Medical Conflicts in Early Modern London: Patronage, Physicians, and Irregular Practitioners, 1550-1640

by Margaret Pelling

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199257805
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	08/07/2003
Series:	Oxford Studies in Social History
Pages:	428
Product dimensions:	8.72(w) x 6.46(h) x 1.04(d)

About the Author

Oxford University

Table of Contents

Preface and AcknowledgementsAbbreviations and ConventionsList of Figures and Tables1. Introduction: The College and the Middling Sort2. Anatomy of an Anxious Institution: Plague and Seasonality3. Censorial Activity: The Burdens of Officebearing4. Initiation and Pursuit: Sources of Information for a Capital in Flux5. Irregular Practitioners: A Wilderness of Mirrors6. Gender Compromises: The Female Practitioner and her Connections7. Active Patients: Patrons and Parties to Contract8. The Effects of Confrontation: Demeanour, Penalties, and Patronage9. Conclusions: Defining the MajorityAppendixesBibliographyIndex

Editorial Reviews

"Impressive...This is an excellent, thoroughly researched and well-argued book. This book offers much to an audience beyond historians of medicine....Pelling is right:it is time to re-evaluate the usefulness of the medical marketplace for the study of history."—H-Net

"Margaret Pelling is a prolific social historian of medicine, whose dense, thoughtful, and thought-provoking articles and book chapters have done much to advance this topical area of study during the last twenty years...[A] solid, if not riveting analysis of the constitution, workings, and political status of the College of Physicians....This is a mature, erudite, and generally satisfying piece of scholarship..."—Albion

"[A] valuable contribution to the history of women's work."—Journal of the History of Medicine

From the Publisher