Englishmen preferred to study medicine abroad--according to a recent study made by Phyllis Allen and printed in the _Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences_--because a better education could be obtained there in the same number of years. The Doctorate of Medicine required fourteen years of undergraduate and post-graduate study at Oxford; the Cambridge requirement was similar. Despite reforms during the seventeenth century, education at these universities remained dogmatic and classical. Students usually found their studies dull and their social life stimulating. The more enterprising students could find the new ideas of the period in books not required in their course of study. Cambridge, Oxford, and the Royal College of Physicians all licensed physicians who had survived their education, met certain professional requirements, and passed an examination. That physicians in England did possess a high social status as well as more extensive formal education is evidenced by a precaution taken by the Virginia Company, to avoid causing displeasure among men of rank, in preparing letters patent. The Company requested of the College of Heralds, in 1609, the setting "in order" of the names of noblemen, knights, and Doctors of Divinity, Law, and Medicine so that their "several worths and degrees" might be recognized when their names were inserted on the patents. Surgeons received no mention. On the other hand, physicians and surgeons in England might well have come from similar social backgrounds and even on occasions from the same families. When there were three or four sons in the family of a country gentleman, he might have followed the custom of keeping the eldest at home to manage and eventually inherit the estate. The second, then, would be sent to one of the universities in order to follow a profession such as that of physician, lawyer, or clergyman. The third might be apprenticed to an apothecary, surgeon, or a skilled craftsman. This practice should be borne in mind when former medical apprentices are found in high offices in Virginia; their origins were not always humble. Although the physician enjoyed the greatest social and professional prestige, he received the most verbal abuse and criticism. Perhaps the most damaging and galling satire of the century flowed from the pen of the French dramatist, Moliere, who had a medical student--not completely fictitious--swear always to accept the pronouncements of his oldest physician-colleague, and always to treat by purgation, using clysters (enemas), phlebotomy (bloodletting), and emetics (vomitives). These three curative measures followed the best Galenic technique: releasing corrupting humors from the body. Moliere's _Le Malade Imaginaire_ confronted the audience with constant purgings and bleedings, and the caricature was not excessive.