Becomming a Doctor in the early 1800s

[Stanwix England]

Hello all,

I was wondering if anyone knows what a person went through in order to become a doctor/surgeon in the early 1800s?

The reason I ask is because I'm trying to find out more about a man called Dr Thomas Wheldale. You can see more about my attempts to track him down here. http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=678572.0

It appears that he was born in Boston, Lincolnshire. I don't know when exactly, but I estimate it would have been no later then 1780. His father was a West Wheldale who also lived in Boston Lincolnshire. It appears from some apprentices records that he was a draper.

I know from his obituary that T Wheldale went to live in Jamaica around 1805 and died there 20 years later. He is described as being a doctor on a few documents. He was also linked to the militia in Jamaica and worked as a surgeon. He was appointed to the Trelawny regiment of the militia on the 18th February 1809. There are five assistant surgeons also listed. I have no idea how long he worked for them, or if that was his reason for moving to Jamaica.

I'd always assumed that you'd need a bit of money behind you to become a doctor or a surgeon. Yet I doubt that West Wheldale had that sort of money, working as a draper. Not to mention T Wheldale was his seventh son, hardly first in line to be helped out.

What's more Thomas, regrettably, bought slaves when he went out there, so he must have had some capital.

Anyone able to shed light on this?

[Billyblue]

Do you know if he used any post nominals after his name?
These days, in England / Australia / NZ etc (it's a bit different in US) an ordinary doctor has an MB,BS for Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery.
When they get to be a specialist (another five or six years after their basic degree) they are Fellows of the Royal College of xxx,  e.g. FRCP, FRACP, FRNZCP for physicians, substituting S for Surgeons in the same lot of initials.  Surgeons from Scotland got a Bachelor of Chirugery (I think that's the spelling).
But many 'surgeons' in the 1700s and 1800s started off as apothecaries (chemists) or even barbers!  The training probably didn't much resemble today's university training etc.

So he may have had formal training, or he may have come up through a type of apprenticeship.

Dawn M

[GrahamSimons]

A good place to research is the Wellcome Library: http://wellcomelibrary.org/

[Stanwix England]

Thank you both for your help, this does shed some light on the situation.

Billyblue, I have no record of him having any letters after his name. It seems to me that the apprenticeship route seems to have been the most likely course of events given his background.

Thank you all once again.

[GrahamSimons]

On the apprentices front, there are indexes to them....

Worth trying Peterkin & Drew's book on Army medics