Editing History of medicine (section)

===== European Age of Enlightenment =====
During the [[Age of Enlightenment]], the 18th century, science was held in high esteem and physicians upgraded their social status by becoming more scientific. The health field was crowded with self-trained barber-surgeons, apothecaries, midwives, drug peddlers, and charlatans.

Across Europe medical schools relied primarily on lectures and readings. The final year student would have limited clinical experience by trailing the professor through the wards. Laboratory work was uncommon, and dissections were rarely done because of legal restrictions on cadavers. Most schools were small, and only [[Edinburgh Medical School]], Scotland, with 11,000 alumni, produced large numbers of graduates.<ref>{{cite book | vauthors = Broman TH | chapter = The Medical Sciences |title=The Cambridge History of Science | volume = 4, Eighteenth-Century Science |date=2003–2020 |location=Cambridge |isbn=978-0-521-57243-9 | pages = 465–468 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book | vauthors = Rosner L |title=Medical Education in the Age of Improvement: Edinburgh Students and Apprentices 1760-1826 |date=1991 |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |location=Edinburgh |isbn=978-0-7486-0245-2}}</ref>