e answer lies in the professional's experience, but even in a
colony without a medical school it also lies in the education and
training received by the professional.

There were several ways in which a seventeenth-century Virginia
physician could acquire his education or training. He could have
received a medical degree in England or on the continent and then gone
to America. On the other hand, he might have learned without formal
education--perhaps by attending lectures and by experience--and then
established himself in Virginia where he was accorded professional
status. A man born in Virginia could return to the Old World for
training or formal education and then practice in Virginia. Also, a
common manner of becoming a physician or surgeon in Virginia, which was
without medical schools, was by apprenticeship. Finally, the importance
of books--imported from Europe--as a means to medical education should
not be minimized.

To be officially licensed for practice, the requirements in England
were high--those in London especially so. The following excerpt from
the statutes of the College of Physicians of London demonstrates how
demanding the educational standards for seventeenth-century English
physicians could be:

First, let them be examined in the physiologick part, and the very
rudiments of medicine, and in this examination let questions be
propounded out of the books concerning elements, temperaments, the
use of parts, anatomy, natural powers and faculties, and other
parts of natural medicine.

Secondly let him be examined in the pathologick part, or concerning
the causes, differences, symptoms and signs of diseases, which
physicians make use of to know the essence of diseases; and in this
examination let questions be proposed out of books concerning the
art of physick, of the places affected, of the differences of
diseases and symptoms, of feavers, of the pubes, of the books of
prognosticks of Hippocrates, &c.

Thirdly let him be examined concerning the use and exercise of
medicine, or the reason of healing; and let that be done out of the
books concerning preservation of health, of the method of healing,
of the reason of diet in acute diseases, of simple medicines, of
crises, of the aphorisms of Hyppocrates, and other things of that
kind, which relate to the use of healing; for example sake, what
caution to be observed in purging? in