HIST 249 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Thomas George Roddick, Antiseptic
17 Nov 2016
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Document Summary
Pre-modern specialists: outside the medical mainstream, usually at the margins of surgery, healers who performed particular operations on specific parts of the body. Stages of specialization: 1830s-1880s: period of emergence as academic category, 1880s -1920s and 30s: period of widespread unregulated specialist practice, 1920s-1940s: development of specialist certification, since 1950s, dominance of specialist practice. Possible explanations: growing density of population (cities, faith in specialized expertise, material self-interest of doctors. Possible explanations 2: rosen-ackerknecht thesis: organic localism combined with technologies, to create foci of interest around organs and organ systems that creates groups of specialists. Weisz interpretation: linked to creation of large communities of researchers and professionalization of science generally. Specialization is a requirement of rigorous medical research which requires large numbers of patients and cadavers with the same disease. Logic of state administration: support knowledge development; organize hospital system based on specialized institutions.
