Medical gentlemen and the process of professionalisation before 1860

In the early-nineteenth century, the professionalisation of medicine at the Cape began in earnest. Although there were key legislative and professional developments in this period, the notion, outlined in Burrows' seminal work on South African medical history, that it was a 'golden' age of medical reform underplays the extent of intra-professional differentiation and draws attention away from the politics of professional regulation at the Cape. The period was a time of inter- and intra-professional conflict as doctors, druggists and shopkeepers competed to sell drugs and medical advice and it spawned a profession that was deeply divided. In spite of early, general and monopolistic legislation passed in 1807, the process of medical professionalisation at the Cape was very uneven, cementing an intra-professional distinction between doctors in Cape Town and doctors or druggists in the rest of the colony. The special status of Cape Town provided the bedrock for an urban-rural divide in professional regulation and services still present in South Africa today.