By the statute of Henry the profession was for the first time divided into physicians, surgeons and apothecaries: a division still kept up in England. It also enacts, under a penalty, that “no physician or surgeon shall practise in London, or within seven miles of it, without examination by the Bishop of London, or the Dean of St. Paul’s, and four doctors of physic; nor out of the city, or precinct, but if he be first examined and approved by the bishop of the diocese, or his vicar-general, calling to them such expert persons in the same faculty as their discretion shall think convenient.” Fancy a D.D. sitting in judgment on an |9| M.D. How orthodox and regular in his attendance at church would the latter have to be! However, 14 & 15 Henry VIII. cap. 5, vests this power of examination in the President and Elects of the College of Physicians of London. This Royal College was founded in 1518 by letters patent from the king. Power was given to it to make laws for the government of all men of the faculty of physic in London and within seven miles, and for the correction of the physicians within those limits and their medicines: and none could practise within those limits without a license. Shortly after an Act of Parliament confirmed this patent so that none could practise in England without the license of the college, save graduates of Oxford and Cambridge. Subsequently Fellows of the college were given power, together with the warden of the Apothecaries’ Society, to enter the houses of apothecaries in London, to examine their wares, drugs and stuffs, and to burn and destroy those that were defective.