Though their work was entirely unscientific, experience and common sense, or perhaps mere luck, often gave to their treatment an appearance of success which was denied to their more learned rivals. Thus Adam Martindale describing his illness says that it was “a vehement fermentation in my body ... ugly dry scurfe, eating deep and spreading broad. Some skilfull men, or so esteemed, being consulted and differing much in their opinions, we were left to these three bad choices ... in this greate straite God sent us in much mercie a poore woman, who by a salve made of nothing but Celandine and a little of the Mosse of an ashe root, shred and boyled in May-butter, tooke it cleare away in a short time, and though after a space there was some new breakings out, yet these being annointed with the same salve ... were absolutely cleared away.”[[595]]
The general standard of efficiency among the men who professed medicine and surgery was very low, the chief work of the ordinary country practitioner being the letting of blood, and the wise woman of the village may easily have been his superior in other forms of treatment. Sir Ralph Verney, writing to his wife advises her to “give the child no phisick but such as midwives and old women, with the doctors approbation, doe prescribe; for assure yourselfe they by experience know better than any phisition how to treate such infants.”[[596]] Of Hobbes it was said that he took little physick and preferred “an experienced old woman” to the “most learned and inexperienced physician.”[[597]]
Dr. Turbeville, a noted oculist in the West Country, was sent for to cure the Princess of Denmark, who had a dangerous inflammation of the eyes. On his return he is reported to have said that “he expected to learn something of these Court doctors, but, to his amazement he found them only spies upon his practice, and wholly ignorant as to the lady’s case; nay, farther, he knew several midwives and old women, whose advice he would rather follow than theirs.”[[598]] He died at Sarum in 1696, and his sister, Mrs. Mary Turbeville, practised afterwards in London “with good reputation and success. She has all her brother’s receipts, and having seen his practice, during many years, knows how to use them. For my part, I have so good an opinion of her skill that should I again be afflicted with sore eyes, which God forbid! I would rely upon her advice rather than upon any pretenders or professors in London or elsewhere.”[[599]]
Events, however, were taking place which would soon curtail the practice of women whose training was confined to personal experience, tradition and casual study. The established associations of physicians, surgeons and apothecaries, although of recent growth, demanded and obtained, like other companies, exclusive privileges. Their policy fell in with the Government’s desire to control the practice of medicine, in order to check witchcraft. Statute 3, Henry VIII., enacted that “none should exercise the Faculty of Physick or Surgery within the City of London or within Seven Miles of the same, unless first he were examined, approved and admitted by the Bishop of London, or the Dean of St. Paul’s, calling to him or them Four Doctors of Physick, and for Surgery other expert Persons in that Faculty, upon pain of Forfeiture of £5 for every Month they should occupy Physick or Surgery, not thus admitted” because “that common Artificers, as Smiths, Weavers, and Women, boldly and accustomably took upon them great Cures, and Things of great Difficulty, in the which they partly used Sorceries and Witchcraft, and partly applied such Medicines unto the Diseased, as were very noyous, and nothing meet therefore.”[[600]]
The restrictions were extended to the provinces. A Charter given to the Company of Barber-Surgeons at Salisbury in 1614 declared that “No surgeon or barber is to practise any surgery or barbery, unless first made a free citizen, and then a free brother of the company. Whereas, also, there are divers women and others within this city, altogether unskilled in the art of chirurgery, who do oftentimes take cures on them, to the great danger of the patient, it is therefore ordered, that no such woman, or any other, shall take or meddle with any cure of chirurgery, wherefore they, or any of them shall have or take any money, benefit or other reward for the same, upon pain that every delinquent shall for every cure to be taken in hand, or meddled with, contrary to this order, unless she or they shall be first allowed by this Company, forfeit and lose to the use of this Company the sum of ten shillings.”[[601]]
The Apothecaries were separated from the Grocers in 1617, the charter of their company providing that “No person or persons whatsoever may have, hold, or keep an Apothecaries Shop or Warehouse, or that may exercise or use the Art or Mystery of Apothecaries, or make, mingle, work, compound, prepare, give, apply, or administer, any Medicines, or that may sell, set on sale, utter, set forth, or lend any Compound or Composition to any person or persons whatsoever within the City of London, and the Liberties thereof, or within Seven Miles of the said city, unless such person or persons as have been brought up, instructed, and taught by the space of Seven Years at the least, as Apprentice or Apprentices, with some Apothecary or Apothecaries exercising the same Art, and being a Freeman of the said Mystery.” Any persons wishing to become an Apothecary must be examined and approved after his apprenticeship.[[602]]
