Medical regulation ensures that medicine is only practised by qualified and suitable people and can be used to prevent competition and increase financial compensation.
The earliest reference to medical regulation in the UK dates from 1421, when physicians petitioned parliament to ask that nobody without appropriate qualifications be allowed to practise medicine.
John Raach wrote that "the Church was apparently considered the one institution whose influence was extensive and potent enough to be effective in suppressing quacks and licensing the members of the medical profession".
Medicine and religion were also closely entwined: healing had long been associated with the supernatural, while the events of birth and death involved both medics and clerics.
The Act created the position of Registrar of the General Medical Council – an office still in existence today – whose duty is to keep up-to-date records of those registered to practise medicine and to make them publicly available.
Summing up the Act, the British Medical Journal wrote, "In future, the GMC will be possessed of wider powers, improved machinery, and a better status, all serving to ensure the continued and enhanced confidence of the profession and the public alike.