Doctors and their work, or medicine, quackery and disease.

  • Carter, Robert Brudenell, 1828-1918.
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Doctors and their work, or medicine, quackery and disease. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

    20/328 (page 10)
    upon his doorplate or -apon his cards, with at least a tacit assumption that it indicated superiority over those of his brethren or his competitors who were compelled to describe themselves by the less dignified abbreviation of ' Mr.' In relation to the actual number of practitioners, the cases were not very numerous, but they were numerous enough to constitute a mild professional grievance; especially as, during the first half of the century, the stamp of the Scottish doctorate was chiefly sought by a class of English students who were not manifestly likely to become highly distinguished by reason of their own superior merits or attainments. At the time referred to, men possessing only Scottish or Irish qualifications, whatever they might be called, could not legally practise in England ; and hence, among Englishmen, these qualifications were only sought in addition to English ones, and for the sake of the titles which they conferred. A complete change in this respect was wrought by the Medical Act of 1858, which legalised, over the whole of the United Kingdom, the qualifying medical examinations of each division, and which therefore threw open the field of English practice to Scottish or Irish doctors without restraint. It is quite possible that the jealousy of these ' doctors,' which had for some time been felt by many English general practitioners, led to imputations which