The English universities, while aiming at educating professional men, never pretended in old time to give the final practical training which is required for every profession. Even in the education of the clergy, to which they gave their special attention, they attempted to educate them in scientific Theology rather than to impart even the elements of the pastoral profession.

So it was that young men intending to practise medicine or surgery, though they might receive the grounds of a valuable education, and some theoretical instruction, in one of the universities, were obliged to look elsewhere for practical knowledge to qualify them for their profession.

A Quarterly Reviewer stated in 1827 (p. 235) that of all the physicians then practising in England (three hundred licentiates of the College of Physicians and numerous unlicensed country practitioners) about one hundred had been educated at Oxford or Cambridge; while of the six thousand members of the College of Surgeons not six had graduated at either of our universities.