Making Medicine Scientific: John Burdon Sanderson and the Culture of Victorian Science

by Terrie M. Romano

Overview

In Victorian Britain scientific medicine encompassed an array of activities, from laboratory research and the use of medical technologies through the implementation of sanitary measures that drained canals and prevented the adulteration of milk and bread. Although most practitioners supported scientific medicine, controversies arose over where decisions should be made, in the laboratory or in the clinic, and by whom—medical practitioners or research scientists. In this study, Terrie Romano uses the life and eclectic career of Sir John Burdon Sanderson (1829-1905) to explore the Victorian campaign to make medicine scientific.

Sanderson, in many ways a prototypical Victorian, began his professional work as a medical practitioner and Medical Officer of Health in London, then became a pathologist and physiologist and eventually the Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford. His career illustrates the widespread support during this era for a medicine based on science. In Making Medicine Scientific, Romano argues this support was fueled by the optimism characteristic of the Victorian age, when the application of scientific methods to a range of social problems was expected to achieve progress. Dirt and disease as well as the material culture of experimentation —from frogs to photographs—represent the tangible context in which Sanderson lived and worked. Romano's detailed portrayal reveals a fascinating figure who embodied the untidy nature of the Victorian age's shift from an intellectual system rooted in religion to one based on science.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801868979
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	06/04/2002
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.83(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Terrie M. Romano is working for the Canadian government. She is currently working on a history of carnivorous plants.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: From Evangelical to Medical Officer of Health
Chapter 1: Choosing Medicine
Chapter 2: Medical Officer of Health
Part II: Making a Career in Medical Research
Chapter 3: Before the Germ Theory: The Cattle Plague of 1865-1866 and the State Support of Pathology
Chapter 4: From Clinician-Researcher to Professional Physiologist: Making the Pulse Visible
Chapter 5: Becoming a Research Pathologist: The Rise of Laboratory Medicine in Britain
Chapter 6: Focusing on Physiology: Capturing the Venus's-Flytrap's Electrical Activity
Part II: The Medical Sciences: Critics and Allies
Chapter 7: Physicians, Anti vivisectionists, and the Failure of the Oxford School of Physiology
Chapter 8: A Corner Turned? Experimental Medicine in Late Victorian Britain
List of Abbreviations
Appendix: Researchers Associated with Burdon Sanderson in Britain
Notes
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Romano treads a sensible line between an older literature which saw the rise of the science establishment within medicine as natural and positive, and a newer (equally partisan) interpretation which seeks to reduce science in nineteenth-century medicine to rhetoric and ideology.
—William F. Bynum, Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College, London

William F. Bynum

Romano treads a sensible line between an older literature which saw the rise of the science establishment within medicine as natural and positive, and a newer (equally partisan) interpretation which seeks to reduce science in nineteenth-century medicine to rhetoric and ideology.

Editorial Reviews

An important and highly readable life of John Burdon Sanderson . . . [including an] exquisitely textured account of his projects . . . Romano's beautifully written biography deftly integrates Burdon Sanderson and his chosen intellectual milieu.
—E. A. Heaman, Canadian Bulletin of Medical History

A full-length study of this influential figure in British medical science has finally appeared . . . Libraries will surely want to add it to their holdings.
—L. Margaret Barnett, PhD, Journal of the American Medical Association

Romano has performed a brilliant service for medical historians . . . a useful entry in the canon of science and public health, this little book is an antidote to the hubris of recent claims of accomplishment.
—Choice

Making Medicine Scientific is a carefully researched and written work . . . It enlares our view of the power-struggle for autonomy over medicine by both doctors at the bedside and scientists in the laboratory and extends the picture of the relationship between science and medicine in the late nineteenth century.
—Stephanie Snow, Institute of Historical Research

From the Publisher

Making Medicine Scientific is a carefully researched and written work . . . It enlares our view of the power-struggle for autonomy over medicine by both doctors at the bedside and scientists in the laboratory and extends the picture of the relationship between science and medicine in the late nineteenth century.

Institute of Historical Research - Stephanie Snow

An important and highly readable life of John Burdon Sanderson . . . [including an] exquisitely textured account of his projects . . . Romano's beautifully written biography deftly integrates Burdon Sanderson and his chosen intellectual milieu.

Canadian Bulletin of Medical History - E. A. Heaman

A full-length study of this influential figure in British medical science has finally appeared . . . Libraries will surely want to add it to their holdings.

Journal of the American Medical Association - L. Margaret Barnett

Romano has performed a brilliant service for medical historians . . . a useful entry in the canon of science and public health, this little book is an antidote to the hubris of recent claims of accomplishment.

Choice

Making Medicine Scientific is a carefully researched and written work... It enlares our view of the power-struggle for autonomy over medicine by both doctors at the bedside and scientists in the laboratory and extends the picture of the relationship between science and medicine in the late nineteenth century.

— Stephanie Snow

Institute of Historical Research

A full-length study of this influential figure in British medical science has finally appeared... Libraries will surely want to add it to their holdings.

— L. Margaret Barnett, PhD

Journal of the American Medical Association

An important and highly readable life of John Burdon Sanderson... [including an] exquisitely textured account of his projects... Romano's beautifully written biography deftly integrates Burdon Sanderson and his chosen intellectual milieu.

— E. A. Heaman

Canadian Bulletin of Medical History

Romano treads a sensible line between an older literature which saw the rise of the science establishment within medicine as natural and positive,and a newer (equally partisan interpretation which seeks to reduce science in nineteenth-century medicine to rhetoric and ideology.

William F. Bynum

Viewing the career of Sir John Scott Burdon Sanderson (1829-1905) as a perfect window through which to study the Victorian efforts to bring scientific methodologies to the practice and study of medicine, the author follows the trajectory of his career as he moved from medical practitioner to laboratory researcher. The ups and downs of his career demonstrate the Victorian controversy over whether medical decisions should be made in the clinic or the laboratory. The author further argues that his choice of a career in the first place helps demonstrate the increasing secularization of the era. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR