Medical Progress and Social Reality

A Reader in Nineteenth-Century Medicine and Literature

Lilian R. Furst

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780791448045, 9780791448038
• eBook ISBN: 9780791491522
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Medical Theory, Practice & Reference

An anthology of nineteenth-century literature about medicine and medical issues.

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.

Table of contents

• Medical Progress and Social Reality: A Reader in Nineteenth-Century Medicine and Literature
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: From Speculation to Science
• 1. An Introduction to the Ethical Basisof Medical Practice: The Hippocratic Oath and Its Successors
• 2. An Old Style Doctor: An Introduction to Selections from Anthony Trollope’s Dr. Thorne
• 3. The Cult of Pathology: An Introduction to Selections from Eugène Sue’s Les Mystères de Paris
• 4. Blood-Letting and Septic Surgery: An Introduction to Selections from Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary
• 5. Germs, Drugs, Diagnoses,and Cadavers: An Introduction to Selections fromGeorge Eliot’s Middlemarch
• 6. The Laboratory and Its Products: An Introduction to Selections from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• 7. Advances toward More Scientific Practice: An Introduction to Selections from Sinclair Lewis’s Arrowsmith
• 8. Emergency: An Introduction to Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The Steel Windpipe”
• 9. Telling the TruthAn Introduction to Selections from Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks
• 10. A Poor Woman’s Plight: An Introduction to Selections from George Moore’s Esther Waters
• 11. Hands-on Medical Training: An Introduction to Selections from Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage
• 12. A Woman Doctor?: An Introduction to Selections from Sarah Orne Jewett’s A Country Doctor
• 13. A Shocking Discovery!: An Introduction to Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Doctors of Hoyland”
• 14. Starting Up in Practice: An Introduction to Selections from Daniel W. Cathell’s Book on the Physician Himself
• Further Historical and Literary Readings
• Index