Lay medical knowledge in the eighteenth century: The evidence of the Gentleman's Magazine

1985-04-01articleMedical History105 citationshybrid

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History of Science and Medicine Medical History and Innovations History of Medicine Studies

Abstract

Drawing attention recently in his 'Health, disease and medical care' to advances made during the last generation in the study of eighteenth-century medicine, W. F. Bynum also pointed to gaps remaining in our knowledge.'One of these was the understanding of medical relations from the patient's point of view.There are two main reasons why research into lay belief-systems and practices about sickness and medicine should be a matter of moment to the medical historian.First, in "the world we have lost" the sufferer habitually played an active and sometimes a decisive role in interpreting and managing his own state of health.2Self-diagnosis and dosing were routine amongst all ranks of society, and laymen regularly dispensed medicine to friends, family, and servants.Not least, as Jewson has explained,3 laymen also in some sense "prescribed" to the faculty: the educated and affluent sick played an assertive and sometimes even dominant role in clincial consultations.Hence, in seeking an integrated panorama of the totality of medical transactions in the community, and not least in aiming to understand the standing of the practitioner himself, we need to know what the public thought and did.4Secondly, and more generally, we must explore lay attitudes towards health and

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References

1981UNNATURAL CONCEPTIONS: THE STUDY OF MONSTERS IN SIXTEENTH-AND SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY FRANCE AND ENGLAND

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