ABSTRACT
The general practitioner was subjected to the direct control of a London mercantile company, and to the indirect supervision of the College of Physicians, whose policy was to make permanent the subordinate and inferior status of the apothecary. A major problem for the practitioner in establishing his professional status was that as an apothecary the law allowed him to charge for medicines only and not for attendance. The idea of self-governing professionalism was at the same time being vigorously pressed in other occupations. I. Waddington argues that it was not merely the development of the general practitioner as such which was the cause of the internal struggle in the Colleges; a movement which was directed at the institutions of the state and the church. Extreme democracy in the government of the profession was to be ensured by a postal ballot of all registered practitioners. This was a provision included in the subsequently successful 1858 Act.
