Why did John Keats train to become a surgeon?

It is a common misconception that John Keats chose to pursue medicine out of a personal desire to become a physician. In reality, his medical training was not a career path he initiated himself.

Following the death of his mother in 1810, Keats’s grandmother placed the children’s affairs under the control of a guardian, Richard Abbey. It was at Abbey’s instigation that Keats was apprenticed to a surgeon in 1811.12

Keats continued in the medical field for several years, working as a dresser—a type of junior house surgeon—at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ hospitals after breaking off his initial apprenticeship in 1814. However, his true passion lay in literature, which had been encouraged during his school years by Charles Cowden Clarke. By 1817, Keats abandoned his medical pursuits entirely to dedicate his life to poetry.12