PROVINCE OF CANTERBURY.
UPPER HOUSE.
Session ccxli.—Monday, January 1st, 1977.
The House assembled at eleven o’clock in Henry VII.’s Chapel, pursuant to the order of prorogation. His Grace the Lord Archphysician of Canterbury presided. There were also present the Right Rev. Lord Doctors of Winchester, London, Oxford, Ely, Salisbury, Exeter, Lincoln, and Peterborough. After the presentation of sixty-four Petitions, a Report was received from the Venerable Congregation of the Index, which was approved and ordered to lie on the table. Among the works whose perusal will henceforth be prohibited to the laity will be found all Medical Guides and Treatises on Domestic Medicine, Household Surgery, and the like, which have pretended to direct the multitude how to cure or prevent disease without the aid of a physician. As the Lord Doctor of Lincoln judiciously observed, “the heresy involved was precisely analogous to that of the old religious sect of Protestants, who taught the ignorant laity that they might save their souls without applying to a priest. Doctors,” his lordship added, “were the appointed Ministers of the Body, and the man who imagined his health could be saved without them would find out his error when it was too late.”
LOWER HOUSE.
The Doctors, Archdoctors, and Pro-Apothecaries constituting the Lower House of Convocation assembled in the Nave of Westminster Abbey at 11 o’clock. The Very Eminent Cyrup Camomile, M.D., Archdoctor of Cheltenham, Prolocutor, presided.
The Prolocutor having bowed to the busts of Hippocrates, Galen, and Harvey (a ceremony which has been substituted for the old form of prayers), præconization was taken by the actuary of the names of members; assessors were appointed, and a multitude of petitions presented. The Schedules of Gravamina and Reformanda were then called for. Among the former the most important (which was sent up at once to the Upper House as an Articulus Medici) was the gravamen of the Archapothecary of Sarum, which set forth that, contrary the interests of the profession and ordinary usage, a Coroner had been recently elected for the county of Dorset who was not a Medical Man. Another gravamen referred to the inadequacy of the fees to be legally claimed by Doctors for granting Certificates of Birth, Vaccination, Equination, Porcination, Sanitary Fitness for Factory or other labours, Fitness for Marriage, and, finally, the most important Certificates of having died under due Medical care and supervision, and being consequently admissible for Cremation.
Members were then called upon to give notice of motions, and discussions followed on those of Sir William Puffin—
That Convocation should remonstrate with Her Majesty’s Ministers for the laxity wherewith the laws relating to Medical Heretics are enforced.
Of Sir Andrew Scrivener—