THE SILVER LINING | JAMES POTTER

Part 25

The primary meaning of Doctor in English has historically been with reference to the holder of a doctoral degree.[14] These particularly referred to the ancient faculties of divinity, law and medicine, sometimes with the addition of music, which were the only doctoral degrees offered until the 19th century. During the 19th century, PhDs became increasingly common in Britain, although to obtain the degree it was necessary to travel to continental Europe or (from 1861) to the United States, as the degree was not awarded in the UK until 1917.

However, the title, not being protected by law, was adopted by quacks.[15] As a result, by the mid 19th century, it was normal in the UK to omit the title "Dr" when addressing letters to those holding doctoral degrees, and instead write the abbreviated form of the degree after the name, e.g., "The Reverend Robert Phelps, D.D.", "Thomas Elliotson, Esq. M.D.", or "John Lindsey, Esq. Ph.D.", in order to avoid classing academic doctors "with the village apothecary and the farrier" and various "quacks in literature, science, or art".[16] In the US it similarly became customary to use post-nominals rather than the title of Doctor when addressing letters.[17] All those with doctoral degrees continued to use the title professionally and socially.[18]

Despite being historically associated with doctorates in law, the title of doctor for lawyers has not customarily been used in English-speaking countries, where lawyers were traditionally not required to have a university degree and were trained by other lawyers by apprenticeship or in the Inns of Court.[19] The exception being those areas where, up to the 19th century, civil law rather than common law was the governing tradition, including admiralty law, probate and ecclesiastical law: such cases were heard in the Doctor's Commons, and argued by advocates who held degrees either of doctor of civil law at Oxford or doctor of law at Cambridge. As such, lawyers practicing common law in England were not doctoral candidates and had not earned a doctorate. When university degrees became more common for those wanting to qualify as a lawyer in England, the degree awarded was the Bachelor of Laws (LLB). Similarly in the US, even though degrees became standard for lawyers much earlier, the degree was again the LLB, only becoming the Juris Doctor (JD) generally in the latter half of the 20th century.

In many English-speaking countries, it is common to refer to physicians by the title of doctor, even when they do not hold a doctoral level qualification. The word Doctor has long had a secondary meaning in English of physician, e.g., in Johnson's Dictionary, which quotes its use with this meaning by Shakespeare.[14] In the US, the medical societies established the proprietary medical colleges in the 19th century to award their own MDs,[20] but in the UK and the British Empire, where degree granting was strictly controlled, this was not an option. The usage of the title to refer to medical practitioners, even when they didn't hold doctoral degrees, was common by the mid 18th century.[21] However, the first official recognition of Doctor being applied as a title to medical practitioners regardless of whether they held a doctoral degree was in 1838, when the Royal College of Physicians resolved that it would "regard in the same light, and address by the same ap