Doctors of learning

I WISH to comment briefly on the recent debate in your letters page (September 9/16) on the use of the title ‘doctor’.

The word originates from the Latin ‘docere’ (to teach) and ‘doctor’ has been used for more than a millennium as an academic title for those who hold the highest university degree.

The use of ‘doctor’ as an honorific for physicians with bachelors’ degrees in medicine is of considerably more recent origin. Brief perusal of the Oxford English Dictionary will confirm it is perfectly valid to refer to as ‘doctor’ one who “has attained to the highest degree conferred by a university”.