Professionalism and the boundaries of control: pharmacists, physicians and dangerous substances in Canada, 1840-1908.

Abstract

In the drive for the consolidation of professional authority, physicians in the nineteenth century sought to exert control over all associated occupations, and weaken the influence of competitors. Many historians have chronicled this process, as doctors and their associations sought to proscribe or eliminate competitors such as homeopaths, eclectics, chiropractors and Thomsonians. Others have explored how physicians sought to subjugate allied occupations such as nursing, radiation technology and physical therapy. Such studies consider power struggles in two contexts. First, doctors could and wanted to function without the interference of others in the health industry. Second, doctors sought to enforce a power structure that placed them at the top with all the other health care occupations beneath them, dependent upon the activities of the physicians to maintain their livelihoods. In both contexts, external factors and internal exigencies shaped the future identity of all occupational groups.