Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- List of Figures
- Introduction: The Medical Trade Catalogue in Context
- 1 The Rise of the Medical Trade Catalogue
- 2 Markets of Medics: Designing the Catalogue
- 3 Inside the Catalogue: The Rhetoric of Novelty, Safety and Science
- 4 Catalogue Production: ‘The Work of an Amateur’?
- 5 At Home, Work and Abroad: Distributing Catalogues
- 6 (Re)Reading the Catalogue: Doctors, Consumption and Invention
- Conclusion: Selling Medicine to Professionals, Professionals Selling Medicine
- Appendix: Trade Catalogues
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Conclusion: Selling Medicine to Professionals, Professionals Selling Medicine
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- List of Figures
- Introduction: The Medical Trade Catalogue in Context
- 1 The Rise of the Medical Trade Catalogue
- 2 Markets of Medics: Designing the Catalogue
- 3 Inside the Catalogue: The Rhetoric of Novelty, Safety and Science
- 4 Catalogue Production: ‘The Work of an Amateur’?
- 5 At Home, Work and Abroad: Distributing Catalogues
- 6 (Re)Reading the Catalogue: Doctors, Consumption and Invention
- Conclusion: Selling Medicine to Professionals, Professionals Selling Medicine
- Appendix: Trade Catalogues
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
The attempt to build a Chinese wall round the field of medical thought cannot be expected to succeed in these days, nor is it desirable that any attempt should be made.
A Contributor, British Medical Journal, 1896Over the preceding chapters we have seen the ways in which medical trade companies and doctors worked together for mutual benefit to design and produce a catalogue that was both useful to late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century medical practice and acceptable to a consolidating professional readership. Companies, as the catalogue's, primary authors, viewed the publication as essential for maintaining and developing relationships with doctors during a period of both economic growth and market uncertainty. Influenced by the requirements of their readership both before and after the act of composition, companies balanced their desire for profit with the ethical considerations of the medical profession; they excluded non-medical professional readers and Shaped their catalogues into medical reference books, a publication with which all practitioners were familiar and which they had long deemed crucial for the dissemination of new forms of medical knowledge. Doctors' general acceptance and use of the catalogue suggests that companies succeeded in satisfying professional mores; they were willing readers of the publication and consumers of the tools promoted within them, but also played a vital and active role as authors in directly shaping the form and content of catalogue through suggestions, testimonials and their own designs of new medical tools and apparatus.
- Type
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- Information
- The Medical Trade Catalogue in Britain, 1870–1914 , pp. 151 - 160Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014