Skip Navigation

Social History of Medicine 1989 2(1):1-33; doi:10.1093/shm/2.1.1
© 1989 by Society for the Social History of Medicine
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by COOK, H. J.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

Articles

Policing the Health of London: the College of Physicians and the Early Stuart Monarchy

HAROLD J. COOK *

SUMMARY While histories of public health sugggest that government intervention British is a product of the later nineteenth country, the work of George Rosen suggested that interventionist policies on behalf of the public good are to be associated with particular political outlooks. He pointed to the connection between ‘absolutism’ and medical police in Europe as the foundation for later public-health policies. with Rosen‘s ideas in mind, we can see that under the early Stuarts there was indeed a growing association between government policy and medical police. While early Stuart medical police developed from ad hoc measures rather than a conscious programme, it was nevertheless premised upon principle of positive sovereignty on behalf of the public good that lay at the root of Stuary ideology. Working through the court physicians,(especially Theodore Turquet de Mayerne) and the London Copllege of Physicians, the monarchy supported or created policies to regulate medical practitioners and corporations, medicines and practices, and to help insitute plans for London to prevent or ameliorate plague eoidemics that helped stimulate plans for the New Incorporation. When opposition to monatchial polices took force in the early 1640s, measures for medical police were one of the grivances against the crown, and they were ended, not to be institured again until the nineteenth century

Keywords: apothecaries; College of Physicians; law; London; Mayerne; Medical police; plague; profession; public health; Stuarts; medical

* Department of the History of Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer:
Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.