[A medical journal suggests that all candidates for Medical
Degrees should be required to give proof of good handwriting,
in order to put an end to indistinct prescriptions.]
A few additional requirements, we believe, have been under
consideration, of which the following are a sample:--
All candidates for the M.B. Degree to be able to count up to fifty.
Candidates who are more than fifty not to count.
Nobody to become a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons until he
has mastered Simple Addition and Compound Fractures.
Members of the Royal College of Physicians will henceforth be expected
to know their Weights (with boots off) and Measures (round the
waist). Troy weight only. "Scruples" not allowed. Good knowledge of
Multiplication Table indispensable for dispensers.
No candidate to be accepted for a Degree unless he either has a good
"bedside manner," or undertakes to develop one as soon as possible.
Any candidate to be at once ploughed unless he can answer all the
following questions:--
1. What would you do if asked to hold a consultation with a
practitioner whom you have every reason to suppose an incapable quack?
2. If a good paying patient, suffering from no ailment whatever,
called you in with a view to getting a week's holiday at the seaside
by medical orders, how would you reconcile a desire to oblige that
pardonable weakness with a strict regard for veracity?
3. When the parents of a large family, who do their duty manfully
by calling you in about twice a week, and from whom therefore you
derive a not inconsiderable proportion of your income, object to have
an infant vaccinated at the proper time, because they erroneously
consider it to be unfit for the operation, which would you feel
inclined to strain--friendship, or the law?