So said the governors of St Bartholomew’s Hospital after a dispute with the lecturers in the Medical College in 1965. Although the subsequent agreement over teaching and clinical space recognised the role St Bartholomew’s had as a teaching hospital, when teaching started is less certain. While the hospital and priory were established in 1123, provision for the training of doctors took longer to emerge. Several versions of how clinical instruction started at the hospital have been put forward, although few have explained why a school was relatively slow to evolve. Some have claimed that effective instruction commenced in 1765 when Percival Pott delivered his lectures on surgery. Other evidence suggests that apprentices had at least been present since the mid-seventeenth century. Although no formal charter or foundation existed until 1921, the presence of a medical school at St Bartholomew’s had been referred to since the 1800s. For many, the College went on to symbolise tradition, fierce institutional loyalty and a particular style of academic medicine. However, little is known about how the institution worked and developed, or about its culture.

The same might be said for the history of medical education. It has customarily been ancillary to larger themes in medical history, forming what Vivian Nutton and Roy Porter have described as a ‘peaceful backwater’. Medical schools have frequently been seen as the locus for change rather than an object for study. Investigations have been biased towards London and Edinburgh, with the evolution of private and hospital schools in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries attracting most attention. Although Bonner has sought to produce a comparative study that seeks to analyse training in national terms, far less research has been undertaken on the twentieth century; and little on the postwar period.