The second-century Roman Navy under Emperor Hadrian included a surgeon aboard each of its triremes, with the position earning twice a regular officer's pay.
[1] From the early days of the Royal Navy, surgeons had been carried on board ships (albeit intermittently, depending on the length of voyage and likelihood of hostilities).
William Clowes, sometime Warden of the Company, and his colleague John Banister (both of whom had served at sea early in their careers) did much to ensure that naval surgeons were properly qualified and prepared.
[2] British colonization of the Americas led to longer sea voyages, battles and skirmishes far from home and encounters with new diseases, all of which contributed to a greater regularisation of the naval medical service.
By the 1840s all applicants were required to be qualified practitioners, in addition to which they had to provide a 'certificate of good moral character' and to be examined by the Inspector-General of Naval Hospitals and Fleets.
[11] A small number of doctors with a prestigious medical education were ranked as physicians; they would supervise surgeons on ships or run hospitals on shore.
[8] As set out in the Regulations and Instructions Relating to His Majesty's Service at Sea first published in 1730, surgeons were required to keep two journals: 'the one of his Physical Practice in Diseases; the other of his Chirurgical Operations and, at the End of the Voyage, to deliver the first to the Physicians in the Commission of Sick and Wounded; and the latter to the Governors of the Surgeons Company, who are to examine the same and certify their Judgment thereupon'.