40
elevates the individual above all Esquires not honourable, and above all Field-Officers, not Generals or Admirals." I am not prepared to assert, that the English Universities do not confer this rank, but I may observe, as to the estimation in which these degrees are held, that the Physicians to the crowned heads on the Continent, who have been British subjects, have all, or nearly all, been medical graduates of Edinburgh, and that when the present Emperor of Russia founded the Imperial University of Wilna, in Lithuania, it was to Edinburgh, and not to Oxford or Cambridge, that he sent to invite Physicians, to fill the chairs of the professorships of medicine, and Baron Dimsdale, who was chosen to inoculate the late Empress Catharine of Russia, was certainly neither of Oxford nor Cambridge.[1]
- ↑ The author does not condescend to tell us, how the English Seminaries became possessed of the right of conferring this rank, whether by Charter from the Crown, or Act of Parliament; however, custom which in such affairs is nearly equivalent to an Act of Parliament, makes no distinction between a Physician of Oxford, Cambridge, or Edinburgh; but the profession of medicine in general, consider Edinburgh as the first medical University in the world, whilst Oxford and Cambridge, as schools of medicine, can scarcely be said to exist.