It will be observed that there is little in their charters to distinguish the medical from other city Companies, and while the examination required by the Faculties of Medicine and Surgery in the City of London excluded women altogether, the Apothecaries still admitted them by marriage or apprenticeship. “Mʳⁱˢ Lammeere Godfrey Villebranke her son both Dutch Pothecarys” are included in a certificate made by the Justices of the Peace to the Privy Council, of the foreigners residing in the Liberty of Westminster.[[603]] A journeyman who applied for the freedom of the company, stated that he was serving the widow of an apothecary. His application was refused time after time through difficulties owing to a clause in the Charter. Counsel’s opinion was taken, and finally he was admitted provided he kept a journeyman and entered into a bond of £100 to perform the same, that he gave £10 and a spoon to the Company, took the oaths and paid Counsel’s fees.[[604]] He subsequently married the widow. Similar rules obtained in the provinces, as is shown by the admittance of Thomas Serne in 1698-9 to the freedom of the City of Dorchester on payment of 40s. because he had “married a wife who had lived as apprentice for 20 years to an apothecary.”[[605]]
The jurisdiction of companies was local, and where no company existed boys were apprenticed to surgery for the sake of training, though such an apprenticeship conferred no monopoly privilege. Surgery was sometimes combined with another trade. John Croker describes in his memoir how he was bound apprentice in 1686 to one John Shilson “by trade a serge-maker, but who also professed surgery; with whom I went to be instructed in the art of surgery.”[[606]] The operation of these various Statutes and Charters being local and their enforcement depending upon the energy of the parties interested, it is difficult to determine what was their actual and immediate effect on the medical practice of women. Statute 3, Henry VIII., must have been enforced with some severity, for a later one declares “Sithence the making of which said Act the companie & felowship of surgeons of London, minding oonly 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 herbes, roots and waters, and the using & ministering of them to such as been pained with customable diseases, as women’s breasts being sore, a pin and the web in the eye, &c., &c., and yet the said persons have not taken any thing for their pains or cunning.”[[607]]
Not only the Surgeons but the Apothecaries also, enforced observance of the privileges which the King had granted to them, and in consequence a Petition of many thousands of citizens and inhabitants in and about London was presented on behalf of Mr. William Trigg, Practitioner of Physick, saying that he “did abundance of good to all sorts of people in and about this City: when most of the Colledge Doctors deserted us, since which time your Petitioners have for above twenty yeares, in their severall times of Sicknesses, and infirmities taken Physick from him ... in which time, we doe verily believe in our consciences, that he hath done good to above thirty thousand Persons; and that he maketh all his Compositions himselfe, not taking anything for his Physick from poor people; but rather releiving their necessities, nor any money from any of us for his advice; and but moderately for his Physick: his custome being to take from the middle sort of Patients 12d., 18d., 2s., 2s. 6d. as they please to give, very seldom five shillings unlesse from such as take much Physick with them together into the Countrey ... there is a good and wholesome law made in the 34th year of King Henry 8 C. 8. Permitting every man that hath knowledge and experience in the nature of Herbs, Roots and waters, to improve his Talent for the common good and health of the people,” and concluding that unless Dr. Trigg is allowed to continue his practice “many poore people must of necessity perish to death ... for they are not able to pay great fees to Doctors and Apothecaries bills which cost more then his advice and Physick; nor can we have accesse unto them when we desire, which we familiarly have to Dr. Trigg to our great ease and comfort.”[[608]]
Prudence Ludford, wife of William Ludford of Little Barkhampton, was presented in 1683 “for practising the profession of a chyrurgeon contrary to law,”[[609]] but many women at this time continued their practice as doctors undisturbed; for example, Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson casually mentions that one of her maids went to Colson, to have a sore eye cured by a woman of the town.[[610]] While Mrs. D’ewes was travelling from Axminster to London by coach, her baby boy cried so violently all the way, on account of the roughness of the road that he ruptured himself, and was left behind at Dorchester under the care of Mrs. Margaret Waltham, “a female practitioner.”[[611]]