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.