Becoming a physician : medical education in Britain, France, Germany, and the United States, 1750-1945 / Thomas Neville Bonner.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bonner, Thomas Neville.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Medical education--History.

Medical education.

History.

Physical Description:

xii, 412 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, 1995.

Summary:

Written by eminent education scholar Thomas Neville Bonner, Becoming a Physician is a groundbreaking, comprehensive history of Western medical education. The only work of its kind, it covers the United States, Great Britain, France, and Germany. Challenging previous portrayals of medical education as a story of steady and sometimes heroic progress, Bonner bases his study within the context of social, political, and intellectual transformations that occurred in Europe and North America between the Enlightenment and Nazi Germany. Comparative in focus, Becoming a Physician also reveals both the similarities and differences in how medical knowledge has been disseminated within the four countries and how these approaches have reflected and affected the individual cultures. Viewing the late eighteenth century as a critical watershed in the development of medical education, Bonner begins by describing how earlier practices evolved in the 1800s with the introduction of clinical practices. He then traces the growth of laboratory teaching in the nineteenth century and the twentieth-century preoccupation with establishing a university standard of medical education. Throughout this fascinating work, Bonner pays particular attention to the students themselves. He not only depicts the changing nature of the medical population, but he also chronicles their daily lives and discusses the religious, gender, class, and racial restrictions imposed upon them. Highly readable and sweeping in scope, Becoming a Physician challenges readers to look at this vital subject from new perspectives.

Contents:

1. An Uncertain Enterprise: Learning to Heal in the Enlightenment 12

The Breakdown of the Medieval Order 14

Varieties of Healers 16

Serving the Rural Population 22

The Role of the State 26

2. Changing Patterns of Medical Study Before 1800 33

Medicine as University Study 34

Other Sites of Medical Study 43

Rapprochement of Medicine and Surgery 56

The Shape of Things to Come 58

3. Lives of Medical Students and Their Teachers (Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century) 61

Social Class and Medical Study 63

The Chorus of Advice 70

A Portrait of a Student of Medicine 72

Classroom and Hospital 80

Vexations of Academic Life 81

The Medical Teacher 89

Across National Boundaries 98

4. The Clinical Impulse and National Response, 1780-1830 103

What Is a Clinic? 104

The Revolutionary Changes in France 106

Hospital or Policlinic? 109

Clinical Teaching in Britain and America 114

Outside the Walls of Academe 119

Military Medicine and the Clinic 123

Glimpses of Clinical Teaching 125

Contrasts in French Clinical Training 128

Practical Teaching in Anglo-America 132

Paris, the Clinic, and History 136

5. Science and Medical Study: Early Nineteenth Century 142

The New Sciences and the Old Curriculum 145

The Spread of "Morbid Anatomy," 146

The Beginnings of Physiology as a Medical Subject 151

Medical Study and National Differences 156

6. A Bird's Eye View of Medical Education in 1830 158

The German Enterprise in Medical Education 159

The French System: Comparisons and Contrasts 163

An Overview of Medical Education in Great Britain 166

North American Medical Training in 1830 175

7. Toward New Goals for Medical Education, 1830-1850 182

The Struggle for Change in Britain and America 182

The Aims of Reformers on the Continent 185

Germany Advances the Single Standard 187

The Reform Movement in France 190

Creating a Safe, General Practitioner in Great Britain 193

Striving for Change in the United States 195

Medical Teachers at Midcentury 200

8. Between Clinic and Laboratory: Students and Teaching at Midcentury 203

Social Distinctions in Preparation for Medicine 204

Women and Medical Education Circa 1850 207

The Lives of Medical Students 213

A Changing Curriculum 217

Beyond the Classroom 226

9. The Spread of Laboratory Teaching, 1850-1870 231

Why Germany? 232

The Laboratory as an Extension of Practical Teaching 236

The Spread of Laboratory Teaching, 1850-1870 239

The Teaching Laboratory in France 241

Anglo-American Teaching and the Laboratory 244

10. The Laboratory Versus the Clinic: The Fight for the Curriculum, 1870-1890 251

The Axis of the 1870s 252

The German University at Its Zenith 253

Reappraising Medical Training in France 255

The 1870s in Great Britain 259

America in the 1870s 264

The Fight for the Curriculum 268

Conflict in Germany 269

The Clinic Versus the Laboratory in Great Britain 275

Resistance to Laboratory Science in America 276

The French Clinic and the "Auxiliary" Sciences 278

After 1890 278

11. Toward a University Standard of Medical Education, 1890-1920 280

The Persistence of National Differences 281

The Systems at the Fin de Siecle 285

Universities, Laboratory Science, and Medicine 288

Medical Education and the American University 291

The Goal of University Teaching in Britain 295

Science, the Clinic, and Flexner 298

The War and Medical Education, 1914-1920 306

12. Changing Student Populations in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century 309

Changing Expectations and Rising Costs 309

The Limited Admission of Women to Medicine 312

Anti-Semitism and Medical Study 315

The Student Experience 316

Access to Patients and Clinics 318

13. Consolidation, Stability, and New Upheavals, 1920-1945 325

The Aftermath of War 326

Between the Wars 327

British Efforts at Change in the 1920s 330

The Continent: Echoes of Old Battles 332

The Hardening of National Differences 336

Students, Depression, and Political Turmoil 337

Women's Study Between the Wars 338

Anti-Semitism in Germany and Elsewhere 340

African Americans and Medical Study 342

War and Medical Study: 1939-1945 343.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0195062981

OCLC:

31520060