That sounds very Jeffersonian. He was a strong believer in the idea that anything was learnable by anyone and that specialties (and the terms they use) are created by the professionals as a sort of job security and self validation. Until then, there was no required set of basic sciences or clinic training to become a doctor. Most schools only required a 3 month apprenticeship with a physician and no one actually cared if they showed up to work with the physician during those 3 months.

It's an interesting theory, regardless of one's opinion of the specifics.

Edit: I don't think I made any sense... I agree with you. Also, I was trying to say that the idealogy that everything is learnable has often been attributed as a Jeffersonian theory. It really caught on and was a main tenent of industrialized nations (especially the US) until about the end of the 19th century (like you said, about a hundred years ago). Then, to use my own career as a reference, people realized they might prefer their doctor to know more than the average person and wanted that person to have devoted a significant portion of their life into studying and perfecting the art of medicine (or whatever other profession they had chosen). It wasn't until around 1890 that Harvard made the revolutionairy step of requiring that doctors go to school and learn basic science for a minimum of 10 months. No one liked that idea and their enrollment suffered heavily for the next 10 years. That's right...you could once become a doctor at harvard in 10 months.<--wish I could have got on that boat!