Surgeon Henry Best

[LilyAllenFan86]

I am enquering about my 5x great Grandfather Henry Best born in abt 1730 in Lanteglos, Cornwal to William and Ann Best in his marriage record on January 5th 1755 where he married a Grace Smith in Lanteglos it states his profession as a surgeon and I wanted to find out more about him and his career, they would have a total of seven children where all bar the eldest were born in St Dennis, Cornwall.
I would be gratefull if anyone knew any site or had information about him such as which school he went to I presume that being a surgeon he would have had to have studied somewhere, any information would be welcomed.

Kind Regards
Beth

[BeeJay]

My 5 x great-grandfather was born in 1761 in Suffolk and he was also a surgeon. In his case he was apprenticed to a surgeon in 1771, at the age of 10. In October 1780 when he was 19 he became a pupil apothecary at St. Thomas’s Hospital for a period of six months. The time, usually 6 or 12 months, was spent “attending lectures and shadowing staff.” In his uncle’s will dated February 1779 he was already referred to as a surgeon.

[Coromandel]

Parts of William Hunter and the eighteenth-century medical world (edited by W.F. Bynum and Roy Porter, 1985) can be seen on Google Books. This includes an interesting chapter by Joan Lane on the role of apprenticeship in medical education.

Try searching for "surgeon apothecary" on Google Books to find much more. One that looks useful, though only parts of it are visible, is Anne Digby's Making a medical living: doctors and patients in the English market for medicine, 1720-1911 (published 1994).