New York regulates medicine

Unscrupulous purveyors of fake medicine would take to the streets in middle-ages Netherlands, shouting to advertise their wares. They were called quacksalver, or kwakzalver in modern Dutch, leading to the term used for fraudulent doctors today — quacks. Quackery persisted through the centuries in Europe and found its way to the American colonies, where the earliest steps to regulate the profession were taken.

On this day, June 10, in 1760 New York City passed the first law regulating medical practice, mandating examining and licensing of prospective doctors, and penalizing unlicensed physicians. The authority to issue and revoke licenses rested with the city authorities.

In the century before the New York law, colonial legislatures would occasionally license doctors thought worthy, but those doctors already had to have an established and successful practice; the acts themselves were just a confirmation of the fact the doctor was legitimate. An earlier law passed in Massachusetts forbade healing “without the advice and consent of such as are skillful in the same Art, (if such may be had) or at least some of the wisest and gravest then present.”