Cambridgeshire doctors in the olden time, 1466-1827 / by W.M. Palmer.

  • Palmer, William Mortlock, 1866-1939.
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Cambridgeshire doctors in the olden time, 1466-1827 / by W.M. Palmer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    this my licence to practice Chirurgery within the diocese of Ely during my good will & pleasure, & until such time as I shall revoke and call back ye same, requesting all people quietly to permit and suffer him soe to doe without molestinge troubling or preventing him therefore. In witnesse whereof I have here unto subscribed my name, & sett my seale of office the 25 daye of October 1615.” This licence is not issued in exact accordance with the Act of 1511, since instead of skilled surgeons, the chancellor has taken the testimony of any honest men. The worshipful doctor’s wish that success should still attend the surgeon’s efforts, is rather quaint. My next hope was Bishop Wren. He was a great stickler for all details of ecclesiastical rule, and in his primary visitation of this diocese, issued a book of a hundred and forty-seven questions for the clergy and churchwardens to answer. The searching nature of these questions was a matter of great offence to many of his flock, and a huge petition was signed by the laity and clergy of this county against his so-called innovations. The original petition is still in existence in the British Museum. But only two parts of the book touch my present subject. In a chapter, headed “Concerning Schoolmasters, Physi- cians, Chirurgeons, Midwives, Parish clerks and Sextons”—a queer mixture—was this question or set of questions: “What Physician or Chirurgeon have you in your parish, who not being a Doctor of Physick or otherwise sufficiently licenced in either of the universities, doth notwithstanding practice physick ? What other persons have you among you, either male, or female, who take upon themselves to profess or practice physic or chirurgery ? And who be midwives in your parish ? ” And at the end of the book there is an order that all physitians, schoolmasters, chirurgeons and midwives, should appear at the Lord Bishop’s visitation. Now if the above questions had been faithfully answered,