he new ideas of the period in books not required in their
course of study. Cambridge, Oxford, and the Royal College of Physicians
all licensed physicians who had survived their education, met certain
professional requirements, and passed an examination.

That physicians in England did possess a high social status as well as
more extensive formal education is evidenced by a precaution taken by
the Virginia Company, to avoid causing displeasure among men of rank,
in preparing letters patent. The Company requested of the College of
Heralds, in 1609, the setting "in order" of the names of noblemen,
knights, and Doctors of Divinity, Law, and Medicine so that their
"several worths and degrees" might be recognized when their names were
inserted on the patents. Surgeons received no mention.

On the other hand, physicians and surgeons in England might well have
come from similar social backgrounds and even on occasions from the
same families. When there were three or four sons in the family of a
country gentleman, he might have followed the custom of keeping the
eldest at home to manage and eventually inherit the estate. The second,
then, would be sent to one of the universities in order to follow a
profession such as that of physician, lawyer, or clergyman. The third
might be apprenticed to an apothecary, surgeon, or a skilled craftsman.
This practice should be borne in mind when former medical apprentices
are found in high offices in Virginia; their origins were not always
humble.

Although the physician enjoyed the greatest social and professional
prestige, he received the most verbal abuse and criticism. Perhaps the
most damaging and galling satire of the century flowed from the pen of
the French dramatist, Moliere, who had a medical student--not
completely fictitious--swear always to accept the pronouncements of his
oldest physician-colleague, and always to treat by purgation, using
clysters (enemas), phlebotomy (bloodletting), and emetics (vomitives).
These three curative measures followed the best Galenic technique:
releasing corrupting humors from the body. Moliere's _Le Malade
Imaginaire_ confronted the audience with constant purgings and
bleedings, and the caricature was not excessive.

The diseases of the century did not allow for the inadequacies of the
physician, and imparted a grim note of realism to the satire of the
dramatist. Infant mortality was high and the life expectancy low.
Hardly a household escaped t