From Quacks to Professional Men

From ancient times, quackery, prayers, and traditional poultices and herbalism, were the medics’ tools of trade alongside crude surgery and bleeding.

Then came the Enlightenment when anatomy, science and an understanding of how the body works changed everything.  By the early 1800s, a substantial body of knowledge had started to develop which required medical practitioners to train and learn in organised schools with experienced teachers.

The Teaching Hospital and the concept of Lecturers were born.  And so it was at Queen’s.

It had distinguished the function of caring and treating from teaching and training by recognising and building a separate, but on-site, Medical School with its own Dean.  It was not a separate entity in law – its finances and administration were very much part of Queen’s, and its benefactors.  The administrator, known as the Treasurer, was all important but the medics started to get organised.

At the same time, the law changed.  The state recognised the desirability of having an authorised body to ensure that medical practitioners were suitably qualified, and had passed their exams, thus the Royal College of Physicians (instigated under King Henry VIII) was boosted and became that body. Continue reading →