re: Have you ever met someone who wasn't a real doctor demand to be called "Dr".

I am a card-carrying member of the British Library, so absolutely!

Anyone who "demands" people call them doctor outside of the work setting has an ego problem and will typically be a douchebag. And that's regardless of the doctorate degree they hold. I feel bad for people who are that defined by their degree.

I'm not sure what you mean by "requirement," but it sounds like that's just a feature of the standardization of medicine: LINK

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Anyone who "demands" people call them doctor outside of the work setting has an ego problem and will typically be a douchebag. And that's regardless of the doctorate degree they hold.

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Yes. Also, pro tip: if an author puts "Ph.D." after their name, he or she is almost certainly a hack.

There have been medical degrees dating back way longer than the past century. They just weren't MDs because other countries have different names for them.

There were requirements back in the late 1700s here and med schools started in the late 1700s as well. There were licensure requirements, etc by the mid 1800s. The big change in the last century was more standardization and the internship requirement. But med school was a requirement.

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I'm pretty sure they awarded MDs in the middle ages though...

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According to Wikipedia (so take it for whatever it's worth), only the Muslim hospitals in and around Baghdad were granting MDs during the middle ages.

You have to remember that our concept of medicine didn't develop until the later middle ages and up through the scientific revolution. Before that, they bled people and put leeches on them to get rid of "bad humors," held women under water to check them for "demons," and sacrificed goats to appease the gods who had made them sick.

The Muslims actually developed a lot of knowledge before that. They approached things from a more scientific perspective than a lot before them.

Detroit

LINK

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On May 5, 1847, nearly 200 delegates representing 40 medical societies and 28 colleges from 22 states and the District of Columbia met. They resolved themselves into the first session of the American Medical Association (AMA). Nathaniel Chapman (1780-1853) was elected as the first president of the association. The AMA has grown to become an organization that has a great deal of influence over issues related to health care in the United States.
The AMA set educational standards for MDs, including the following:

A liberal education in the arts and sciences
A certificate of completion in an apprenticeship before entering the medical college
An MD degree that covered 3 years of study, including two 6-month lecture sessions, 3 months devoted to dissection, and a minimum of one 6-month session of hospital attendance

In 1852, the standards were revised to add more requirements:

Medical schools had to provide a 16-week course of instruction that included anatomy, medicine, surgery, midwifery, and chemistry
Graduates had to be at least 21 years of age
Students had to complete a minimum of 3 years of study, 2 years of which were under an acceptable practitioner

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Correct. They also compartmentalized theological and secular studies, so that religious beliefs didn't interfere with the pursuit of knowledge. The Christian West, by contrast, punished people for suggesting that the earth revolves around the sun.

Times have changed in that respect, to say the least.

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Yea just a tad though we still stifle some things here as well. It is definitely interesting.