges of Physicians of Edinburgh or Dublin, were entitled to practise iu all parts of the United Kingdom. This, accompanied with the lowering of the fee for admission by the College of Physicians of Edinburgh, led a large number of general practitioners to seek admission to that College. Shortly after the passing of the act, the College of Physi cians in London instituted a year of grace, in which they admitted to the membership of the College also at a reduced fee, the graduates of universities and others practising medicine, who did not send out their medicines. This has led greatly to the increase of the number of members of the medical profession, who practise under the style and title of physician.
Some idea of the amouut of fees paid to physicians in the middle ages may be gained by what we are told of Petrus de Abano, one of the most eminent physicians of the 13th century. For visiting a patient out of his own city he charged one hundred and fifty francs (or about six pounds) per day ; and that when sent for by Pope Honorius I V., he demanded four hundred ducats per day, or about seventy pounds. (Bayle's Diet,' art Apone.) It should, however, be noticed that these charges were considered very enormous.