Medical Conflicts in Early Modern London

This is the first comprehensive analysis of the best single record we have which details the multifarious medical practitioners in early modern London. It reveals the attitudes and realities in the conflict between the College of Physicians and the practitioners, male and female, whom the College regarded as illicit or irregular. 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 artisanal and contractual medicine in London which the College of Physicians sought to suppress.