Medical Training

Question 1

After the Church’s involvement in all aspects of medicine during the Renaissance, what happened?

Answer 1

1. Doctors were now able to practice the medicine they had learned at university
2. Local people, charities and town councils now paid for hospitals set up
3. Hospitals provided both medical care for the sick and a place for doctors to train and carry out research.

Question 2

How did doctors build on the changes made in the Renaissance?

Answer 2

1. Anatomists carried out detailed observations and dissections, employing secretaries to write up their findings and artists to draw them.
2. Doctors were required to study medicine at university
3. 1815: The Society of Apothecaries and the Royal College of Surgeons began to require students to pass examinations before being allowed to practice.
4. Medical students still watched dissections as part of their training
5. 1858: General Medical Council was set up to register all doctors
6. Teaching hospitals were set up, after the Germ Theory was discovered because there was more emphasis on observation, where medical students shadowed doctors
7. Doctors became more professional, better able to treat disease and more widely respected in the community