Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences Advance Access originally published online on November 15, 2006
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 2007 62(2):125-140; doi:10.1093/jhmas/jrl046
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Richard Wiseman and the Medical Practitioners of Restoration London
Correspondence: * Department of History, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599-3195. Email: mcvaugh{at}email.unc.edu
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Abstract |
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The case histories used to illustrate Richard Wiseman's Several Chirurgicall Treatises (1676) reveal not only pathological and therapeutic detail but much information about the range of occupational relationships between Wiseman and the many London physicians with whom he collaborated on cases (more than forty are identified in an appendix to this article). His interaction with the two physicians with whom he had most to do, Francis Prujean and Walter Needham, exemplifies the extremes of such relationships. With Prujean, an older man and a leading figure in the College of Physicians, a formal and hierarchical relationship was observed, in which distinct occupational lines were maintained. In the case of Needham, a younger physician whose devotion to anatomical study was shared by Wiseman, a friendship developed between the two men that carried over into practice and tended to break down occupational and intellectual distinctions, so that Needham sometimes involved himself in Wiseman's surgical practice, and Wiseman initiated medical research later reported by Needham to the Royal Society.
Key Words: Richard Wiseman • Walter Needham • Francis Prujean • surgery • case histories • professional relationships • Royal Society
An earlier version of this paper was given at a session honoring Jerome J. Bylebyl at the meetings of the American Association for the History of Medicine, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 4 May 2006.