Historians writing on nineteenth and early-twentieth century medical debates regarding modes of venereal disease transmission, treatment and prevention have rarely addressed the fundamental question of venereological training. It has generally been assumed by historians that doctors possessed an adequate working knowledge of the symptoms of venereal disease, as well as the treatment methods available to patients. Yet the limited presence of venereology in the undergraduate curriculum and in optional, postgraduate training courses raises important questions about the state of the average practitioner’s venereological knowledge and clinical skill. Even towards the end of the nineteenth century when specialisms were emerging as distinct and important disciplines within an integrated body of medical knowledge and practice, the place of venereology remained problematic. Was the dissemination of new ideas about the aetiology, treatment and prevention of venereal disease impeded by a lack study? Did the shortcomings in medical education affect the accuracy of diagnosis and the efficacy of treatment regimes? Was this lack of systematised learning a product of limited knowledge and clinical skill? These questions need to be addressed if historians are to gain a more nuanced understanding of the nature and limitations of clinical practice, of the dissemination of knowledge among medical professionals, and the impact of this upon the care of venereally-diseased patients.

In 1899, the British Medical Journal enthusiastically announced that a new postgraduate teaching college was soon to be opened in London. The aim of the Medical Graduates’ College and Polyclinic (MGC) was to provide continuing education to general practitioners, focusing principally on specialisms otherwise omitted from the undergraduate curriculum. Although lecturers at the MGC assumed a certain degree of knowledge and skill among their student-practitioners, they were also fully aware of the gaps in their and their students’ venereological knowledge. The College’s courses were intended to refresh knowledge and to introduce practitioners to new knowledge claims and clinical practices. This paper examines the work conducted at the MGC in an attempt to understand how venereological knowledge was produced and disseminated among medical practitioners at the turn of the twentieth century.