Margaret Pelling

Medical Conflicts in Early Modern London

Patronage, Physicians, and Irregular Practitioners, 1550-1640

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Many were London artisans, barber-surgeons and apothecaries who can be seen as the 'excluded middle' between the two better-known extremes of the physician and the quack. In suppressing artisan practitioners, the College was also seeking to suppress contractual or 'citizen' medicine, an alternative system of structuring relations between the active patient and the practitioner which was fully integrated in contemporary urban custom and practice, but which has since disappeared. The College's selective account also inadvertently reveals the existence of female artisans who practised medicine outside the household routinely and for payment. Although distorted by the College's proximity to the Crown and to elite patrons, the Annals of the College give access to the rich variety of medical practice in early modern London and to the forms of resistance and self-presentation with which those outside the College justified, or denied, their identity as practitioners.

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This is the first comprehensive analysis of the best single record we have which details the many medical practitioners in early modern London. It reveals the attitudes and realities in the conflict between the College of Physicians and the practitioners, whom the College regarded as illicit or irregular. In so doing, the book challenges the assumptions we make about the dominant professional values of modern western society.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Oxford University Press, USA
• Seitenzahl: 428
• Erscheinungstermin: 7. August 2003
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 222mm x 146mm x 29mm
• Gewicht: 608g
• ISBN-13: 9780199257805
• ISBN-10: 0199257809
• Artikelnr.: 20971507

Inhaltsangabe

Preface and Acknowledgements
Abbreviations and Conventions
List of Figures and Tables
1: Introduction: The College and the Middling Sort
2: Anatomy of an Anxious Institution: Plague and Seasonality
3: Censorial Activity: The Burdens of Officebearing
4: Initiation and Pursuit: Sources of Information for a Capital in Flux
5: Irregular Practitioners: A Wilderness of Mirrors
6: Gender Compromises: The Female Practitioner and her Connections
7: Active Patients: Patrons and Parties to Contract
8: The Effects of Confrontation: Demeanour, Penalties, and Patronage
9: Conclusions: Defining the Majority
Appendixes
Bibliography
Index