ABSTRACT
This chapter concentrates on the attitudes and behaviour of those staffing the teeming seventeenth-century medical marketplace. The truly licensed healers of seventeenth-century England were the physicians, surgeons and midwives. Physicians were licensed by bishops, universities and the Royal College of Physicians of London (RCP). Surgeons were licensed by bishops and universities. Midwives were licensed by bishops. Apothecaries, although they were technically neither healers nor licensed, will be included in the category of licensed healers. Midwives may be viewed as being more similar to unlearned unlicensed healers than they were to physicians, surgeons and apothecaries. Recent scholarship has shown that unlicensed healers were widely distributed throughout the country and that sufferers did use their services. The physicians were joined in their efforts by a small number of learned surgeons. These surgeons were concerned about the activities of unlearned but licensed surgeons as well as about the behaviour of unlicensed healers.
