A doctor's cash book: the economy of general practice in the 1830s.

THERE is, in the Warwick County Record Office, a pocket cash book measuring 543'4 by 3+" in which entries were made from September 1828 to December 1831.1 The name "Henry Peart" is written on the flyleaf, and all that was known about him when the cash book was first seen was that it belonged to a medical man. Every entry in the book is financial: "cash received" on the left-hand pages, "cash paid" on the right. This cash book is, nevertheless, a manuscript of considerable interest; first, as a contribution to the social and economic history of the medical student and general practitioner in the period that it covers, and second, as an example of the historical value of such an apparently (at first sight) sparse document. An outline of the main events revealed by this cash book during the period of three and a quarter years is shown in Figure 1. In September 1828, Peart came to London to study medicine: an entry to the effect that this was his "first winter session" suggests he had not studied medicine in London before. He obtained the Licence of the Society of Apothecaries in February 1829, paying the fee of six guineas, and the diploma of Membership of the Royal College of Surgeons of London in January 1830, for a fee of 122. Unless he was a late starter in medicine, Peart was probably aged twenty-one at this time (and therefore born in 1807 or 1808), as this was the minimum age for entrance to these examinations. He clearly intended to become a general practitioner because the dual qualification MRCS and LSA was then the hallmark of this branch of the medical profession.2 Indeed, after I August 1815, the possession of the LSA was a legal requirement (quite often defied) while the MRCS was, as a contemporary put it, legally voluntary but conventionally compulsory. It seems likely that Peart travelled to London from Yorkshire, because there is an entry at the beginning of the book of a fare of 2s. 6d. to York and £1 5s. Od. to London. Moreover, in April 1829, he returned to Pocklington for the summer and, as his expenses were minimal, it was a reasonable assumption that he stayed with his family in Yorkshire. A selection from the main items of expenditure in the cash book