Mayhem and Medical Students: Image, Conduct, and Control in the Victorian and Edwardian London Teaching Hospital

Abstract

In exploring how the image of the medical student was created and modified during the nineteenth century, this article suggests that stereotypes first put forward in the 1820s were in part a product of the trend towards institutional medical education. They quickly acquired a cultural resonance that reflected concerns about the nature of medicine and fears of the urban. By the late nineteenth century, however, the medical student was being reinvented as part of doctors' efforts to improve the status of medicine and rework stereotypes so that they reflected the values associated with the professional gentlement. At the same time, student conduct had started to alter, giving some substance to a new set of stereotypes being put forward by doctors. By locating the transformation within the culture of London's medical schools, the article shifts attention away from the changes that were occurring in the structure of medical education to look at the role of the medical school in regulating the student. A focus on the experiences of St Bartholomew's, the largest medical school in London, provides a case study through which these changes are discussed.

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