The whole business of doctoring was very messy at that time, it was not at all clear who was a doctor and who was not. In 1858 the British Parliament tightened it all up and, not coincidentally, medicine started to become more effective and the status of doctors began to rise. Was it not in 1861 that Lister at Edinmburgh cut the death rate from operations by sterilising surgical instruments? But I fear the BWI up till then then were not on the cutting edge of medical practice. The other thing was that doctors were more or less apprenticed - like other skilled trades. There is a lot of material on Naval Surgeons in the PRO some of whom came to the Caribbean. The more respecable doctors came from Oxford, Cambridge, the Colleges of Surgeons (most) and Physicians (a few), Apothecaries Hall and the Scottish Universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and St Andrews. Not including Holland, France etc. The brother of my great grandmother was born at Vere in Jamaica in 1807 went to Aberdeen U, then the RCS and finally Paris before he qualified and went to Canada in 1833. Edward Crawford > In addition to various apothecaries and barbers passing themselves off as doctors, I have read that there was a flood of doctors to the West Indies with the passage of the Slave Acts (early 1800s) which mandated medical care for slaves and fixed fees which the planters were required to pay. Many doctors from the UK, not necessarily the best qualified ones I'm sure, went to the West Indies to take advantage of the opportunity thus created. One of them was my great grandfather's great grandfather, an Assistant Regimental Surgeon with the British Army, whose only medical training seems to have been as a "Hospital Mate," more or less the equivalent of a nurse or orderly. Illustrating the variety of people ending up in the West Indies, he seems to have been from Silesia, and probably Jewish. At the time many British Army soldiers were recruited in Eastern Europe, either through the King's German lands or as prisoners or refugees in the Napoleonic wars who switched sides. He ! > also apparently opened an apothecary shop, and his grandson, with no pretense of being a doctor but also no professional training except probably an apprenticeship to his unqualified grandfather, practiced as an apothecary. > The place, by the way, was Bequia, and then Kingstown St. Vincent. > ______________________________________________________________ This message has been scanned by the Datanet VirusScreen Service, powered by BT Ignite and Messagelabs. For more information please visit http://www.VirusScreen.co.uk.