Charles Bell and the Anatomy of Reform

Description

Sir Charles Bell (1774–1842) was a medical reformer in a great age of reform—an occasional and reluctant vivisectionist, a theistic popularizer of natural science, a Fellow of the Royal Society, a surgeon, an artist, and a teacher. He was among the last of a generation of medical men who strove to fashion a particularly British science of medicine; who formed their careers, their research, and their publications through the private classrooms of nineteenth-century London; and whose politics were shaped by the exigencies of developing a living through patronage in a time when careers in medical science simply did not exist. A decade after Bell’s death, that world was gone, replaced by professionalism, standardized education, and regular career paths. In Charles Bell and the Anatomy of Reform, Carin Berkowitz takes readers into Bell’s world, helping us understand the life of medicine before the modern separation of classroom, laboratory, and clinic. Through Bell’s story, we witness the age when modern medical science, with its practical universities, set curricula, and medical professionals, was born. Tags: Europe, Medical, Great Britain, Biography & Autobiography, Science, History, Science & Technology, General Contents Introduction Chapter One. Politics and Patronage: Building a Career in London’s Medical Classrooms Chapter Two. Pedagogy Inside and Outside the Medical Classroom: Training the Hand and Eye to Know Chapter Three. From the Anatomy Theater to the Political Theater: Journals and the Making of “British Medicine” in Early Nineteenth-Century London Chapter Four. London’s New Classrooms: London University and the Middlesex Hospital School Chapter Five. Defining a Discovery: Changes in British Medical Culture and the Priority Dispute over the Discovery of the Roots of Motor and Sensory Nerves Epilogue Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index