By the statute of Henry the profession was for the first time divided into physicians, surgeons and apothecaries: a division still kept up in England. It also enacts, under a penalty, that “no physician or surgeon shall practise in London, or within seven miles of it, without examination by the Bishop of London, or the Dean of St. Paul’s, and four doctors of physic; nor out of the city, or precinct, but if he be first examined and approved by the bishop of the diocese, or his vicar-general, calling to them such expert persons in the same faculty as their discretion shall think convenient.” Fancy a D.D. sitting in judgment on an |9| M.D. How orthodox and regular in his attendance at church would the latter have to be! However, 14 & 15 Henry VIII. cap. 5, vests this power of examination in the President and Elects of the College of Physicians of London. This Royal College was founded in 1518 by letters patent from the king. Power was given to it to make laws for the government of all men of the faculty of physic in London and within seven miles, and for the correction of the physicians within those limits and their medicines: and none could practise within those limits without a license. Shortly after an Act of Parliament confirmed this patent so that none could practise in England without the license of the college, save graduates of Oxford and Cambridge. Subsequently Fellows of the college were given power, together with the warden of the Apothecaries’ Society, to enter the houses of apothecaries in London, to examine their wares, drugs and stuffs, and to burn and destroy those that were defective.
In 1560, by 32 Henry VIII. cap. 40, surgery was declared a part of physic, and the practice thereof was thrown open to all of the company or fellowship of physicians throughout the realm. Not long afterwards the Parliament of this reforming king seems to have changed its mind and made a move in the direction of free-trade in physic, and by 34 & 35 Henry VIII. cap. 8, any man or woman was permitted to practise to a limited extent. We fancy we can trace the influence of the sturdy king in the provisions of this Act, which was entitled, “An Act that persons being no common surgeons may administer outward medicines notwithstanding the statute;” the statute after referring to the Act passed in the third year of the king’s reign (which imposed penalties upon those who should practise as physicians or surgeons without being examined and admitted) goes on to say, “Sithence the making of which said Act (that of 3 Henry VIII.) the |10| company and fellowships of surgeons of London, minding only their own lucres, and nothing the profit or ease of the diseased or patient, have sued, troubled and vexed divers honest persons, as well men as women, whom God hath endued with the knowledge of the nature, kind and operation of certain herbs, roots and waters, and the using and ministering of them to such as be pained with customable diseases, as women’s breasts being sore, a pin and the web in the eye, uncomes of hands, burnings, scaldings, sore mouths, the stone, strangury, saucelin, and morphers, and such other like diseases; and yet the said persons have not taken anything for their pains or cunning, but have ministered the same to poor people only, for neighbourhood and God’s sake, and of pity and charity. And it is now well-known that the surgeons admitted will do no cure to any person, but where they shall know to be rewarded with a greater sum or reward than the cure extendeth unto: for in case they would minister their cunning unto sore people unrewarded there should not so many rot and perish to death, for lack of help of surgery, as daily do; but the greatest part of surgeons admitted have been much more to be blamed than those persons that they trouble.” It further states that “although the most part of the persons of the said craft of surgery have small cunning, yet they will take great sums of money and do little therefor, and by reason thereof they do oftentimes impair and hurt their patients rather than do them good.” In consideration whereof and for the ease and health of the king’s poor subjects, it was enacted that it should be lawful to every person having knowledge and experience of the nature of herbs, etc., to practise and minister them without suit or vexation. (Here is evidence of the existence of herb doctors, hydropaths and lady physicians in those days.)