Sir, - One gets very tired reading almost every week various suggestions for the General Medical Council to adopt this, that, or the other reform. As far as safeguarding the interests of the practitioner the General Medical Council's utility is nil. When the employment of unqualified assistance was prohibited, surely the profession had a right to expect that the Council would see that discarded unqualified assistants did not indulge in independent practice. Such, however, is not the case.
Here in the town where I practise we have a man who was for years an unqualified assistant here, and who now not only practises medicine, surgery, and midwifery with impunity, but who has successfully run the gauntlet of a couple of inquests. Now, I ask, where is the use of having a qualification when such a state of things is allowed to exist?—I am, etc.,
April 4th. M.D. Dublin. (BMJ 1900;i:933.)