Abstract
The cluster of ideas we now call ‘the medical marketplace’ comes from the intersection of three different historiographic strands in the mid-1980s and the 1990s. First, the medical marketplace became a kind of shorthand for a critique of older ideas about the structures and regulation of the medical profession. The old narrative was of a tripartite London-centred hierarchy of rank and value: physicians, surgeons and apothecaries, each assigned specific healing functions that minimized competition between them. The work of Harold Cook and Margaret Pelling demolished this older view.1 Taken together, these two painted a picture of a College of Physicians that was neither particularly powerful nor controlled medical practice. In the 1970s, medical sociologists such as Nicholas Jewson and Ivan Waddington had reminded us that doctors competed with each other for patients, often in crowded markets, and Pelling in particular emphasized the variable nature of medical work and underlined its economic aspects.2
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Notes
Cook, Decline; M. Pelling, ‘Medical Practice in Early Modern England: Trade or Profession?’ in W. Prest ed., The Professions in Early Modern England (1987).
R. Porter ed., Patients and Practitioners (Cambridge, 1985); Beier, Sufferers;
R. & D. Porter, In Sickness and in Health (1988); Porter, Progress.
R. Porter, English Society in the Eighteenth Century (Harmondsworth, 1982).
P. Langford, A Polite and Commercial People (Oxford, 1989);
J. Brewer, The Sinews of Power, (New York, 1989);
J. Brewer & R. Porter eds, Consumption and the World of Goods (1994).
A. Bermingham & J. Brewer eds, The Consumption of Culture, 1600–1800 (1995);
N. McKendrick, J. Brewer & J.H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society (Bloomington, 1982).
Porter, Health; W. F. Bynum & R. Porter eds, Medical Fringe and Medical Orthodoxy (1987).
P. Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance (Oxford, 1989).
Face-to-face relations are emphasized in D. Evenden, The Midwives of Seventeenth-Century London (Cambridge, 1999). On earlier uses of print: Pelling, Conflicts, 97–8.
R. Chartier, ‘Culture as Appropriation: Popular Cultural Uses in Early Modern France’, in S. L. Kaplan ed., Understanding Popular Culture (Berlin, 1984). See also: R. Scribner, ‘Is a History of Popular Culture Possible?’, History of European Ideas, 10 (1989).
D. Upton & J. M. Vlach eds, Common Places (Athens, GA, 1986);
H. Glassie, Folk Housing in Middle Virginia (Knoxville, 1975).
The ESTC was originally the Eighteenth-Century Short-Title Catalogue, and now encompasses Wing and the STC as the English Short-Title Catalogue. Pioneering scholarship on popular medical works includes: C. Webster, The Great Instauration (1975), esp. 265–74;
P. Slack, ‘Mirrors of Health and Treasures of Poor Men: The Uses of the Vernacular Medical Literature of Tudor England’, in C. Webster ed., Health, Medicine, and Mortality in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1979);
C. E. Rosenberg, ‘Medical Text and Social Context: William Buchan’s Domestic Medicine’, BHM, 57 (1983); R. Porter, “The Secrets of Generation Display’d”: Aristotle’s Master-Piece in Eighteenth-Century England’, in R. P. Maccubbin ed., ‘Tis Nature’s Fault (Cambridge, 1987).
On almanacs, see L. Curth, ‘The Commercialisation of Medicine in the Popular Press: English Almanacs 1640–1700’, Seventeenth Century, 17 (2002); idem., ‘The Medical Content of English Almanacs 1640–1700’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 2001); B. Capp, Astrology and the Popular Press, 1500–1800 (1979);
T. Horrocks, ‘Rules, Remedies, and Regimens: Almanacs and Popular Medicine in Early America’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 2003);
D. McCarter, ‘Of Physick and Astronomy’ Almanacs and Popular Medicine in Massachusetts, 1700–1764 (Ph.D. thesis, University of Iowa, 2000).
