Original Edinburgh Fellowship Examination

The College Fellowship Examination has recently been revised. The original Seal of Cause of the Incorporation of Surgeons, granted in 1505, contained specific instructions regarding required knowledge and examinations, and the records show that oral and practical (and ultimately written) examinations were required from the start before any entrant could be admitted as a master of the Incorporation. Although the original examinations were an 'undergraduate' qualification, and the range of surgical knowledge available limited, the original aims of the examinations do not seem to have greatly altered over the last five centuries. The early records of the College relating to examinations have been surveyed, and an account is given here of examination policy and regulations, together with the topics prescribed to some 50 candidates in the first half of the 18th century.