ABSTRACT
The aims of reform were to introduce a national system of formal education, examination and registration of all medical practitioners and thereby create a unified profession, not only to improve the state of medicine, but also to enable the public to differentiate between the orthodox and the unorthodox medical practitioners, the regulars and the quacks, the true and the false. A colourful character, a radical and a republican, Phillips personified the cross-connections between the lay and medical periodical press. Phillips encouraged medical reform, was antagonistic towards the Royal Colleges in London, and thus supported the emerging general practitioners. The end of hostilities in Europe in 1815 was widely welcomed in the medical press, although material from Europe had most notably been published all the time. Much of the strife was mediated through the columns of the medical periodicals which are almost the only source on what really happened in the period of medical reform.
