Making medicine scientific: Empiricism, rationality, and quackery in mid-Victorian Britain

Social History of Medicine

Volumn 9, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 175-194

  Weatherall, Mark W ^a  

^a Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Cambridge; Empiricism; Hom opathy; Medical education; Quackery; Rationality; Scientific medicine

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; HISTORY; HOMEOPATHY; QUACKERY; SCIENCE; UNITED KINGDOM;

GREAT BRITAIN; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; HOMEOPATHY; QUACKERY; SCIENCE;

EID: 0030208993     PISSN: 0951631X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/shm/9.2.175     Document Type: Article

References (122)

1. This paper originated as chapter 1 of my Ph.D. thesis 'Scientific Medicine and the Medical Sciences in Cambridge, 1851-1939' (University of Cambridge, 1994) which was supported by a research scholarship from the Wellcome Trust. I would like to thank my supervisor Dr Harmke Kamminga for her incisive and constructive comments on my work.
2. G. L. Geison, 'Divided We Stand: Physiologists and Clinicians in the American Context' in M. J. Vogel and C. E. Rosenberg (eds.) The Therapeutic Revolution: Essays in the Social History of American Medicine (Philadelphia, 1977), 67-90;
3. S. E. D. Shortt, 'Physicians, Science, and Status: Issues in the Professionalization of Anglo-American Medicine in the Nineteenth-century', Medical History, 27 (1983), 51-68;
4. J. H. Warner, 'Science in Medicine', Osiris, n.s. 1 (1985), 37-58;
5. 'Ideals of Science and their Discontents in late Nineteenth-century American Medicine', Isis, 82 (1991), 454-78;
6. 'The Rise and Fall of Professional Mystery. Epistemology, Authority and the Emergence of Laboratory Medicine in Nineteenth-century America', in A. R. Cunningham and J. P. Williams (eds.) The Laboratory Revolution in Medicine (Cambridge, 1992), 110-41;
7. W. F. Bynum, Science and the Practice of Medicine in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1994).
8. G. B. Risse, 'The Quest for Certainty in Medicine: John Brown's System of Medicine', Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 45 (1971), 1-20.
9. Works which challenge this view of the state of medicine in nineteenth-century Britain include M. J. Peterson, The Medical Profession in Mid-Victorian London (Berkeley, 1978);
10. I. Waddington, The Medical Profession in the Industrial Revolution (Dublin, 1984).
11. Medical Times and Gazette, i (1864), 367-8.
12. Waddington, The Medical Profession in the Industrial Revolution, 96;
13. T. N. Stokes, 'A Coleridgean against the Medical Corporations: John Simon and the Parliamentary Campaign for the Reform of the Medical Profession', Medical History, 33 (1989), 343-63.
14. Lancet, i (1863), 4-15, 213.
15. C. E. Rosenberg, 'The Therapeutic Revolution: Medicine, Meaning, and Social Change in Nineteenth-century America', in Vogel and Rosenberg (eds.) The Therapeutic Revolution, 3-25.
16. See, for example, British Medical Journal, i (1868), 239.
17. This discussion derives from S. Shapin and S. Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump. Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton, 1985), 80.
18. See footnote 2 above.
19. J. H. Warner, The Therapeutic Perspective: Medical Practice, Knowledge, and Identity in America, 1820-1885 (Cambridge MA, 1986), 41-5.
20. A notable exception is the work of Christopher Lawrence: 'Incommunicable Knowledge: Science, Technology, and the Clinical Art in Britain, 1850-1914', Journal of Contemporary History, 20 (1985), 503-20;
21. Lawrence, Medicine in the Making of Modern Britain, 1700-1920 (London, 1994).
22. Though Bacon's work had been criticised, qualified, and superseded by the period under consideration, appeals to Baconian philosophy continued to be a central rhetorical resource for validation and legitimation at the level of that body of rhetoric, argument, and polemic by which a scientific community established itself within society as a whole: R. R. Yeo, 'An Idol of the Market-place: Baconianism in Nineteenth-century Britain', History of Science, 23 (1985), 251-98.
