This book looks at medical professionalisation from a new perspective, one of failure rather than success. It questions the existing picture of broad and rising medical prosperity across the nineteenth century to consider the men who did not keep up with professionalising trends. It unpicks the life stories of men who could not make ends meet or who could not sustain a professional persona of disinterested expertise, either because they could not overcome public accusations of misconduct or because they struggled privately with stress. In doing so it uncovers the trials of the medical marketplace and the pressures of medical masculinity. All professionalising groups risked falling short of rising expectations, but for doctors these expectations were inflected in some occupationally specific ways.
Autorentext
Alannah Tomkins is Professor of History at Keele University
Klappentext
This book examines the turbulent careers of medical practitioners who wanted to become full members of the profession but were held back from the fulfilment of their ambitions. Some became bankrupt or were forced to take a post that did not live up to their expectations. Others were accused of neglecting or injuring patients, and there were those who felt the strain of professional practice so severely that they fell ill or committed suicide. The book tells the stories of the unfortunate, deceptive and desperate doctors who tried and failed to earn a living, or who overcame substantial setbacks to their careers. It moves beyond the well-known examples of medical heroes and villains to reveal startling, poignant and sometimes equivocal experiences that complicate our understanding of medical professionalisation. By the end of the nineteenth century the behaviour of professional doctors aspired to be entirely disinterested; yet the continued existence of a medical marketplace demanded attention to personal gain and fostered covert competition between practitioners. This is the first book to consider the parameters of a specifically medical masculinity and pressure points for medical male identities. This book will be essential reading for undergraduates working on the social history of medicine, and a research text for academic treatments of professionalisation in medicine.
Inhalt
List of Figures List of TablesAcknowledgements1. Introduction 2. Financial hardship: bankruptcy, insolvency, and medical charity3. Thwarted ambition and disappointing careers? Narratives of the Indian Medical Service4. Accident or on purpose? Neglect, incompetence, and unintentional killing5. Crimes Against the Body: Causing harm6. Mad Doctors: lunacy and the asylum7. Despairing doctors: professional stress and suicide8. Conclusion Select BibliographyIndex