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Social History of Medicine 1990 3(3):369-386; doi:10.1093/shm/3.3.369
© 1990 by Society for the Social History of Medicine
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Eighteenth-Century Medical Practice: A Case Study of Bradford Wilmer, Surgeon of Coventry, 1737–1813

JOAN LANE*

*Centre for the Study of Social History, University of Warwick Coventry CV4 7AL

SUMMARY Nineteenth-century views of Georgian medicine were generally uncomplimentary, criticisms it is difficult to refute for apparent lack of original sources on provincial practice and practitioners, especially the range of patients and conditions they actually treated. The data that has been discovered about Bradford Wilmer of Coventry suggests a different picture of a practitioner. His career covered most aspects of eighteenth-century provincial medicine but, quite exceptionally, he was also the author of two works on surgery and one on toxic plants, as well as running a four-man group practice. He participated in two murder trials, one of which, Captain Donellan's, was a contemporary cause célèbre. Politically a high Tory, he became wealthy by speculative investment and four good marriages, as well as by medical practice, but performed poor-law duties throughout his career. He had trained at St Bartholomew's under Sharp and Pott, then practised in Coventry for forty years but maintained an extensive network of professional contacts, corresponding with many British medical contemporaries. His publications have a strongly practical tone and are based chiefly on his midland patients. Not afraid of controversy, he appeared against John Hunter in court in 1781 and disagreed in print with eminent surgical authorities.

Keywords: Coventry; medical author; medical expert witness; medical partnership; medical practitioner; poor-law medical practice; provincial medical practice; surgeons; Warwickshire


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