fied from time to time the courses of lectures
or terms of hospital practice to be attended by medical students before
their examination, and in the progress of years regular schools of
medicine were organized throughout England.

As it was found that, notwithstanding the stringent regulations as to
medical acquirements, the candidates were in many instances deficient in
preliminary education, the court of examiners instituted, about the year
1850, a preliminary examination in arts as a necessary and indispensable
prerequisite to the medical curriculum, and this provision has been so
expanded that, at the present day, all medical students in the United
Kingdom are compelled to pass a preliminary examination in arts, unless
they hold a university degree. An act of parliament, passed in 1858, and
known as the Medical Act, made very little alteration in the powers
exercised by the Apothecaries' Society, and indeed it confirmed and in
some degree amplified them, for whereas by the act of 1815, the
licentiates of the society were authorized to practise as such only in
England and Wales, the new measure gave them the same right in Scotland
and Ireland. The Medical Act 1886 extended the qualifications necessary
for registration under the medical acts, by making it necessary to pass
a qualifying examination in medicine, surgery and midwifery. (See
MEDICAL EDUCATION.)

An act, passed in 1874, related exclusively to the Apothecaries'
Society, and is termed the Apothecaries' Act Amendment Act. By this
measure some provisions of the act of 1815, which had become obsolete or
unsuitable, were repealed, and powers were given to the society to unite
or co-operate with other medical licensing bodies in granting licences
to practise. The act of 1815 had made it compulsory on all candidates
for a licence to have served an apprenticeship of five years to an
apothecary, and although by the interpretation of the court of examiners
of the society this term really included the whole period of medical
study, yet the regulation was felt as a grievance by many members of the
medical profession. It was accordingly repealed, and no apprenticeship
is now necessary. The restriction of the choice of examiners to the
members of the society was also repealed, and the society was given the
power (which it did not before possess) to strike off from the list of
its licentiates the names of disreputable persons. The act of 1874 also
specified that the soci