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Diana
Inspector
Username: Diana
Post Number: 324
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, September 24, 2004 - 9:10 pm: | 
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I had occasion to read a history of American medicine this week. In the 1800's there was a proliferation of medical diploma mills. You could become an MD in as little as six months. Nothing was regulated. We were largely a frontier then and England had been civilized for centuries, so the situation in England may not have been anything like that. It is a little point that would be good to nail down. It relates to how much credibility we assign to the medical evidence from back then. I had always assumed that although medicine had not advanced to where it is today, these guys were doctors, right? We need to pay attention to what they said. Or not? |
Nina Thomas
Detective Sergeant
Username: Nina
Post Number: 62
Registered: 5-2004
| | Posted on Saturday, September 25, 2004 - 12:18 am: |
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Hi Diana,
In Britain the Medical Act of 1858, established a medical register of approved practitioners. The 1859 Medical Register contained 15,000 doctors.
Here are some postings from the boards on the doctors and their qualifications.
Doctor Bond
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Nina |
Diana
Inspector
Username: Diana
Post Number: 325
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, September 25, 2004 - 8:34 am: |
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I'm still taking my anatomy and physiology course. This week I was studying the respiratory system. I read that the alveoli in the lungs can take other substances from the blood besides carbon dioxide. Then those substances are exhaled. That is why you can smell alcohol on someone's breath and why breathalyzers work. I dont know if the cells in the stomach work the same way. I dont know what narcotics Saunders was looking for or how he would have tested for them. |
Jon Smyth
Inspector
Username: Jon
Post Number: 260
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, September 25, 2004 - 1:29 pm: |
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The first College for Doctors in England was set up in the mid 19th century (1850-60), I have the exact date somewhere, but prior to that the people who became doctors were only those who could afford the medical instruments and wherewithall to carry out the job.
Interest and finance were the only qualifications in those early days.
(if you had the inclination and the money)
From the middle of the 19th century doctors were taught and had to complete training programs.
Walter Dew introduces the reader to doctor Phillips with:
" I knew Dr. Phillips well, He lived in Spital Square, close to Commercial Street Police Station, and had been the divisional surgeon for a great many years" (23 years in fact) "He was a character. An elderly man, he was ultra-old-fashioned both in his personal appearance and his dress. He used to look for all the world as though he had stepped out of a century-old painting. His manners were charming; he was immensely popular both with the police and the public, and he was highly skilled." p.116
A reporter put things in a nutshell as far as the Whitechapel murders goes, "..Dr. Phillips, of course, knows more of the medical bearings of the murders than any other man"
The Star, Dec 24, 1888.
Which is something that often gets overlooked.
Regards, Jon |
Diana
Inspector
Username: Diana
Post Number: 326
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, September 25, 2004 - 9:14 pm: |
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So if any of these guys were older and had been "trained" before 1850, they knew about as much as "Granny" on the Beverly Hillbillies? |
Diana
Inspector
Username: Diana
Post Number: 327
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, September 25, 2004 - 9:38 pm: |
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Maybe we could resolve the conflicts between the different doctors by analyzing their backgrounds and educations? |
Jon Smyth
Inspector
Username: Jon
Post Number: 267
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, September 25, 2004 - 9:52 pm: |
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Diana, ...who do you think did the training?
Regards, Jon |
Nina Thomas
Detective Sergeant
Username: Nina
Post Number: 63
Registered: 5-2004
| | Posted on Saturday, September 25, 2004 - 11:26 pm: |
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Jon,
Oxford University
The Bachelor of Medicine (MB) took around seven years of study, including a preliminary Arts training; a medical doctorate (MD) was awarded after ten years' study. Hence there were hardly swarms of medical students ... in 1436 - Oxford had only a single MD teaching
The Greatest Benefit to Mankind
Roy Porter
Page 114
Nina
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Nina Thomas
Detective Sergeant
Username: Nina
Post Number: 64
Registered: 5-2004
| | Posted on Saturday, September 25, 2004 - 11:34 pm: |
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Diana,
I suppose that sensory testing was the best they could do at that time.
Nina |
Jon Smyth
Inspector
Username: Jon
Post Number: 271
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, September 26, 2004 - 12:56 am: |
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Nina.
Medical Doctorate in 1436?
Slightly puzzled, Jon
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Jon Smyth
Inspector
Username: Jon
Post Number: 272
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, September 26, 2004 - 1:22 am: |
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Diana, joking apart, in all honesty there were extremely experienced surgeons in England long before the practice was licenced.
Take one fine example..
