How did Doctors Get Their Profession, and Were They Really "Professional?"

        Today, when you go to the doctor's office, you expect that your doctor has a medical degree, as well as that they are passionate about their job. In the Middle Ages, however, this was a lot of the time not the case. Most of the wealthy population had a professional doctor who learned their job by apprenticing more experienced doctors. They had the best equipment and were much more accurate at treating patients than the poor doctors were. The poor could not afford the better doctors. Instead, barbers were hired as a second job to be doctors for the unwealthy, which a lot of people in the Middle Ages were. Barbers were not professional at all, which is why it is an obvious theory that this could have been the cause of the amount of unhealty people.

Money= Good Doctors

     For one, the people could not have gotten the best medical advice, considering the doctors were part-time barbers who had most likely never gone near a medical school. Another reason, is that the barbers could not have had the best medical tools and equipment. Many had to use some of the tools they used for being a barber as medical supplies! Could you imagine going to get a checkup and having the doctor draw blood by using their scissors, which of course were used for hair? Gross, right? Also, the medical procedures could no have been very sanitary. The poor could not afford fresh water supply from many places at all. This of course, made it very hard to clean the supplies, or to have clean water for the patients to drink and relax with. No matter if you were rich or poor, you would have done everything you could in order to not get sick in the Middle Ages.