23. This was also true in élite medical circles; see, for example, the remarks of the St George's Hospital physician A. W. Barclay in his 1864 Lumleian lectures at the Royal College of Physicians: A. W. Barclay, Medical Errors: Fallacies Connected with the Application of the Inductive Method of Reasoning to the Science of Medicine (London, 1864).
24. British Medical Journal, ii (1862), 183.
25. Bennett was Professor of the Institutes of Medicine and Senior Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of Edinburgh: J. H. Warner, 'Therapeutic Explanation and the Edinburgh Bloodletting Controversy: Two Perspectives on the Medical Meaning of Science in the Mid-nineteenth Century', Medical History, 24 (1980), 241-58;
26. L S Jacyna, 'The Laboratory and the Clinic: the Impact of Pathology on Surgical Diagnosis in the Glasgow Western Infirmary, 1875-1910', Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 62 (1988), 384-406.
27. Inconclusive investigations were launched in 1868, for example, by the Clinical Society and the Harveian Society, on topics such as the value of various methods of arresting haemorrhage, the value of quinine as a means of diminishing the temperature and pulse in pyrexia, and the natural history and treatment of rheumatic fever and eczema: British Medical Journal, i (1868), 284-85, 305-6.
28. Empirical projects also suffered from the general attack on induction as launched by philosophers such as William Whewell: M. Fisch and S. Schaffer, William Whewell. A Composite Portrait (Oxford, 1991).
29. In 1869, for example, the relevance to medical practice of the results of animal experiments carried out by the BMA's 'Edinburgh Committee' (under John Hughes Bennett) on the action of mercury and other drugs on biliary secretion, which showed, contrary to received medical wisdom, that mercury had no effect on the flow of bile, were publicly questioned by members of the Committee itself: British Medical Journal, i (1869), 411-20, 482, 503.
30. On anti-vivisection movements, see R. D. French, Antivivisection and Medical Science in Victorian Society (Princeton, 1975).
31. The PMSA passed resolutions to this end at their Brighton meeting in 1851, and reaffirmed them at subsequent meetings: P. Vaughan, Doctors' Commons. A Short History of the British Medical Association (London, 1959), 90.
32. See also P. Bartrip, Mirror of Medicine. A History of the British Medical Journal (Oxford, 1990).
33. For Thomas Wakley's 'War on Quacks' in the Lancet,
34. see C. Brook, Battling Surgeon (Glasgow, 1945).
35. For an account from the viewpoint of homœopathic practitioners, see P. A. Nicholls, Homœopathy and the Medical Profession (London, 1988).
36. . Wittern, 'The Origins of Homœopathy in Germany', Clio Medica, 21 (1992), 51.
37. Nicholls, Homœopathy and the Medical Profession;
38. G. Rankin, 'Professional Organisation and the Development of Medical Knowledge: Two Interpretations of Homœopathy', in R. Cooter (ed.) Studies in the History of Alternative Medicine (London, 1988), 46-62;
39. M. Kaufman, 'Homœopathy in America: the Rise and Fall and Persistence of a Medical Heresy' in N. Gevitz (ed.) Other Healers: Unorthodox Medicine in America (Baltimore, 1988).
40. A German medical journal found 244 homœopathic doctors in England in 1860: Medical Times and Gazette, ii (1860), 443.
41. The Medical Directory of 1856 listed 10,220 qualified practitioners in England and Wales: Association Medical Journal, (1856), 253.
42. In Manchester, for example, civic authorities publicly backed homœopathy in 1852: R. Cooter, 'Introduction: The Alternations of Past and Present', in Cooter, Studies in the History of Alternative Medicine, xi.
43. Further details on the impact of homœopathy in the north of England are found in J. V. Pickstone, Medicine and Industrial Society. A History of Hospital Development in Manchester and its Region, 1752-1946 (Manchester, 1985), 108, 149;
44. H. Marland, Medicine and Society in Wakefield and Huddersfield, 1780-1870 (Cambridge, 1987), 205-51.
45. Allopathy was a pejorative term intended to encapsulate the antagonistic approach inherent in the use of treatments intended to counter symptoms rather than provoke them. For the political differences between the two homœopathic bodies, see Rankin, 'Two Interpretations of Homœopathy', 52-3.
