The Imperial Makings of Medical Work: Peter Johnstone Freyer and the Practice of Genitourinary Medicine in Britain and the Raj, c. 1875–1921

Abstract

Abstract This article establishes the social history that connected British imperialism, the medical profession, and the meaning of its work through the career of a prominent Irish surgeon, Peter Johnstone Freyer, between 1875 and 1921. Although the social history of professions has been of frequent interest among contributors to this journal, their readings have maintained particularly “structural” accounts of what provides professions with their power and authority. From this perspective, professions are made and maintained by formal education, the strength of the associations between their members, and how they practice their knowledge. In recent years, however, such accounts have been called into question by scholars who seek to emphasize the “imaginative” qualities of professions, that is, the active processes by which they situate their ethics, values, and institutions in relation to particular cultures external to the formal structures of the profession itself. This is the premise from which I work in order to demonstrate the ways in which the social and cultural contexts provided by British imperialism shaped the meaning of Freyer’s practice in genitourinary medicine, both in India and metropolitan London. As a result, I augment pre-existing accounts of this medical specialty, which have been written in line with structural accounts of the social history of professions.