Exams

Examinations appear to have originated in China in 156 B.C.

They were inaugurated by the Emperor Han Wen Ti. When the Imperial Medical College was inaugurated in the 7th century A.D., it adopted the practice of setting examinations developed at the Imperial University during the preceding centuries.

European medical examinations have been traced back to the physicians of 10th century Baghdad, where the Caliph al-Muqtadir, moved by a death arising from a medical mistake, decreed that the famous physician, Sinan, should examine all would-be practitioners.

Arabic influence on the famous European medical school at Salerno played an important part in communicating the system further west. Arabic-Chinese contacts arose in the 8th century as a result of Islamic expansion, and it is thought that this is how the idea of medical examinations was transmitted from China to Europe.

—World Student News.