Physicians In The 19th Century

The powers of physicians were limited in the 19th century by social, economic, and scientific factors, and as a result medicine was prevented from taking its place as a high status profession. The major contributors to these limitations include: the underwhelming ability to cure patients, lack of high knowledge exclusively help by physicians, and in America, various objections to regulating medicine. Doctors competed for rich clientele in order to supplement their income. Being in a lower class than many of their patients hindered medical knowledge. This was due to several reasons. Laws of propriety prevent proper examinations, useful discoveries were not shared, patient’s narrative was used to explain disease, and extreme treatments were used at the patient’s insistence of tangible evidence that some event was taking place inside them (Waller, “Bedside Medicine in the 18th Century). Combined, these stopped progress in medicine. Even after the hospital reforms in France, these issues still were present in private practice.
After the 1789 Revolution in France, hospitals in the state was reformed in a way that allowed medical knowledge to advance. The ideals of France later spread across Europe and was known as Paris medicine. The most …show more content…
Other people outside this small sect saw “Any attempt to create a privileged monopoly… as a violation of the egalitarian spirit of the American Revolution” (Waller, “Doctors on Horseback”). The government was therefore not persuaded to limit the number of people entering this trade, it went against the pillars it was built on. There were also scandals involving medical students and grave robbing, which gave them a bad reputation. In addition to this the educated did not make research a priority, so original scientific work was not being produced. The combined force that these situations created worked to keep physicians from achieving a high