9780199257805. Pre-owned: good condition. Hard cover. Language: english. Pages: 432. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. 432 P. Contains: unspecified. Oxford studies in social history. Physicians have had a major role in framing the middle-class values of modern western society especially those relating to the professions. This book questions the bases of this hegemony by looking first at the early modern physician s insecurities in terms of status and gender and then at the wider world of medicine in london which the college of physicians sought to suppress. The college s proceedings against irregular practitioners constitute a case-study in the regulation of an occupation critical for the well-being of contemporary londoners. However the college was it is argued an anomalous body detached from most other forms of male authority in the urban context and its claims lacked social recognition. It used stereotyping to construct an account designed for higher authority but at the same time its regulatory efforts were constantly undermined by the effects of patronage. The so-called irregular practitioners emerge as extremely diverse in country of origin religious belief and levels of formal education yet the full analysis provided here also shows that most were literate and that a significant number later became members of the college. Many were london artisans barber-surgeons and apothecaries who can be seen as the excluded middle between the two better-known extremes of the phy...
