Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T06:19:50.107Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - Physicians and writers: Medical theory and the emergence of the public sphere

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 September 2009

Thomas H. Broman
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Get access

Summary

The previous chapter described how the eighteenth-century medical profession was shaped by (and in turn gave form to) reformist impulses that were proclaimed under the banners of Enlightenment, social welfare, and the pragmatic uses of knowledge. The responses formulated by physicians to those impulses, as that chapter suggested, were a complex amalgam of defensive and offensive postures. At the most general level, those responses were structured by two issues. The first issue, hinted at by the discussion of Bildung, consisted of how someone conceived of the profession's relationship to the state. Did medicine exist to promote the state's enlightened ends (for example, by means of public health), or should physicians stake their identity on a more individual and personal level, for example in terms of their selfless service to patients, or their claim to cultivation of personal freedom through Bildung? The second issue concerned physicians’ sense of the relationship between theory and practice in medicine. Should theory be cultivated with an eye toward its application at the bedside, or could medical theory rightly lay claim to being a profound inquiry into the mysteries of organic nature? How in fact did bedside practice represent an “application” of a physician's theoretical knowledge?

Two points must be made to clarify these issues. First, in some ways their presentation as choices between alternatives is deceptive, because they did not necessarily represent mutually contradictory stances.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×