| Abstract: | Abstract Acute and protracted intra-professional conflict was a dominant feature of the period of medical reform. The traditional tripartite professional structure of physicians, surgeons and apothecaries was breaking down, evolving into a bipartite division between elite hospital consultants and general practitioners. The paper explores the hypothesis that rival professional interests were expressed in the different configurations of knowledge on which competing claims to status and authority were based. Where the elite either held aloof or invoked the civilised 'gentlemanly' science of John Hunter, the general practitioner was more disposed to embrace the more radical 'democratic' sciences such as phrenology and the new morphology. |
