Becoming a Physician: Medical Education in Great Britain, France, Germany, and the United States, 1750-1945 / Edition 1

by Thomas Neville Bonner

Overview

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. Comparative in focus, the narrative unfolds within the context of social, political, and intellectual transformations that occurred in Europe and North America between the Enlightenment and Nazi Germany. Viewing the late eighteenth century as a 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, Bonner pays particular attention to the students, chronicling their daily lives and discussing changes in the medical school population and the various biases— class, gender, racial, and religious—students and prospective students faced.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195062984
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	01/04/1996
Pages:	424
Product dimensions:	9.51(w) x 6.42(h) x 1.29(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Wayne State University

Table of Contents

	Introduction	3
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
14.	A Closing Word	346
	Bibliography	349
	Index	405

Editorial Reviews

"A scholarly and comprehensive analysis, Bonner's book is highly recommended for academic and medical libraries."—Library Journal

"An extremely valuable addition to the history of medical education....Highly recommended."—CHOICE

"[A] superb book...[A] rarity, a genuinely comparative study....Clear, concise and comprehensive, this study will long remain definitive."—Nature

"Until now, no single author, to my knowledge, has possessed the intellectual bravery and linguistic skills needed to undertake a study spanning centuries and cultures....In addition to its impressive chronological and geographical range, Becoming A Physician possesses other strengths....for readers interested in seeing the big picture, Becoming A Physician offers by far the best available now."—JAMA Books

"This grandly researched and thoughtful study achieves a difficult goal—an integrated comparative study, rather than several unconnected national histories bound in a single volume."—The Journal of Interdisciplinary History

"An erudite volume based on the study of a remarkable range of archival and printed primary sources....[The book] is an outstanding contribution to the historical study of medical education...breaking new analytical ground."—Albion

"This book is a valuable source of information that provides an important historical perspective."—Modern Pathology

"[The book] is, ostensibly, a truly important work, and may be one of the most significant works in medical historiography to appear in recent times. It is a remarkable historical tableau, and Bonner presents the evolving and eclectic patterns with extraordinary detail as he skillfully weaves together the British, French, German, and American experiences."—Bookman's Review

"This is a densely packed, informative book to which justice can never be done in a short review. This will be a book that all historians of nineteenth-and twentieth-century medicine will continually refer to as the standard authority on medical education."—Journal of the History of Medicine

"This is a well told history....The author has provided and engaging account of studying medicine at different times in different places."—Integrative Physiological and Behavioral Science

"Thomas Neville Bonner's Becoming a Physician is a masterly survey of medical education in Europe and the United States during the transition to modernity....Bonner's very fine book interweaves intellectual, social, and institutional history in a broad but well-balanced account. His work will be the essential starting point from now on for the study of modern medical education."—The Journal of American History

"This readable, scholarly book presents a cross-cultural comparison of medical education over a period of two centuries."—Middlebury Magazine

From the Publisher

The author, a distinguished scholar and university administrator, complements his earlier To the Ends of the Earth: Women's Search for Education in Medicine (Harvard Univ. Pr., 1992) with a broader look at medical education. Bonner traces how such education evolved in four Western countries since the Enlightenment as their respective medical establishments gradually incorporated advances in natural sciences and developed a balance among theoretical, clinical, and laboratory approaches to instruction. Not merely an institutional study, Bonner's monograph describes the changing but always exhausting experiences of medical students and the glacial advances of women and minorities as they sought access to medical training. A scholarly and comprehensive analysis, Bonner's book is highly recommended for academic and medical libraries.-Kathy Arsenault, Univ. of South Florida-St. Petersburg Lib.

Library Journal

Bonner (history, emeritus, Wayne State University) describes the development of medical education between the Enlightenment and the Second World War. Comparing the training physicians received in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and the United States, Bonner considers differences in instruction according to their social, political, historical, and intellectual contexts. Originally published by Oxford University Press, 1995. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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