Contagionism Catches On

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Margaret DeLacy

   Pages 1-18

3. Fever Theory and British Contagionism in the Mid-Eighteenth Century

   • Margaret DeLacy

   Pages 19-54

4. Contagionism after 1750: John Pringle and James Lind

   • Margaret DeLacy

   Pages 55-87

5. Animate Disease after 1750: Exanthemata Viva

   • Margaret DeLacy

   Pages 89-123

6. Counting and Classifying Diseases: Contagion, Enumeration and Cullen’s Nosology

   • Margaret DeLacy

   Pages 125-164

7. John Haygarth and the Campaign for Contagion

   • Margaret DeLacy

   Pages 165-205

8. Contagionism, Politics and the Public in Manchester, 1780–1795

   • Margaret DeLacy

   Pages 207-241

9. Institutionalizing Contagionism: The Manchester House of Recovery

   • Margaret DeLacy

   Pages 243-281

10. Back Matter

    Pages 283-347

    PDF

This book shows how contagionism evolved in eighteenth century Britain and describes the consequences of this evolution. By the late eighteenth century, the British medical profession was divided between traditionalists, who attributed acute diseases to the interaction of internal imbalances with external factors such as weather, and reformers, who blamed contagious pathogens. The reformers, who were often “outsiders,” English Nonconformists or men born outside England, emerged from three coincidental transformations: transformation in medical ideas, in the nature and content of medical education, and in the sort of men who became physicians. Adopting contagionism led them to see acute diseases as separate entities, spurring a process that reoriented medical research, changed communities, established new medical institutions, and continues to the present day. 

• contagionism
• 18th century Britain
• social history
• medical history
• Linnaeus

“The book consists of nine densely packed and detailed chapters, including the introduction and conclusion. … Each chapter covers new areas in the jagged road leading to contagionism and its competitors. … DeLacys sources are international, with material in English, Latin, Italian and French. A very careful historian, she notes bibliographical mistakes that scholars have made … . The source notes contain much of interest and should not be skipped. Margaret DeLacy passed the stimulus test with flying colors.” (Shelby Shapiro, The Independent Scholar, Vol. 8, December, 2021)

“This book is a study of a revolution in pathology that occurred in Britain in the second half of the eighteenth century. … Margaret DeLacy’s study is a valuable contribution to the existing literature.” (Laurence Brockliss, Isis, Vol. 109 (4), December, 2018)

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• Portland, USA

  Margaret DeLacy

Margaret DeLacy is the author of The Germ of an Idea: Contagionism, Religion and Society in Britain, 1660-1730 (Palgrave MacMillan, 2016), Prison Reform in Lancashire, 1700-1850: A Study in County Administration (Stanford University Press, 1986), and articles on medical history. She is an independent scholar in Portland Oregon.