LAW AND MEDICINE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
By Russell Gray.
SOME statutes have been passed, and more have been proposed, in various State legislatures recently, for regulating the practice of medicine and excluding unqualified persons from it, with the intention of protecting the public from quacks. The policy of such legislation has been much discussed privately and publicly, but few, if any, references have been made to the history of the earliest parliamentary attempts in this line,—a history which has an amusing as well as an instructive side.
The first attempt to lay any restraint on medical or surgical practice was the Stat. 3 Hen. VIII. c. 11 (1511-12), the preamble of which depicts the evils of the existing state of things in the lively manner which lends to the ancient statutes a charm wholly wanting to the modern. "Forasmuch as the science and cunning of physic and surgery, to the perfect knowledge whereof be requisite both great learning and ripe experience, is daily, within this realm exercised by a great multitude of ignorant persons, of whom the great part have no manner of insight in the same, nor in any other kind of learning; some also can no letters on the book, so far forth that common artificers, as smiths, weavers, and women, boldly and customably take upon them great cures and things of great difficulty, in the which they partly use sorcery and witchcraft, partly apply such medicines unto the disease as be very noxious and nothing meet therefor, to the high displeasure of God, great infamy to the faculties, and the grievous hurt, damage, and destruction of many of the King's liege people, most specially of them that cannot discern the uncunning from the cunning." It was "therefore, to the surety and comfort of all manner people by the authority of this present parliament enacted" that no one should practise physic or surgery without being first examined and admitted by the bishop of the diocese, who was to be assisted by experts. The Act contained a saving of the privileges of the Universities.
Unlicensed practitioners were liable to forfeit £5 a month, half to the King and half to the informer; a heavy penalty, in view of the fact that the value of money was then no less than twelve times as great as at present (Froude, Hist. Eng. c. 1). It would seem that the women-doctors and the mental healers of the day (using sorcery and witchcraft) ought to have been somewhat discouraged.
But the regular physicians had as yet no organization for waging war on these and other enemies. This they first acquired, some seven years later, by royal charter incorporating the College of Physicians (Sept. 23, 1518). In this charter the King recited his sense of the necessity "to restrain the boldness of wicked men, who profess physic more for avarice than out of confidence of a good conscience," and his hope that the ignorant and malicious might be punished by the laws late made, and by constitutions to be made by the College. Accordingly the College was given large powers to regulate the practice of physic within a circuit of seven miles from London, and no person might practise within that limit without their license under penalty of £5 per month, one half to be paid to the King and one half to the College. By the Stat. 14 & 15 Hen. VIII. c. 5 (1523), the charter was confirmed, and no persons (except graduates of the Universities) were allowed to practice physic anywhere in England without license from the College; it being expedient that no person "be suffered to exercise and practise physic but only those persons that be profound, sad, and discreet, groundedly learned
