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

ordinary people. To do this they did not need a classical education, but an
apprenticeship and a practical training. 126
Cook raises an alternative explanation, not alluded to by others, to
explain the professional distinction between the surgeon-apothecary and the
physician, other than that of tradesman versus gentleman. He proposes
that the physicians and surgeon-apothecaries were in disagreement about a
fundamental principle of how patients should be treated. The surgeon-
apothecaries, particularly those who had served in the navy, believed in
having effective medicines with which they could treat a specific set of
symptoms. They believed, for instance, that any man displaying symptoms
of fever, irrespective of his age or background and no matter where he was
in the world, should be treated in the same way. They wished to carry a
limited number of medicines, ideally one for each condition; they observed
and took notes of how these medicines performed and adjusted their
armamentarium accordingly.
The physicians, however, believed that treatment was much more an
individual matter. The treatment would depend on the social class of the
patient, his or her age, sex, geographic location, surroundings and state of
health. Consequently the treatment would vary for each patient from
minute to minute. The ex-naval surgeon-apothecaries took their philosophy
into their civilian practices with successful results, to the detriment of the
physicians. 127
126 Hamilton, „The Medical Professions in the Eighteenth Century‟, 162.
127 H. Cook, „Practical Medicine and the British Armed Forces after the “Glorious Revolution”‟, Medical
History, 34, (1990) 13.
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