e other doctors. By doing this he became better known in his practice. Being well known was important because as Vivian Nutton tells us in “Patients and Practitioners”, there were many doctors to compete with. Anyone could declare himself or herself a doctor, “There is (here) no examination, no qualifying-test or oral, only the doctor’s own attestation before a magistrate that he is a doctor” (Nutton, 30). Also, knowledge was easily achieved because of the accessibility of medical ideas and the relative absence of any medical terms and language. This enabled medicine to take a prominent place in the general literary culture (Nutton, 32). Nutton also says that, “participation of all classes throughout the ancient world proves beyond any doubt that medical knowledge was by no means confined to those who called themselves doctors” (Nutton, 33). What Nutton is trying to tell us is that a doctor could be anyone in ancient times and therefore in order to become a paid and prestigious doctor you had to be able to successfully heal the patients. Even into some of the later centuries this “competition” between doctors seemed to be evident. Carole Rawcliffe talks specifically in her article, “The Profits of Practice: the Wealth and Status of Medical Men in the Later Medieval England”, how physicians in the later Middle Ages came by payment in two ways: either by money, if they were treating nobility, or in exchange for something else like food or a place to live and other types of goods. In order to treat the Royalty and actually earn a decent amount of money, it was necessary to earn the trust of the laymen and then work your way up to wealthier patients (62-65). This was necessary because many times even though, “an agreement…establishing in precise detail when and how a mutually acceptable fee was to be handed over”, that sum was never paid. We know...
