physician

British and Commonwealth

The British meaning of the term physician is the original one, and is used in opposition to surgeon, which refers to a specialist in surgery. This meaning of physician conveys a sense of expertise in treatment with drugs, rather than with the manual procedures used by a surgeon. The English word physician is at least nine hundred years old: physicians and surgeons were once members of separate professions, and traditionally were rivals. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, gives a Middle English quotation making this contrast, from as early as 1400: "O Lord, whi is it so greet difference betwixe a cirugian and a physician." Henry VIII granted a charter to the London Royal College of Physicians in 1518. It was not until 1540 that he granted the Company of Barber-Surgeons (ancestor of the Royal College of Surgeons) its separate charter. In the same year, the English monarch established the Regius Professorship of Physic at the University of Cambridge. Newer universities would probably describe such an academic as a professor of internal medicine. Hence, in the 16th century, physic meant roughly what internal medicine does now.