Genre:

Introduction, Drollery; Essay, Spoof

Subjects:

Medical Treatment, Medical Practitioners, Heterodoxy, Quackery, Education, Pharmaceuticals, Homeopathy

    Mr Punch's spoof entry for the £30 Morisonian Prize for the 'best essay on the Medical Liberty of the Subject', recently advertised by the proprietors of James Morison's pills. The essay opens by claiming that medicine will rise, 'in spite of priestcraft and oppression', to spread its 'refulgent beams' over the world. Believes the medical faculty will not 'quell the spirit of medical dissent' and that the 'College of Physicians shall meet in mortal shock the College of Health'—the grandiose name for Morison's premises in Euston Road. Asks why medical men are allowed to delude the public when 'the universal medicine [...] cures all diseases'. This medicine is revealed to be a 'vegetable pill' which is resisted by the faculty and whose efficacy Mr Punch seeks to prove with 'three millions of well-authenticated cases'. Supports claims that the producers of the pill, the 'Hygeists' at the College of Health, are being persecuted by the faculty, adding that the 'very existence of the medical profession' is a 'virtual persecution of the medical dissenter'. Suggests that the College of Health 'ought exclusively to be allowed to practise medicine' and to exert sole control over medical examinations. Insists that the expensive medical education was intended to keep the medical profession 'respectable', while examinations prevented the profession from subscribing to 'erroneous doctrines' such as 'Universal Pills'. Argues that the 'medical liberty of the subject' is the 'overthrow of all medical institutions, and the establishment of the College of Health in their place', and that the 'Universal Vegetable Pill' is the 'only real medicine'. Asserts that 'every medical system except medical dissent, is quackery', and that 'all those who question our creed are wilfully blind, perverse and obstinate'.

See also:

The Times, 15 December 1842, p. 8a