The Express.
London, England, 1847-02-24 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, WEDNESDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 24, 1847.

of the Roman poet—laurfatur et alget. It is de-
clared to be a very good thing, which nobody tastes.
M. SOYER, chef of the culinary department of the
Reform Club, has been affected by the overflowing
liberality of the establishment, into the proposal to ,
introduce the French system of vegetable soup-
making into Ireland. What he proposes are simply
the recipes used in every farm-house and cottage of
France for utilising field and garden vegetables, and,
in fact, subsisting families on what English poor have
been taught to reject as garbage.
Could NI. SOYER succeed in introducing his soup,
and getting the peasant to drink it, he would achieve
something fur more important than the relief of tem-
porary distress. Ile would work a revolution in the
entire diet and economy of the lower closers, not only
of Ireland, but of this country. Could the population
of either country be induced to become a soup-
drinking people, the result would be their greater
independence of any one crop, their greater
ability to utilise, and 'nourish themselves with, the
cheaper and now rejected portion of animal food, a
very great economy in their mode of life, for the soup
pot, like that of Spain or France, with its otnnium
gatherum of vegetables, and a scrap of meat or lard,
is just as cheap as the dry meal of potatoes, and
would lead, in Ireland, to a radical change and im-
, provement in the habits of agriculture.
There are, however, a great many difficulties, and
I not a few objections. One is, that, however liquid
diet may agree with the population of the south of
Europe, a solid diet is requisite for the north. More-
over. wine, from its various qualities, is a natural cor-
rective of the tendencies of a vegetable diet. 'The
population condemned to beer and water require the
solid food, which the possession of the grape, and of
the sun which ripens it, can dispense with.
In Ireland, however, these objections are of little
weight. There the population have long been
reduced to a vegetable diet, so lowering, that, like the
savage, accustomed to inanition and exhaustion, the
peasantry cannot resist the temptation of spirits as a
cordial. A population, well provided with animal
food, does not need the super-excitement of spirits—it
always prefers malt liquor.
Those habituated to a low vegetable diet and
obliged to great bodily exertion upon such support,
cannot resist the temptation of the spirit-bottle. If
the potato continues the staple food of the Irish, not
all the efforts of Father MATHEW will wean them
from the counteracting excitement. Change and
raise the staple of the Irishman's food, and he will not
be more prone to consume spirits than the English-
man, the Frenchman, or the German.
We sincerely wish M. SOYER success with his
modest experiment. We should only recommend him
not to be too sparing of substantiaLs, of shin of beef
and oatmeal. Over-economy and over-spareness will
spoil both his scheme and his broth. We hold the in-
treduction of vegetable soups a very great opening of
reform in the mode of subsistence of our lower
classes. _ _ .

At a dinner given to Mr. COBDEN last year, by the
Bordelais, a philanthropic wine-merchant of that city
declared that the progress and sale of Bordeaux wine
was the true concomitant, symptom, and cause of
civilisation. In direct contradiction of Lord CAR-
DIGAN% thesis, M. Di. rouß declared the black bottle to
be the great standard of social enlightenment and
regeneration.
We are not quite so enthusiastic in wine bibbing
or wine vending. But we would insinuate that
cookery is no despicable element of civilisation, that
the rudest people eat the simplest dishes, which arc
neither the most healthful nor the most economical;
and that the health and the pocket of the poorest
classes would be, both of them, greatly benefited by
increased enlightenment in the humble but useful
science of the kitchen.

TITYRE are few subjects in which the public arc
more deeply interested than that of medical reform,
and yet perhaps there is none on which so little
general information exists. It is ignorantly supposed
that medical legislation is one in which medical men
are alone interested, and they are left to themselves
to seek those changes which are admitted on unhands
Ito be at least as necessary for the safety of the public
as for tho character and honour of the medical pro-
fession. It is almost impossible, in a few words, to
give a correct idea of the various institutions in this
country, which have either the power of grant-
ing medical degrees or giving licenses to prac-
tise various departments of medicine. Each
of these has ite code of laws conferring on it and on
its graduates and members certain exclusive privi-
leges, which of course its executive is exceedingly
anxious to maintain intact. These institutions have
been founded from time to time, according to the
pressure of circumstances, and their legal privileges
have been conferred upon them without much regard
to c insistency, and frequently with a result the re-
verse of what was intended. Medical legislation has
been in fact in this country, since the time ofgranting the
first charter to the London College of Physicians in 151 9,
to the granting of the last charter to the College of
Surgeons in 1843, a piece of patchwork without one
single comprehensive attempt to bring the whole pro-
fession under anything like a common law. It may
be urged in favour of the universities and corpora-
tions having medical privileges that, however, anoma-
lous these privileges may be, they were required to
meet and avert some special evil. This we believe.
At the same time it must be obvious they have not
attained their end. _ _

The object of the legal powers of most of these
bodies has been to prevent ignorant and il-
literate men from practising the art of medicine.
Has it done so ? We think not, and we think it
would be difficult to point to a period of our history,
when there has been a greater amount of quackery
and empiricism tolerated than at the present moment.
The fact is, the privileged medical bodies are so
numerous that they have always been more busily
occupied in quarelhng with each other than in ward-
ing off the common enemy. That in this country we
have a body of intelligent practitioners of the healing
art, of which any nation might be proud, is as much
due to the spirit of the age and country in which we
live, as to our medical institutions. That we
have more quackery out of the profession,
and heart-burnings and jealousies in the profession,
than in any other civilised country, is, we believe,
mainly owing to the nature of the laws by which
these institutions are governed. These laws are not
only in spirit at variance with each other, but their
most oppressive action is directed not against the
ignorant and illiterate practitioner, but against the
legitimate members of the profession.
In order to make this evident we have only to
call attention to the numbers of bodies granting
degrees and licenses in medicine. The united king-
dom can boast of seventeen such bodies, besides
the army, navy, ordnance, and East India Com-
pany's medical boards, and a doubtful power of
granting a license to practise physic vested in the
hands of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Of the
seventeen, eight are universities—those of London,
Cambridge, Oxford, Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow,
Aberdeen, and St. Andrews; three are colleges of
physicians—those of London, Edinburgh, and Dublin ;
three colleges of surgeons at the same places, and two
apothecaries' companies, one in London, the other in
Dublin. Each of these bodies has the power
of examining candidates for its diploma and
license, and each has its privileges in particu-
lar districts. A few only of them trust each
other ; and all, previous to the bestowal of their
licenses or degrees, require that candidates submit to
an examination of their own. It thus happens that a
man may study in Edinburgh, graduate there, and be
even admitted a fellow of the Colleges of Surgeons
and Physicians, and on coming to England he would
not be allowed to practise as a general practitioner
till he had submitted to the examination of the Apo-
thecaries' Company of London. If he wished to be
thought a respectable man in his way, or to obtain a
surgeon's post in a dispensary or hospital, he would
then find it necessary to pass the examination of the
College of Surgeons of London. If after this he
changed his mind, and wished to practise as
a physician in any part of England out of London, he
would have to undergo another examination for
license to practise as a physician from the London
College of l'hysicians. And if after all this he
should wish to settle in London, the College of
Physicians again meets him with the demand of
another examination, in order that he may have their
license to practise in London. This is no imaginary
case: there are men in London who could paper their
consulting rooms with their diplomas and licenses, nor
are these titles of permission to practise conferred as
matters of form ; each body strives to support its ima-
ginary dignity by the severity or peculiarity of its
examinations, and those who pm with credit one
board of examiners are rejected by ethers. The Col-