ed; and the two together deserve much less reliance than one who is conversant with the whole. The confidence which ignorant persons are inclined to repose under such circumstances, in what they call a combination of talent, is quite fallacious, if the combination consist of a Surgeon ignorant of the general, and a Physician who knows nothing of the local treatment. In many of those serious cases, the mere local means are of little importance, while the fate of the Patient depends upon the treatment; so that a Surgeon ignorant of the latter, is incompetent to the duties of his profession. Thus whatever view we may take of the subject, the same conclusion forces itself on the mind with irresistible evidence, viz., that there is no natural distinction between Surgery and Physic; that they are merely parts, and united parts, of one science and art; that the practical principles rest in both on the same scientific foundation; and that the two branches of the Profession must, in most instances, adopt the same proceedings, because they have the same purposes to accomplish, while their occasional differences are merely unimportant modifications in the means of arriving at the same end. Thus the distinction turns out at last to be quite arbitrary; to depend on, and be regulated by usage; founded on no fixed principles, and, therefore, fluctuating and uncertain, like all matters of custom.' These observations will, I trust, be sufficient to satisfy your Lordship that the study and practice of Physic and Surgery ought not to be separated, and that no person ought to be licensed to exercise the healing art unless he be qualified to practise Medicine, Surgery, and Pharmacy, leaving it to his option to practise those branches, afterwards, which he may prefer, or which he may select for special pursuit; and further, that no person ought to have the second or higher degree of Doctor in Medicine and Surgery until five or six years have elapsed from the period of obtaining the first or Bachelor's degree, so that there may be some reasonable pretence for exercising the functions of a Consulting Practitioner. Two objections, however, have been made to the above union, to which I shall very briefly advert,-the first is, that a Gentleman who thinks proper to confine his practice to Surgery, viz., the pure Surgeon, ought not to be required to take out a medical degree, either from the Society of Apothecaries or from an University : in answer to this objection-I would adduce the evidence of Mr. Lawrence quoted above; and I would also further adduce evidence, given before the Committee of the House of Commons on Medical Education, that the Colleges of Surgeons are merely Colleges of Surgery, and that nine-tenths of the practice of pure Surgeons is of a strictly medical character, or, in other words, what ought to belong to the Physicians: these I humbly submit are sufficiently cogent to induce the Legislature to require that every Practitioner should be qualified to practise both branches of the Profession, or, that no Practitioner ought to be allowed to practise Pharmacy, or in other words, to prepare medicines for his patients. Independently of old habits and customs, to preclude Practitioners in remote districts of the country from dispensing medicines to their patients would be quite impracticable, and an extension of legislation quite uncalled for; and, further, Practitioners have more confidence in remedial agents compounded under their own immediate superintendence, and the recent exposure of the practices carried on in the Drug trade must serve to confirm the practice of allowing Practi

tioners to dispense their medicine if they may think proper. In large towns the inconveniences would not be so great as in the country, if Practitioners were deprived of the power of dispensing their medicines; but an effect would result from such a prohibition that would nearly amount to a monopoly, inasmuch as the Practitioners of long standing and reputation would engross the practice of the localities where they resided, as the public, more particularly the uneducated portion of the community, would not be disposed to remunerate young Practitioners for professional services with pure fees, unless they received some tangible equivalent for their gold and silver in the shape of medicine."

With regard to Registration Fees, and the present Stamp Duties for Patent Medicines ::