46. Rankin, 'Two Interpretations of Homœopathy', Ibid, 56.
47. F. Boase (ed.) Modern English Biography Volume IV (Truro, 1908), supplement vol. I;
48. 'William Bayes', British Journal of Homœopathy, 41 (1883), 110;
49. 'Address to the Annual Assembly of the British Homœopathic Society, 21st June 1883', Annals and Transactions of the British Homœopathic Society, x (1882-83), 353;
50. W Bayes, Homœopathy: An Address to the Governors of Addenbrooke's Hospital (Cambridge, 1861).
51. W Bayes, Truth in Medicine; or, a Few Words on Homœopathy (London, 1856). The newspaper controversy was played out in the pages of the Cambridge Chronicle between June and August 1859.
52. Bayes, Truth in Medicine, 6.
53. Cambridge Chronicle, 16 July 1859.
54. Cambridge Chronicle, 2 July 1859.
55. Bayes, Truth in Medicine, 6, 13.
56. Bayes, Truth in Medicine, Ibid, 15.
57. Bayes, Truth in Medicine, Ibid, 16.
58. Bayes, Truth in Medicine, Ibid, 18.
59. Bayes himself made pathological investigations during his time at Cambridge: W. Bayes, 'Case of Softening of the Brain and Hydrocephalus: with Remarks', British Journal of Homœopathy, 21 (1863), 22.
60. Cambridge Chronicle, 4 June 1859.
61. See, for example, J. Y. Simpson's best-selling Homœopathy: its Tenets and Tendencies, Theoretical, Theological and Therapeutical (Edinburgh, 1851), which went through several editions during the middle decades of the century.
62. Bayes, Truth in Medicine, 22.
63. Cambridge Chronicle, 2 July 1859.
64. See, for example, T. Spencer Wells' attempt to defend the Malvern water cure against charges that the hydropathists were consorting with homœopathists: British Medical Journal, ii (1861), 423.
65. Also the gradual disenchantment with Turkish baths: Medical Times and Gazette, ii (1862), 564.
66. Medical Times and Gazette, i (1861), 364.
67. This passage was reprinted in the Cambridge press at the time of the contest for the hospital in a letter from 'Studens': Cambridge Chronicle, 27 April 1861.
68. See, for example, Medical Times and Gazette, ii (1861), 66.
69. Barclay, Medical Errors.
70. See also his comments in the British Medical Journal, i (1865), 206.
71. British Medical Journal, ii (1861), 208, 389.
72. British Medical Journal, ii (1861), 65;
73. British Medical Journal, i (1862), 364.
74. British Medical Journal, ii (1861), 90.
75. No-one was above suspicion: even George Burrows, President of the Royal College of Physicians, was accused of having transgressed: Lancet, i (1863), 73, 98, 129, 192, 220.
76. G. E. Paget to J. Romilly: University of Cambridge Archives CUR 28.4.1 (21(1)).
77. W. Bayes to J. Romilly, 3 October 1856: University of Cambridge Archives CUR 28.4.1 (21(2)).
78. In later years Bryant ran a mesmeric and galvanic infirmary at his residence, and offered lessons in mesmerism and electro-biology, while continuing to advertise homœopathic and botanic medicines: Cambridge Chronicle, 20 April 1867, 22 January 1870;
79. Cambridge Undergraduates' Journal, 9 May 1873.
80. Cambridge Independent Press, 6 April 1861.
81. Cambridge Chronicle, Cambridge Independent Press, 13 April 1861.
82. No mention is made of Bayes's candidature in the standard history of Addenbrooke's: A. J. Rook, M. Carlton and W. G. Cannon, The History of Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge (Cambridge, 1991).
83. Daily Telegraph, 15 April 1861.
84. Similar sentiments were expressed in the medical press: British Medical Journal, i (1861), 429.
85. Bayes was already using the Cambridgeshire Dispensary for such investigations: W. Bayes, 'Hydrastis Canadensis in Cancer', British Journal of Homœopathy, 19 (1861), 1;
86. W. Bayes, 'Intermittent Fevers', Annals and Transactions of the British Homœopathic Society, i (1860-61), 441.
87. Annals and Transactions of the British Homœopathic Society, i (1860-61), 367.
88. 'Homœopathy at Cambridge', Medical Times and Gazette, i (1861), 472.
89. British Medical Journal, i (1861), 502.
90. Cambridge Chronicle, 13 April 1861.
91. Cambridge Chronicle, 27 April 1861.
92. Cambridge Chronicle, 1861. Ibid.
93. Cambridge Chronicle, 1861. Ibid.