D. Cressy, Literacy and the Social Order (Cambridge, 1980); T. Laqueur, ‘The Cultural Origins of Popular Literacy in England, 1500–1850’, Oxford Review of Education, 2 (1976); M. Spufford, ‘First Steps in Literacy: The Reading and Writing Experiences of the Humblest Seventeenth-Century Spiritual Autobiographers’, Social History, 4 (1979).
P. Earle, A City Full of People (1994), 36–8, 119–121.
See A. Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England, 1500–1700 (Oxford, 2000);
B. R. Smith, The Acoustic World of Early Modern England (Chicago, 1999).
J. Lackington, Memoirs of the First Forty-Five Years of the Life of James Lackington (1792), 91.
M. Spufford, Small Books and Pleasant Histories (Cambridge, 1981);
T. Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety 1550–1640 (Cambridge, 1991); Chartier, ‘Culture as Appropriation’.
On Hooke’s library, see L. Rostenberg, The Library of Robert Hooke (Santa Monica, 1989).
On the book trade, see A. Johns, The Nature of the Book (Chicago, 1998);
D. F. McKenzie, The London Book Trade in the Later Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1976);
A. Halasz, The Marketplace of Print (Cambridge, 1997). More generally, see: The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain (Cambridge, 1998–2005), vols 3–5.
These numbers were generated from a search of the online ESTC on 30 January 2001. As the ESTC adds new entries, the totals will change, but the overall picture has long been known. See, for example, N. Smith, Literature and Revolution (New Haven, 1994), 23–31;
F. S. Siebert, Freedom of the Press in England 1476–1776 (Urbana, 1952), 165–263; J. Barnard, ‘London Publishing, 1640–1660: Crisis, Continuity, and Innovation’, Book History, 4 (2001). Many thanks to Yvonne Noble for this reference. For a broader time span, see: Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, vol. 4, esp. 779–785.
J. Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge, 2003);
D. Freist, Governed by Opinion (1997);
D. F. McKenzie, Bibliography and History (Oxford, 1988).
On newsbooks, see J. Raymond, The Invention of the Newspaper (Oxford, 1996); idem., ed., News, Newspapers, and Society in Early Modern Britain (1999).
Castore Durante, A Family-Herbal or Treasure of Health (1686), Wing D2682B, Huntington Library, San Marino, 379990; Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington (hereafter Folger), G2165.
T. Brugis, The Marrow of Physick (1640), STC 3931; Folger, STC 3931. Hughes’s seemingly compulsive reinscribing of his name in the book is not unusual — see, for example, the Folger’s copy of Kenelm Digby’s Choice and Experimented Receipts in Physick and Chirurgery (1668), Wing D1423A, Folger, 151–446q.
Jane Sharp, The Midwives Book (1671), Wing S2969B. See ODNB, s.n., and Hobby’s edition of Sharp (Oxford, 1999).
On Culpeper, see F. N. L. Poynter, ‘Nicholas Culpeper and His Books’, JHM, 17 (1962); idem., ‘Nicholas Culpeper and the Paracelsians’, in Poynter ed., Science, Medicine and Society in the Renaissance (New York, 1972), 201–220; Webster, Great Instauration, 268–73. M. R. McCarl, ‘Publishing the Works of Nicholas Culpeper, Astrological Herbalist and Translator of Latin Medical Works in Seventeenth-Century London’, Canadian Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 13 (1996). Unfortunately, I have not been able to consult J. Sanderson, ‘Nicholas Culpeper and the Book Trade’, (Ph.D. thesis, University of Leeds, 1999). Many thanks to Yvonne Noble for this reference.
See also B. Woolley, Heal Thyself (New York, 2004).
W. M., The Queen’s Closet Opened. Incomparable Secrets in Physick, Chirurgery, Preserving, Candying, and Cookery; as They were Presented to the Qveen by the Most Experienced Persons of OurTimes (1655), Wing M96; Thomason E.1519[1]; Elizabeth Grey, Countess of Kent, A Choice Manual of Rare and Select Secrets in Physick and Chyrurgery (1653), Wing K310B. On these texts, see L. Hunter, ‘Women and Domestic Medicine: Lady Experimenters, 1570–1620’, in L. Hunter and S. Hutton eds, Women, Science and Medicine 1500–1700 (Stroud, 1997).