"This leads me to offer a few observations on the Fees that ought to be paid for registration, and on the expense that will be incurred in carrying the scheme into operation for the mere purpose of registration, we have the evidence of several eminent members of the Profession given before the Committee of the House of Commons on Medical Education, that the sum of one shilling, or one shilling and sixpence, paid by each member of the Profession in the kingdom, would be amply sufficient to defray every expense that would be incurred in making an efficient registration of Medical Practitioners and Chemists and Druggists in the United Kingdom; but I may safely assure your Lordship and the Right Honourable Chancellor of Her Majesty's Exchequer that the members of the Medical Profession would cheerfully submit to a higher rate of registration fee to accomplish a higher object, in suppressing quackery and empiricism in so far as these derive their importance from being 'patronized by government' in having a stamp affixed to each package, be it box or bottle, of every nostrum that is duly set forth as fit to cure every disease which flesh is heir to. It is admitted on all hands that in no country in the world does quackery prevail to a greater extent than in England; and nothing tends more to keep up the delusion which the nostrum-mongers daily practise upon the weak and the ignorant than the circumstance of their compositions being enveloped in a stamp, as with swaddling cloths, and many have the audacity to advertise that, because they are so invested, they are patronised by Government. It is to be hoped that, in this enlightened age, your Lordship's administration will wipe away this blot and stain that has been cast upon the character of Englishmen, and by at once repealing the stamp duties and licences payable on and for selling such poisons, rescue hundreds of the community from an untimely grave, and the character of the nation from the stigma of folly and ignorance. As the carrying this proposal into effect will resolve itself into a question of revenue, that point, I think, can be settled in a very few words. The national income derivable from Patent Medicine Stamps, Licences, &c., as appears by Porter's Revenue Tables, amounts to about £32,000 per annum for England and Wales-now taking the number of Medical Practitioners and Druggists in England at 80,000, and supposing each Practitioner and each Druggist were to pay a registration fee of Ten Shillings annually, a revenue of £40,000 would be thus created, which

would be more than sufficient to make up the loss the revenue would sustain by the repeal of Patent Medicine Licences and Stamp duties; and further, would leave an ample fund to defray the expense of the additional duties that would be imposed on the Clerks of the Peace for conducting the registration of Medical Practitioners and Druggists, and for defraying the expense of advertising the certified lists in the London Gazette. I may here cursorily observe that if the duties on Patent Medicines and the Licences for vending these articles were repealed, I do not conceive that quack nostrums would cease to be used by the community, still they would not be sought after and swallowed with such avidity as at present; and as no person, except he be a licensed Medical Practitioner, or a licensed Druggist, could advertise or set forth for sale any proprietary medicine, the nostrums would daily diminish in number. The licensed Practitioners and Druggists, who might become the tools of knaves and charlatans, in order to have the nostrums puffed and advertised in their name, would be cautious of lending their name to countenance any preparation of questionable propriety, and as the reputation of Practitioners and Druggists, who would become the medium of introducing these medicines to publie notice, would suffer in the eyes of their professional brethren, their number would daily diminish, and with them would follow the diminution of the nostrums, so that proprietary medicines would eventually be reduced to certain chemical compounds, such as James's powder and other articles, which are of admitted value in the treatment of disease. The third mode, adverted to above, of effecting a registration of Medical Practitioners and Druggists through the medium of the Stamp-office in each Metropolis of the empire, I shall only bring under your Lordship's notice by stating that the members of the Legal Profession are registered in that manner; the registration I believe is as simple as that proposed in this Bill, to be effected with the Clerk of the Peace of the several counties in the ountry; and further, I believe, the registration is quite effectual and satisfactory to the members of that learned Profession. On account of the mode of suppressing unqualified Practitioners, contemplated in this Bill, in a summary manner before any magistrate, I conceive the plan of registering with the Clerks of the Peace preferable for the Medical Profession; at the same time it may become a question with the Right Honourable the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, in the event of the Patent Medicine Licences and duties being repealed, the duties of conducting the registration of Medical Practitioners and Druggists could not be transferred to the Clerks of the Stampoffice, and that without entailing any additional expense upon any public department.

Dr. Sinclair appends to his Letter the draft of a Bill for regulating the practice of Surgeon-Apothecaries and Chemists and Druggists throughout the United Kingdom; and also for suppressing uneducated Practitioners summarily.

ART. XI.-An Historical Sketch of the Protestant Church of France, from its Origin to the present Times. With parallel Notices of the Church of Scotland during the same Period. By the REV. JOHN G. LORIMER, Minister of St. David's Parish, Glasgow. Edinburgh: John Johnstone. 1841.

