Medical Progress and Social Reality: A Reader in Nineteenth-Century Medicine and Literature (Margins of Literature

by Lilian R. Furst (editor)

Medical Progress and Social Reality is an anthology of nineteenth-century literature on medicine and medical practice. Situated at the interdisciplinary juncture of medicine, history, and literature, it includes mostly fictional but also some nonfictional works by British, French, American, and Russian writers that describe the day-to-day social realities of medicine during a period of momentous change. Issues addressed in these works include the hierarchy in the profession, the use of new instruments such as the stethoscope, the advent of women doctors, the function of the hospital, and the shifting balance of power between physicians and patients. The volume provides an introductory overview of the most important aspects of medical progress in the nineteenth century, and it includes an annotated bibliography of further readings in medical history and literature. Selections from Anthony Trollope, George Eliot, Gustave Flaubert, Sarah Orne Jewett, Sinclair Lewis, Mikhail Bulgakov, and others are included, as well as the American Medical Association's 1847 Code of Ethics.

328 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[Denis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Furst's book is an anthology of different works that describe the medical profession during the period of intense changes in the nineteenth century, and two of the prominent works selected are Doctor Thorne and Middlemarch. In her introduction to the passages selected from Doctor Thorne, Furst highlights how Dr. Thorne operates in a social middle-ground that allows him to be more helpful to his patients at the cost of his individual social status, for example by dispensing medications and thus transgressing the class distinction which kept all such elements of commerce separate from the work of a physician. The selections from Middlemarch are introduced by a brief essay that highlights the social and professional circumstances that obstruct and ultimately triumph over Lydgate in his attempts to introduce scientific medical reform to the conservative provincial town. Although Furst's book does not provide very much critical analysis of its selected works, it is very useful as general resource for information about the intersection of literature, history, and medicine in the nineteenth century.