Surgery, Skin and Syphilis

Daniel Turner’s London (1667-1741)
Erscheinungsjahr 1999
ISBN: 978-90-420-0526-6
Verlag: Brill | Rodopi

Buch, Englisch, Band 54, 316 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 590 g

Reihe: Clio Medica

Enlightenment London surgeon. Examining his personal, professional, and genteel achievements enhances our understanding of the boundary between surgeons and physicians in Enlightenment 'marketplace' practice. Turner's pioneering writing on skin disease, De Morbis Cutaneis, emphasizes the skin's role as a physical and professional boundary between university-educated physicians who treated internal disease and apprentice-trained surgeons relegated to the care of external disorders. Turner also argued that a pregnant woman's imagination could be transferred to her unborn child, imprinting its skin with various marks and deformities. This stance sparked a major pamphlet war between Turner and London physician James Blondel, raising this phenomenon from a folk belief to a chief concern of Enlightenment natural philosophy. Turner's career-long crusade against quackery and his voluminous writings on syphilis, a common 'surgical' disorder, provide a refined view into distinctions between orthodox and quack practices in 18th-Century London. Turner, long viewed as a pioneer in British dermatology, also holds the Anglo-American distinction of receiving a medical degree from Yale, the first such degree offered from Colonial America.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wilson, Philip K.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wissenschafts- und Universitätsgeschichte
• Medizin | Veterinärmedizin Medizin | Public Health | Pharmazie | Zahnmedizin Medizin, Gesundheitswesen Geschichte der Medizin

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements

List of Figures and Tables

Brief Chronology of Daniel Turner's Life and Writings

1. Surgery in History

2. Entering the Surgical Trade

3. The Surgical Art

4. Surgical Perspectives of the Body with a Special Focus on Skin

5. A Culture of Reform. 6. Dispute over the Power of the Maternal Imagination

7. Exposing the 'Secret Disease': Recognizing and Treating Syphilis

8. Self-Styled Gentleman in London's Middle Class

9. Aftermath

Appendix 1. Vernacular Surgical Treatises 1685-1745

Appendix 2. Constitution of the Benevolent Society for the Improvement of Chyrurgery, &c. (1704)

Appendix 3. List of the Books Turner Gave to Yale College

Bibliography

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Philip K. Wilson, MA (John Hopkins University) and Ph.D. (University College London) recently joined the 'Great Books' faculty at Shimer College in Waukegan, Illinois after having taught the history of science at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri. He edited the five-volume, Childbirth: Changing Ideas and Practices in Britain and America from 1600 to the Present (Garland, 1996). Currently Wilson is pursuing biographical research on the Swiss-American geologist and geographer, Arnold Guyot and American eugenicist, Harry Laughlin. Wilson lives with his wife, Janice, and sons, James and Douglas, in Libertyville, Illinois.