Medical misadventure in an age of professionalisation, 1780-1890 / Alannah Tomkins.

  • Tomkins, Alannah
Date:
2017
  • Books

About this work

Description

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.

Publication/Creation

Manchester : Manchester University Press, 2017.

Physical description

xii, 290 pages : black and white illustrations ; 23 cm.

Bibliographic information

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Financial hardship: bankruptcy, insolvency, and medical charity -- Thwarted ambition and disappointing careers? Narratives of the Indian Medical Service -- Accident or on purpose? Neglect, incompetence, and unintentional killing -- Crimes against the body: causing harm -- Mad doctors: lunacy and the asylum -- Despairing doctors: professional stress and suicide.

Languages

Where to find it

  • LocationStatus
    History of Medicine
    CB.AA7-8
    Open shelves

Permanent link

Identifiers

ISBN

  • 9781526116079
  • 1526116073