Doctors and Patients, Or, Anecdotes of the Medical World and Curiosities of Medicine (Volume 1) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1873. Excerpt: ... Linacrc and the College of Physicians. 17 NOTABLE PRACTITIONERS. LlNACRE AND THE COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS. The great glory of Linacre was, that he projected and accomplished a most important service to medicine, by the institution of the Royal College of Physicians in London. He had beheld with concern the practice of physic chiefly engrossed by illiterate monks and empirics; a natural consequence of committing the power of approving and licensing practitioners to the bishops in their several dioceses, who certainly must have been very incompetent judges of medical ability. To strike at the root of this evil, he therefore obtained, by his interest with Cardinal Wolsey, letters patent from Henry VIII., dated in the year 1518, constituting a corporate body of regularly bred physicians, in London, in whom should reside the sole privilege of admitting persons to practise within that city, and a circuit of seven miles round it. To use the words of the charter of the college: 'Before this period, a great multitude of ignorant persons, of whom the greater part had no insight into physic, nor in any other kind of learning; some could not even read the letters on the book, so far forth, that common artificers, as smiths, weavers, and women, boldly and accustomably took upon them great cures, to the high displeasure of God, great infamy of the faculty, and the grievous hurt, damage, and destruction of many of the king's liege people.' This was the state of things before the foundation of the College of Physicians. Afterwards, it is true, empirics were occasionally treated in the most summary manner, and their dealings with the credulous must have been wicked and gross to have deserved such a punishment as the following, recorded by Stow, in his Chronicle: 'A counterfe...