Important medical discoveries were made during Queen Victoria’s
reign but in this study Jane Pearson is not so much concerned with medical
progress as with the question of how the profession of medicine
developed. The book shows how doctors working in Colchester during the
Victorian period developed professionally and also investigates the extent to
which they effected medical and social change in the town.
Prior to the Medical Act of 1858 most doctors worked as individual
businessmen, building up a manageable practice in competition with other medics
in their locality. Deriving their income directly from their patients, doctors were
inclined to refrain from discussing their medical work in public, preferring to
maintain patient confidentiality and to appear conservative. It was difficult
to make a reputation in these circumstances and, as a result, some medics
looked to local politics to increase their local standing.
After the Act, which set up the register of qualified doctors and
instituted a professional code, the results of medical research began to be
shared more widely. Doctors had to learn to cooperate, to call upon colleagues
for assistance when necessary and to communicate techniques that worked for
their patients. The education and training of doctors developed to feed and
support this change. Dr Pearson examines how this was achieved over one or two
generations and also considers the degree of agency that was exercised by the
town’s doctors, particularly within the entrenched power structures in the
town’s hospitals, and in relation to campaigns for healthier living conditions.
The
author looks at how the Poor Law welfare system became a point of contention
for the profession, as its relatively poor remuneration for medical officers
risked reducing doctors’ professional status in general. In Colchester, most of
the doctors who served the pauperised section of the community did so for a
good number of years and most showed a tolerance and understanding of the
difficulties involved in impoverished lives.
Drawing on a wealth of
detailed research, Dr Pearson’s fascinating account of how these significant
changes were achieved in one small Essex town sheds light on a little-known
area of medical history.
Table of Contents:
1 Introduction
2 Medical togetherness
3 Doctors and politics: a route for change?
4 The physician, the surgeon and the general
practitioner
5 Were doctors agents of change in the voluntary
hospital?
6 Who ruled the roost in the Union infirmary?
7 The medics who provided for the ‘outdoor’ paupers
8 Mental illness and learning disability
9 Conclusion
Bibliography and further reading
Index
About the Author :
Jane Pearson taught local and social history at the
University of Essex. She has published Prostitution in Victorian Colchester
(UH Press, 2018) as well as papers on Essex local history.