VERY little is generally known in this country concerning the extent and condition of Protestantism in France; and even what is taken for granted by the popular reader on the subject is erroneous or so vague as to amount to no valuable end. It is, for example, very frequently asserted that the French are a nation of infidels, the atheism and scepticism that flooded the land, and were proclaimed by authority to be the true substitute for all religion, at the Revolution, being still supposed to be so much in the ascendant as to banish Christianity to this day from the kingdom; or if there be a religious establishment and the forms of public worship observed, it is very generally imagined amongst us that form and semblance are all, and that as a state engine alone must the whole be regarded. Such we believe to be very prevalent notions on the part of British Protestants, who yet may be charitable enough to accord to Catholicism abstractly the power of being instrumental in supporting religion and preserving among a people vital piety.

Many of those in this country, however, we imagine, who may, as well as of those who may not, entertain such liberal and tolerant opinions as we have now mentioned relative to Popery, are far from being aware of the extent and the character of the Protestant Church of France, as it exists at this moment. Therefore, and without for a moment wishing or attempting to pronounce judgment between creeds, we shall follow Mr. Lorimer in the course of his Historical Sketch, limiting ourselves almost exclusively to his account of the period between 1792 and 1840.

We are informed in the preface to the work, that it originated in a series of papers written for a religious periodical, "The Scottish Christian Herald," but that these have now not only been collected in the present volume, but so enlarged and altered as to warrant the author to call it a new work; there being not less than three-fourths of it additional matter.

Owing, however, to the original form and call for the publication, and even according to the admission of the author, the reader is not to expect a powerful, profound, or philosophical work. The authorities which have been consulted are not difficult of access; and then, from the very nature of the first publication, as well as according to the design of the book, the history is sketchy, and for popular uses rather than erudite recondite, or searching.

Two features, at the same time, must be noticed, and which re

commend as well as distinguish the work. Mr. Lorimer is the first, so far as we know, that has traced and described in our language the Protestant Church of France, from the time at which the doctrines of the Reformation were introduced into that country down to the prevent day; and particularly does the publication stand alone in that he gives us, rather than notices merely of the external and secular aspects of the church, its spiritual and christianizing character, its moral effectiveness and essential beauty as a sacred and holy edifice. Secondly, he has combined with the main current of his history that of the Church of Scotland, taken contemporaneously, making use of some documents not much known, especially recently discovered" Records of the General Session of Glasgow.'

We have to add, that Mr. Lorimer is a Presbyterian as an ecclesiastic, and an Evangelical in doctrine; and must also copy a prefatory notice. After mentioning that one of his reasons for writing the book was the "remarkable correspondence in many points between the constitution snd history of the Church of France and the Church of Scotland," he says "I have an additional motive for the publication, and it is to be found in the present prospects of Popery, both at home and abroad, and the liberalized feeling with which it is regarded by many professed Protestants. Nothing is better fitted, with the Divine blessing, to correct erroneous views of Popery, than to survey its operation in France, and towards the Protestant Church of that country during the last 300 years. In the course of this survey, we behold it in all states of society-in peace and in war-under despotism, and in comparative freedomin ignorance, and in days of civilization and refinement; and we find what experience testifies as to its ability to change for the better in any circumstances." To this we need hardly append the admission that Mr. Lorimer chiefly quotes from the official documents of the Protestant Church" itself, as these have been collected by Quick, "in his Synodicon," and published in two folio volumes, at London, in 1692; and also, "Status Ecclesiæ Gallicanæ," London, 1676. These for the earlier statements; while as regards the corresponding account of the Kirk, the Acts of the General Assembly, together with varies MS. Records, some of them already mentioned have been principally consulted; so that Catholics or others not professing the same belief with our author may allege that he has almost exclusively drawn from friendly, or perhaps from sectarian sources. It is our business to report, not to prejudge, or to act Solomon's decisive part.

According to a preceding announcement, we are not going to detain our readers for any considerable space either with the author's sketch as it relates to the origin of the Protestant Church in France in 1559, or to any intermediate point between that time and the present. We may mention, however, that the doctrines of the Re