It seems that that rural Suffolk is still the only county where anyone has attempted to make a comprehensive record of the existence of medical practitioners in previous centuries.
Dr David van Zwanenberg’s biographies cover men and women practising medicine in all its forms from the eleventh century until roughly 1900.
To qualify for an entry the person must have practised (or have been apprenticed) in Suffolk during that period.
Dr van Zwanenberg (1922- 1991) started his researches in the early 1970s, but he died before he could finish editing the work. His widow kindly donated his notes to the Suffolk Record Office at Ipswich and the reference number of this handwritten material is q.s.614.
To make the material more accessible, a website was set up in 2001 www.suffolkmedicalbiographies.uk.
Over the years the information on it has been greatly expanded by the editor, Dr Edward Cockayne. DHMSA.
You can look for practitioners using their surname, status, place of practice, gender, or the century in which they lived. More excitingly, using the further details box on its own you can discover all sorts of things. Try tapping in ‘press gang’ ‘inoculation’ or ‘inquests’ just to see.