Full Description
How did doctors make a living? Making a Medical Living explores the neglected socio-economic history of medical practice, beginning with the first voluntary hospital in 1720 and ending with national health insurance in 1911. It looks at public appointments in hospitals and dispensaries, office under public welfare systems, and at private practice. In this innovative study, Anne Digby makes use of new sources of information, looks at ordinary rather than élite doctors, and analyses provincial rather than metropolitan practice. From the mid-eighteenth century medicine became more commercialised; doctors travelled to see ordinary patients, developed specialisms, and were entrepreneurial in expanding institutional forms of health care. This entrepreneurial activity helped shape English medicine into a distinctive pattern of general and specialist practice, and of public and private health care.
Contents
Introduction; Part I. The Professional Structure of Practice: 1. Medical practitioners; 2. The context of practice; 3. Medical encounters; Part II. The Economic Dimensions of Practice: 4. The creation of surgical general practice; 5. The GP and the goal of prosperity; 6. Physicians; Part III. Patients and Doctors: 7. Medicalisation and affluent patients; 8. Office, altruism and poor patients; 9. Expanding practice with women and child patients; Part IV. Synthesis: Reflections.
