An MD means a new doctor in America but a research degree in Britain
In the United States, MD is the degree every new physician earns. In the UK and Ireland, junior doctors graduate with a bachelor's in medicine and surgery, and the MD is a higher degree taken later. The split goes back to where 18th-century practitioners trained: Scotland, which then used the MD.
The initials come from the Latin Medicinae Doctor. Many 18th-century medical men learned their trade in Scotland, where the MD was the university qualification, while England culminated in the MB. In the mid 19th century regulators required practitioners in both countries to hold the double bachelor's degree in medicine and surgery, which is why British, Irish and similar systems reserve the MD for research, honorary or advanced clinical awards open only to those already qualified in medicine.
North America went the other way. From the late 18th century its schools followed the ancient Scottish universities and granted the MD instead of the MB, with Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York, then called King's College of Medicine, the first American university to do so. Early MD-granting schools such as Penn, Harvard and McGill were largely founded by doctors trained in England and Scotland. In the 1860s the New England Female Medical College in Boston even used a feminine form, Doctress of Medicine.
Medical degrees are much older. The Schola Medica Salernitana in southern Italy was handing them out by about 1000, and its graduates included a woman, Trota of Salerno. Roger II of Sicily gave them legal standing in 1137, and in 1231 Emperor Federico II's Constitution of Melfi ruled that only holders of Salerno's licence could practise, after three years of logic, five of medicine, examinations and a year's apprenticeship. Glasgow's first medical graduate, Samuel Benion, received an MD in 1703.
Holding the degree rarely means being allowed to practise straight away: most countries require a hospital internship, a residency of at least three years and a licensing exam, requirements found to add time and cost to training. Systems vary widely. In Afghanistan, students enter straight from high school after a competitive national exam and complete a seven-year programme with a thesis, introduced in the 2016 curriculum, and a compulsory hospital internship before registering to practise.
Source: Doctor of Medicine