George Cheyne’s best-sellers were, Essay on Health and Long Life (1724), and The English Malady (1733). On Cheyne see, Shapin, ‘Trusting George Cheyne’, and, A. Guerrini, Obesity and Depression in the Enlightenment (Norman, 2000). On Wesley’s Primitive Physick (1747), see D. Madden, ‘Contemporary Reaction to John Wesley’s Primitive Physic’, SHM, 17 (2004); idem, ‘Medicine and Moral Reform: The Place of Practical Piety in John Wesley’s Art of Physic’, Church History, 73 (2004);
A. Wesley Hill, John Wesley among the Physicians (1958). On Buchan, see Rosenberg, ‘Medical Text and Social Context’; C. J. Lawrence, ‘William Buchan: Medicine Laid Open’, MH (1975).
On such works, see, J. K. Stine, ‘Opening Closets: The Discovery of Household Medicine in Early Modern England’ (Ph.D. thesis, Stanford University, 1996);
E. Leong, ‘Medical Recipe Collections in Seventeenth-Century England: Knowledge, Text and Gender’ (D. Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 2005);
A. Rankin, ‘Medicine for the Uncommon Woman: Experience, Experiment, and Exchange in Early Modern Germany’ (Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 2005);
S. Pennell, ‘The Material Culture of Food in Early Modern England, circa 1650–1750’ (D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1997).
See M. E. Fissell, Vernacular Bodies (Oxford, 2004) for more on Culpeper’s epistemology and politics.
Kenelm Digby, The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digbie Kt. (1669), Wing D1427, ‘To the Reader’.
John Pechey, The Compleat Midwife’s Practice Enlarged (1697)
Wing P1022; Thomas Muffet, Healths Improvement (1655), Wing M2382, Thomason E.835[16];
M. Bromfield, A Brief Discovery of the True Causes, Symptoms and Effects of That Most Reigning Disease the Scurvie (1672), Wing B4884H;
Charles Peter, A Description of the Venereal Disease (1678), Wing P1682.
On the continued vitality of manuscript circulation, see H. Love, Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford, 1993).
John Archer, Secrets Disclosed of Consumptions (1684), Wing A3610. On the London market for cures for VD,
see K. Siena, Venereal Disease, Hospitals, and the Urban Poor (Rochester, 2004), 30–61.
P. K. Wilson, Surgery, Skin, and Syphilis (Amsterdam, 1999), 174–6.
On the Anodyne Necklace, see F. Doherty, A Study in Eighteenth-Century Advertising Methods (Lewiston, 1992).
R. Porter, “‘Laying Aside Any Private Advantage”: John Marten and Venereal Disease’, in L. Merians ed., The Secret Malady: Venereal Disease in Eighteenth-Century Britain and France (Lexington, 1996).
Porter, ‘Laying Aside’, 66 n31; D. Foxon, Libertine Literature in England, 1660–1745 (New Hyde Park, 1965), 31.
See L. Gowing, Common Bodies (New Haven, 2004);
Y. Bar-On, ‘Neighbours and Gossip in Early Modern Gynaecology’, in W. de Blécourt and C. Usborne eds, Cultural Approaches to the History of Medicine (2004).
L. Brockliss and C. Jones, The Medical World of Early Modern France (Oxford, 1997);
G. Pomata, Contracting a Cure (Baltimore, 1998);
D. Gentilcore, Healers and Healing in Early Modern Italy (Manchester, 1998).
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Fissell, M.E. (2007). The Marketplace of Print. In: Jenner, M.S.R., Wallis, P. (eds) Medicine and the Market in England and its Colonies, c. 1450–c. 1850. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230591462_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230591462_6
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