94. Cambridge Chronicle, 4 May 1861.
95. Cambridge Chronicle, 11 May 1861. Haviland was elected the following week but lasted only two years in the job. His wife deserted him in May 1862, taking their three children with her. Although she did not allege adultery, the opprobrium brought on by this episode seems to have destroyed Haviland's credibility in Cambridge, and he left the following year.
96. See 'Haviland v. Monk and Others', Cambridge Chronicle, 16 August 1862, 23 August 1862.
97. The hospital's annual accounts were overdrawn in six of the ten years during the decade leading up to the contest: Rook et al., History of Addenbrooke's Hospital, 454-5.
98. The BMA stated that practitioners should actively discourage others, whether members of the BMA or not, from meeting with homœopathists: 'Professional Promotion of Homœopathy', British Medical Journal, i (1861), 614.
99. British Medical Journal, i (1862), 554.
100. British Medical Journal, i (1862), 547.
101. W. Bayes, 'Medical Consultation with Homœopaths', British Medical Journal, i (1862), 588.
102. This was a particular bee in Bayes' bonnet: 'Observe, I object to the title ef "Homœopath". Its assumption savours of sectarianism. I object to any other title than that of "physician," or at the most "physician practising Homœopathy."': Bayes, "Two Sides to a Question." A Few Observations on Mr Braithwaite's "Temperate Examination of Homœopathy" (Manchester, 1860).
103. British Medical Journal, i (1862), 576.
104. W. Bayes, Medical Terrorism in 1862 (London, 1862).
105. British Medical Journal, i (1862), 616.
106. W. Bayes, 'Medical Terrorism', British Journal of Homœopathy, 20 (1862), 420.
107. Bayes, Medical Terrorism, 3.
108. Bayes, Medical Terrorism, Ibid, 20.
109. Bayes returned to this subject in December 1862 when, following a similar incident which occurred when he had been summoned to Dublin, he published his approving Remarks upon Archbishop Whately's letter on Medical Trades-unions (London, 1863), a letter which had defended the right of medical practitioners to follow whatever system of medicine they chose. Remarks ended with an appeal to H. J. H. Bond, the Regius Professor of Physic at Cambridge, to use his position on the GMC to uphold the law, and to refuse to countenance the 'lawless persecution' of homœopathy, which Bayes held to be opposed to Christian charity, to the interests of science, and to the laws regulating the medical profession.
110. Bayes subsequently became Vice-President of the BHS, Honorary Secretary and Vice-President of the London Homœopathic Hospital (which he helped to found in 1876), and President of the British Homœopathic Congress at its Manchester meeting of 1875.
111. Bayes, Homœopathy, 14.
112. See, for example, British Medical Journal, ii (1861), 389;
113. Medical Times and Gazette, i (1864), 695.
114. British Medical Journal, i (1861), 19.
115. G. E. Paget, 'The President's Address [delivered at the 32nd Annual Meeting of the BMA]', British Medical Journal, ii (1864), 141-8.
116. G. E. Paget, 'The President's Address [delivered at the 32nd Annual Meeting of the BMA]', British Medical Journal, ii (1864), Ibid, 143.
117. G. E. Paget, 'The President's Address [delivered at the 32nd Annual Meeting of the BMA]', British Medical Journal, ii (1864), Ibid, 144. This credulity was, Paget noted, strikingly at variance with the prevalence of scepticism shown in theological matters.
118. G. E. Paget, 'The President's Address [delivered at the 32nd Annual Meeting of the BMA]', British Medical Journal, ii (1864), Ibid, 145.
119. For Simpson, see Nicholls, Homœopathy and the Medical Profession.
120. The situation in Britain was very different from that in the United States, where medical schools devoted to distinct systems of medicine were common in the mid-nineteenth century: P. Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine: the Rise of a Sovereign Profession and the Making of a Vast Industry (New York, 1982);
121. G. Rosen, The Structure of the American Medical Profession (Philadelphia, 1983).
122. See, for example, A. Digby, Making a Medical Living. Doctors and Patients in the English Market for Medicine, 1720-1911 (Cambridge, 1994)