This chapter considers the development of medical education from the Renaissance and the resultant importance of anatomical training for European doctors of all types. The contrasting situation in England is examined, specifically the education available in Oxford and Manchester, which offered very different experiences for the medical student. The traditional division between medical and surgical education lasted longer in England than elsewhere in Europe. Theoretically English physicians received a university education, while surgeons and surgeon-apothecaries or general practitioners were trained through an amalgam of apprenticeships and private courses. Oxford had a long tradition of medical education that could be traced from the seventeenth century, when the study of anatomy was temporarily elevated within the university but ultimately failed to find favour with the governing body. The result was a small school that remained devoted to the increasingly moribund pure physician. Medical education in Manchester provided for the growing band of surgeon-general practitioners that came to dominate numbers in the medical establishment.

This chapter then goes on to examine the increasing importance of anatomical study in England and the national debate around the necessity for long and specialized training in minute anatomy for surgeons and also increasingly for physicians. This focus grew out of demands from within the medical profession to regulate the qualification and training of doctors.