Cambridge and its contribution to medicine : proceedings of the Seventh British Congress on the History of Medicine, University of Cambridge, 10-13 September, 1969 / edited by Arthur Rook.

  • British Congress on the History of Medicine 1969 : University of Cambridge)
Date:
1971
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Cambridge and its contribution to medicine : proceedings of the Seventh British Congress on the History of Medicine, University of Cambridge, 10-13 September, 1969 / edited by Arthur Rook. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    period, which he felt he could safely entrust to me, as in his view it was the only period when Oxford was the better medical school. As Albert Hall was my college I feel no need to revive the battle of the Caius, but it may seem that the education of so small a number of doctors over four centuries justifies the somnolent view, particularly as Oxford only contributed a further four hundred. However one should realize that the estimated population of the British Isles at the beginning of the fourteenth century was only two million which had risen to about five million by 1600. This table (figure 1), based on Talbot and Hammond's great work, 4 figure 1 English Medical Practitioners before 1500 University Graduates Oxford Cambridge Foreign or Unknown Leeches Surgeons Before 1200 2 — 2 130 3 1200-1290 11 1 2 273 32 1300-1399 42 7 7 184 81 1400-1499 67 40 13 96 153 [Based in part on Talbot and Hammond] though probably wildly inaccurate, gives some indication of the availability of medical care in the medieval period. We have no reliable figures for practitioners holding bishops' licences in the sixteenth century, let alone the number of unlicensed surgeons, apothecaries and irregular practitioners, but Oxford and Cambridge provided some five hundred doctors, and the fact that the Royal College of Physicians was limited to thirty fellows at the end of the century, provides some indication of the magnitude of the profession at that time. I felt it necessary to preface my paper in this way, as my attempts at assessing medical education at Cambridge have followed the method I have adopted for Oxford, using in a very amateur way the Namier technique, examining the quality of the physicians that graduated rather than paying close attention to statutes and graces.