Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Preface
- 1 Introduction: Hospital medicine in eighteenth-century London
- PART I INSTITUTIONS AND EDUCATION
- PART II COMMUNITY AND KNOWLEDGE
- 6 Gentlemen scholars and clinical cases, 1700–1760
- 7 London hospital men and a medical community, 1760–1815
- 8 Hospital men make medical knowledge, 1760–1815
- Conclusion
- Appendix I London hospital men, 1700–1815
- Appendix II London hospital pupils, 1725–1820
- Appendix III London medical lecturers, 1700–1820
- Index
- Cambridge History of Medicine
7 - London hospital men and a medical community, 1760–1815
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Preface
- 1 Introduction: Hospital medicine in eighteenth-century London
- PART I INSTITUTIONS AND EDUCATION
- PART II COMMUNITY AND KNOWLEDGE
- 6 Gentlemen scholars and clinical cases, 1700–1760
- 7 London hospital men and a medical community, 1760–1815
- 8 Hospital men make medical knowledge, 1760–1815
- Conclusion
- Appendix I London hospital men, 1700–1815
- Appendix II London hospital pupils, 1725–1820
- Appendix III London medical lecturers, 1700–1820
- Index
- Cambridge History of Medicine
Summary
In the preface to their first volume of Medical Observations and Inquiries (1757), a “Society of Physicians in London” praised the publications of the Royal Society and the Parisian Academy of Sciences, yet noted that their scope “does not allow them to insert several things … calculated only for the improvement of physick.” Furthermore, the anonymous editor(s) continued, some
important cases … cannot decently be read in mixed company, and there are others, of the merits of which, physicians only can be adequate judges, and which would appear neither entertaining nor instructive to philosophers or mathematicians.
“Mixed company,” a phrase that evokes audiences of men and women, suggests that these physicians had extraordinary delicacy about presenting medical details to nonmedical men, unless prim ladies indeed visited the Royal Society meetings. Note how the physicians claimed to be the only “adequate judges” of their experiences. They could share the “entertaining” or “instructive” case with educated folk, but they were the appropriate interpreters of such matters of fact. Asserting their unique expertise had, of course, always marked medical practitioners, however much they negotiated their authority with patients and peers. So the editor(s) went on to explain the particular grounds for their valuable work:
The persons who formed this Society, were either such as had the care of hospitals, or were otherwise in some degree of repute in their profession; and consequently had frequent opportunities of making observations themselves, and of verifying, in the course of their practice, the discoveries of others. […]
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Charitable KnowledgeHospital Pupils and Practitioners in Eighteenth-Century London, pp. 250 - 288Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996