Physicians, part two

Most people thought physicians were quacks. For example, there was the shocking and lurid case of Mary Toft [or Tofts], who apparently gave birth to a litter of rabbits. She fooled several imminent physicians, whose careers were then in question. She was anatomically able to insert portions of animal carcasses and small rabbits inside her vagina, and then faked giving birth. Since she never got anything from it other than attention, her motives were unclear. The medical profession was severely mocked for its gullibility, and the primary doctor published an advertisement in the Daily Journal to try to explain himself. His patients deserted him and he died in poverty.

(University of Glasgow Special Collections Department. “The Curious Case of Mary Toft: 1726”, August 2009, at http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/month/aug2009.html, accessed 16 September 2012.)

Mary Toft "giving birth" surrounded by physicians. (Source: Wellcome Library, London.)

Dr. John Case was not a physician, although he titled himself one – how would the gullible and ill know any differently? He advertised “the excellencies of Doctor John Case’s pills for the speedy cure of violent pains without loss of time or hindrance of business on the other,” reported Ned Ward in his nonfiction book “The London Spy”. (Waller, 90.)
It is easier to understand a lot of the physicians being almost incompetent, when those educated at Oxford and Cambridge got rotten educations, and the better universities were Glasgow and Edinburgh. Except for London, York, Newcastle, and Bristol (each had a long-established physicians or barber-surgeons’ guild), one did not have to take an examination to practice medicine. There were many physicians who had formerly been clergy, (Olsen, 262) including John Wesley’s great-grandfather Bartholomew Wes(t)ley, who became a physician full time after his refusal to sign a government document that required use of certain prayers, rites, and sacraments as prescribed by the Church of England, and thus was fired from his pastoral position.
(Maddox, Randy. “John Wesley on Holistic Health and Healiing” in Methodist History, 46:1 (October 2007), http://archives.gcah.org:8180/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10516/564/Methodist-History-2007-10-Maddox.pdf?sequence=1, accessed 13 September 2012.)

Being a physician then did not produce the respect it does now.