Medicine and Society in America 1660-1860.

Abstract

In recent years medical history has come of age in this country. This scholarly study of medicine in America between 1660 and 1860 illustrates in great detail the basis upon which modern medicine was able to develop. The origins of the medical profession in this country, its extremely limited scope and primitive methods, as well as its meager status, are set forth with disarming clarity. One might almost say that the rise of the medical profession as we know it in this country now was a direct effect of the reforms resulting from Abraham Flexner's Report of 1910, though there were many important forerunners, as Jarcho has shown so well. The rise of university medicine began with the establishment of full-time clinical and basic science faculties, the equal of those of other university graduate schools. The largely proprietary methods of teaching, the very meager specific therapy which the best physician