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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2017
Seventeenth-Century England was a “one-class society,” characterized by a tiny minority of men—at best four or five percent of the population—who “owned most of the wealth, wielded the power and made all the decisions, political, economic and social for the national whole.” Admission to this charmed circle was open to those who could “live without manual labour” and could “bear the port, charge and countenance of a gentleman.” This included not only those of noble blood and ancient riches, but “whosoever studieth the laws of this realm, who so abideth in the university giving his mind to his books, or professeth physic and the liberal sciences.” The physician, as a student of the liberal sciences and a member of an ancient and venerable profession, was accorded gentle status, unlike the great majority of gentlemen, because of his intellectual qualifications, his mastery of the art and science of healing the sick—and much else. If we would begin to understand this somewhat unusual relationship between education and social status, a question that still engages the sociologist and historian of modern society, the practitioners of London, especially the fellows, candidates, and licentiates of the Royal College of Physicians, provide a valuable focus, for it was from these men that the most fruitful medical advances of the century came and it was they who served as models for the physicians of the English towns and countryside for many years to come.
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