William Cheselden was one of the leading and most prestigious English surgeons of the early 18th century. He was born in Somerby, Leicestershire and received his medical education at St Thomas' Hospital, London. He became a 'Bound Apprentice' at that institution in 1703 and qualified in 1710. During this time he was taught anatomy by Cowper. In 1710 he was admitted to the London Company of Barber-Surgeons and he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1712.
During the late 17th and early 18th centuries medical training in Britain was poor and in particular there was little formal anatomy tuition. As a result, in 1711, Cheselden began private tuition in anatomy. This attracted many students away from the 'public' tuition at the Company of Barber-Surgeons and brought him in to conflict with this organisation. His first major book was The Anatomy of the Human Body, published in 1713, and this became a standard medical text for well over the next one hundred years. In 1733 he published Osteographia or the Anatomy of Bones. This was the first full and accurate description of human osseous anatomy.
As a surgeon he was most prolific as a 'Lithotomist'. At this time bladder calculi were a prevalent and significant surgical problem. Most surgeons removed stones by performing a midline perineal lithotomy. This was a prolonged operative procedure associated with significant morbidity and mortality. Cheselden (and John Douglas) developed the 'high' operation to remove stones through a suprapubic incision and he published his experiences of this in A Treatise on the High Operation for the Stone (1723). He later described a lithotomy through a lateral perineal incision with an operating time of minutes rather than hours and an operative mortality of less than 10%. As a result of this achievements he was appointed 'first lithotomist' to the Westminster, St George's and St Thomas' Hospitals.
Cheselden retired in 1737 to Chelsea Hospital from where, in 1738, he was elected an examiner of the Company of Barber-Surgeons. He was elected a Warden of the company in 1744. From this position he had a pivotal role in the separation of the Surgeons from the Barbers. This eventually lead to an Act of Parliament in 1745 forming the Independent Company of Surgeons, an organisation that was later to become the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
Regards, Jon
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Nina Thomas
Detective Sergeant
Username: Nina
Post Number: 67
Registered: 5-2004
| | Posted on Sunday, September 26, 2004 - 1:27 am: |
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Hi Jon,
Here's a link to Oxford's medical history.
http://www.medsci.ox.ac.uk/gazette/volume54-1/23/
Nina |
Jon Smyth
Inspector
Username: Jon
Post Number: 273
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, September 26, 2004 - 2:06 am: |
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Thanks Nina, I just lost connection and a poste with a host of medical sites. We could spend all night digging up links on British Surgical Medical History.
Diana, the question should not be about "how much did they know?", but more accurately, "how little do WE know about what THEY knew".
Ignorance is on our part, not theirs.
Dr. Phillips & Co. were the latest in a long line of capable professionals.
Regards, Jon |
Diana
Inspector
Username: Diana
Post Number: 328
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, September 26, 2004 - 8:54 am: |
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Well, like I said at the beginning, I didnt know and it needed to be nailed down. Sounds like Cheselden was pretty knowledgeable. I know for a fact that Anatomy and Physiology is no walk in the park. (I'm taking it now.) At the college where I go 70% of the enrollees drop out. Note however that most of Cheselden's contemporaries did not jump on the bandwagon. They were not in his class. And in the 1800's you had Burke and Hare stealing bodies so anatomists could study the yet unestablished details. I am beginning to wonder if things were in a transitional mode with some individuals who had a respectable amount of knowledge and others who were little more than barbers. |
Nina Thomas
Detective Sergeant
Username: Nina
Post Number: 69
Registered: 5-2004
| | Posted on Sunday, September 26, 2004 - 8:45 pm: |
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Diana,
I agree with Jon that the physicians on the cases were all capable professionals.
As for your statement:
I am beginning to wonder if things were in a transitional mode with some individuals who had a respectable amount of knowledge and others who were little more than barbers.
I'm sure there were many who would have been considered little more than barbers or quacks, but the police wouldn't have call in an unregistered physician.
My daughter is an MD and I remember how stressed she was taking her courses. I wish you the best.
Nina |
Dustin Gould
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Friday, September 02, 2005 - 11:46 pm: |
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I think we can, with some degree of certainty, regard some of the medical science practiced back then, with reasonable suspicion. For example. Surgeons at that time reported, that in their estimation, it would have taken the Ripper approximately "15 minutes", to commit that amount of eviscertion on the victims. Ian West, a modern post-mortem M.D., quoted a "2 minute" time frame. Based in part, on the crude nature of the cutting itself. So who's the more accurate? I don't know. BUT...I do feel the majority of those who practiced were adequately trained for the time in which they practiced. And based their work and judgements accordingly. Yes, there were some "quacks". And possibly a little more then, as we have now. But the majority were not so. |
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