A Respectable Occupation: - University of Hertfordshire Research ...

In its early days medicine was practised by a large variety of people:
herbalists, clergymen, housewives, bonesetters, cuppers, leech appliers,
quacks, chemists and druggists, surgeons, apothecaries and physicians were
all involved. 8 Fissell concurs with this view expressed by Burnby, Robb-
Smith and Wyman, but makes the further point that the lay people in this
group were applying the same principles and using the same cures as the
physicians and apothecaries. 9 Some of the medicines used were efficacious,
such as quinine used in malaria, opium for pain relief, colchicum in cases of
gout and amyl nitrate in angina. But there were a great number of others
in frequent use that were ineffective. 10 Out of this disparate group of
healers, it was the physicians, surgeons, apothecaries and chemists and
druggists that became recognised by law and survived, but of these it was
the physicians who were the senior branch throughout.
Although the physicians‘ existence can be traced to Ancient Greece,
they were first formally recognised in England, in a charter given by Henry
VIII in 1518. 11 There were a number of ways of becoming a physician; one
could enter either Oxford or Cambridge and first take a degree in classics
lasting seven years, followed by a medical qualification of six years
duration. 12 However, by 1565, Cambridge had abandoned this requirement
8
Burnby, A Study of the English Apothecary from 1660-1760, p. 83; Robb-Smith, „Medical Education at
Oxford and Cambridge Prior to 1850‟, in Poynter, (ed.) The Evolution of Medical Education in Britain, p.
37; A. Wyman, „The Surgeoness: The Female Practitioner of Surgery 1400-1800‟, Medical History, 28,
(1984) 23; Pelling, Common Lot, p. 241.
9
Fissell, Patients, Power and the Poor in Eighteenth Century Bristol, p. 16.
10
R. Porter, Blood and Guts: a short history of medicine (London, 2003), p. 39.
11
R. Mann, „From Mithridatium to modern medicine: the management of drug safety‟, Journal of the
Royal Society of Medicine, 81, (1988) 725.
12
Robb-Smith, „Medical Education at Oxford and Cambridge Prior to 1850‟, in Poynter, (ed.) The
Evolution of Medical Education in Britain, p. 21; A. Carr-Saunders and P. Wilson, The Professions
(London, 1964), p. 66.
11