Land and other wealth, the number of Lawyers and Scriveners were adjusted, I cannot conceive how their should remain above one hundredth part of what now are; forasmuch as I have heard some affirm, that there be now ten times as many as are even now necessary; and that there are now ten times as many Law-suits, as upon the abovementioned Reformation, there would be. It follows therefore, that upon the whole there would not need one in a hundred of the present |10| number of Retainers to the Law, and Offices of Justice; the occasions as well of crimes as injuries being so much retrenched.
29. As for Physicians, it is not hard by the help of the observations which have been lately made upon the Bills of Mortality, to know how many are sick in London by the number of them that dye, and by the proportions of the City to finde out the same of the Countrey; and by both, by the advice of the learned Colledge of that Faculty to calculate how many Physicians were requisite for the whole Nation[1]; and consequently, how many Students in that art to permit and encourage; and lastly, having calculated these numbers, to adoptate a proportion of Chyrurgeons, Apothecaries, and Nurses to them, and so by the whole to cut off and extinguish that infinite swarm of vain pretenders unto, and abusers of that God-like Faculty, which of all Secular Employments our Saviour himself after he began to preach engaged himself upon.
30. Moreover, if it were agreed, what number of Divines, Physicians and Civilians (that is, of men bred in Universities) were requisite to the publick service? As suppose 13000. in the present way, and perhaps not above 6000. in that way of
- ↑ Petty had been admitted a candidate of the College of Physicians 25 June, 1650. The 14th of July, 1655, he was elected fellow of the College, but, being then in Ireland, he was not admitted to his new rank until 25 June, 1658. Munk, Roll, 2nd ed., I. 271. He was also one of the forty fellows named in the charter granted 26 March, 1664. Goodall, The Royal College of Physicians (1684), p. 70. His suggestion is not wholly out of keeping with the purpose of a corporation established "with a view to the improvement and more orderly practice of the art of physic, and the repression of irregular, unlearned, and incompetent practicioners of that faculty."
