Numerous Acts of Parliament have been passed touching the medical profession since the days of “Bluff King Hal,” |11| one under James I. to prevent popish recusants practising physic, or using or exercising the trade or art of an apothecary; another under William and Mary for exempting apothecaries from serving as constables or scavengers; another for exempting spirits and spirituous liquours used by physicians, &c., in the preparation of medicine from duty, and others for purposes too numerous to mention. But it is the Medical Act of 1858, as amended by 22 Vict. cap. 21, that now governs the practitioners.
In 1681, the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, was incorporated and power was given of licensing practitioners and of preventing others practising. In Ireland, although the idea had been conceived many years before, it was not until 1654 that a body called “The President and Fraternity of Physicians” was founded; subsequently this company was incorporated and powers given to it very similar to those enjoyed by the London College. Under the Medical Act, Her Majesty was empowered to change the name of this institution (which had already enjoyed several aliases), to that of “The Royal College of Physicians of Ireland.”
In England and Ireland a third class of medical practitioners exists, namely, the apothecaries. Prior to the days of Henry VIII. an apothecary seems to have been the common name in England for a general practitioner in medicine. About that time shops began to be established for the exclusive sale of drugs and medicinal compounds, and those who kept these shops often took upon them to doctor their customers. In 1542 Henry’s parliament permitted any irregular practitioner to administer outward medicines, and these shopkeepers readily availed themselves of the permission granted by the Act and pushed the sale of their drugs and obtained larger prices on account of the advice they gave with them, and they appropriated exclusively the title of |12| apothecaries. In 1617 they were incorporated under the name of “The Master, Wardens and Society of the Art and Mystery of Apothecaries of the City of London.” About the beginning of the seventeenth century they began to prescribe as well as supply medicine; and although the College of Physicians resisted this poaching on what they considered their preserves, still early in the eighteenth century the matter was settled in favor of the apothecaries, since which time they have been legally recognised as a branch of the medical profession ([5]).
An Act of 1815 now regulates the practice of apothecaries throughout England and Wales, and no one can act as such or recover any charges for his services unless he has a certificate from the Society of Apothecaries. An apothecary is bound to make up any prescription duly signed by a licensed physician ([6]). Creswell, J., considered an apothecary one “who professes to judge of internal disease by its symptoms, and applies himself to cure that disease by medicine.” And Glenn says that the practice of an apothecary may now be said to consist in attending and advising patients afflicted with diseases requiring medical (as distinguished from surgical) treatment; and prescribing, compounding and supplying medicines for their cure and relief ([7]).
The invention of medicine was generally attributed by the ancients to the gods, and both in Egypt and Greece female divinities were intimately connected with the healing art. Isis not only caused, but cured disease; she discovered—so it was said—many remedies and as late as Galen several compounds in the materia medica bore her name. Hygeia, the daughter of Æsculapius, was deemed |13| the goddess of health, and Juno presided at accouchments. These fables show that in the remotest antiquity woman practised medicine. The laws of Greece, at a later period, forbad women to practise; thus, also, was it in Rome. However, 300 years before Christ, Agnodice—a young Athenian—dared to attend in disguise the schools of medicine forbidden to her sex. Preserving her incognito, when her education was finished she soon acquired a lucrative practice; and eventually her case caused the law against women to be revoked.
In the Middle Ages, among Mohammedans, many women were skilled in attending to the needs of their own sex; and among the Christians, nuns as well as monks ministered to bodies as well as souls diseased, practising both surgery and physic. In Italy, at Salerno, women prepared drugs and cosmetics, practised among persons of both sexes, took doctor’s degrees, wrote treatises on medical subjects, obtained the royal authority to engage in the art, and composed poems in praise of their science. At the University of Bologna, as late as 1760, Anna Morandi Manzolini filled the chair of Anatomy; her reputation was European, and her lecture-room was frequented by students of all countries—so great was her skill in delicate dissections, and so clearly did she demonstrate the wonders of the human form divine. Dr. Maria delle Donne was professor of medicine and obstetrics in the same college in 1799; and many were the lady graduates of the Universities of Padua, Pavia and Ferrara, as well as Bologna.
In France, the earliest official document extant relative to the profession (dated 1311) forbids the practice of surgeons, or female surgeons, who have failed to pass the required examinations; and an edict of 1352 refers to female practitioners. In Spain, the Universities of Cordova, Salamanca and Alcala bestowed doctor’s degrees on |14| many women. In Germany, also, a number of the fair sex successfully cultivated the science of medicine, and practised it, in the last century and in the early part of this. In England, as has already been seen, in early days women practised the healing arts. Henry VIII. checked them for a time, but in his old age, changing his mind on this, as on almost every other subject, gave them liberty to minister to the outward and less serious ailments of his people.
Crossing the Atlantic an entry is found, under the date of March, 1638, which tells a tale. It is this: “Jane Hawkins, the wife of Richard Hawkins, had liberty till the beginning of the third month, called May, and the magistrates (if she did not depart before) to dispose of her: and in the meantime she is not to meddle in surgery or phisick, drinks, plaisters or oyles, nor to question matters of religion, except with the elders for satisfaction ([8]).” But now woman is no longer regarded as too good or too stupid to study medicine in America; in nearly every State in the Union she has free access to Medical Colleges ([9]). The Council of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario admit to registration and practice any person who complies with their requirements, without regard to sex. And the Imperial Parliament, by an Act passed in 1876, affirmed the principle that women are entitled to become registered practitioners of medicine.
CHAPTER II. FEES.
The Roman Law considered the services of an advocate and of a physician as strictly honorific; and, as in the Roman age, practitioners in law and medicine, were usually men of leisure and wealthy, who did not practise for the sake of a livelihood, remuneration for their services could not be recovered in the ordinary way. Although owing to the Utopian ideas concerning the honour of a liberal profession then in vogue it was considered that any mention of a “fee,” or a “salary,” by that name would soil and disgrace the robe of a practitioner, still it was an established fiction of the Civil Law that the promise of an honorarium always accompanied the employment of a professional man, and that such promise created one of those obligations that might be enforced by action ([10]). The Common Law of England adopted the theory of the Civil Law as to the high standing of the profession, but afforded no remedy for the recovery of the charges. Surgeons and apothecaries were enabled to recover by law remuneration for their services, but a physician was presumed to attend his patient for an honorarium (something left to the honour of the patient to pay or not to pay), and could not maintain an action for his fees until the passing of the Medical Act, 1858, put an end to his anomalous position in this money-making age, and gave him as free an entrance into the courts of law to recover compensation for his work and labour, time and |16| skill bestowed, as the worker in any other path of life. Before this a physician could not recover even expenses out of pocket, such as those incurred in travelling to visit a patient, unless there had been an agreement specially made to that effect ([11]).