Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- List of Figures and Tables
- Introduction
- Part I The Hostipal
- 1 Using Bacteriology in Teaching Hospitals: London and Cambridge, 1880–1920
- 2 Integrating the Laboratory into Gentlemanly Practice
- Part II The Workplace
- Part III The Community
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
1 - Using Bacteriology in Teaching Hospitals: London and Cambridge, 1880–1920
from Part I - The Hostipal
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- List of Figures and Tables
- Introduction
- Part I The Hostipal
- 1 Using Bacteriology in Teaching Hospitals: London and Cambridge, 1880–1920
- 2 Integrating the Laboratory into Gentlemanly Practice
- Part II The Workplace
- Part III The Community
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
[House Physician] - This is Mr. Cornwall's case.
Physician – Come here, Cornwall; what do you think is the matter with this patient?
Student – I should think she has phthisis.
Phys. – But stay! Cornwall, have you found the tubercle bacillus?
Stud. – No, but I expect to.
Phys. – We can hardly base our diagnosis on your expectations.
Stud. – No, but we will on her expectorations.
St. Bartholomew's Hospital Journal (1895–6)Historians have portrayed a tense relationship between physicians and surgeons diagnosing at the bedside and pathologists testing samples at the bench. Yet, the unpublished records of two English hospitals – St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, and Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge – tell a story of elite physicians who were enthusiastic about new diagnostic techniques carried out by specialist pathologists. Indeed, the comical epigraph for this chapter was published in Bart's hospital journal and represents just how routinely bacteriology was used for diagnosis at the hospital.
In order to understand the contradictory representations of the interactions between elite physicians in the clinic and the laboratory, this chapter analyses a variety of sources created in the course of everyday administration and care for patients within two hospitals. Use of bacteriological diagnosis at Bart's, the oldest continually open hospital in England, established in 1123, is compared with Addenbrooke's Hospital, which was opened to the public in 1766 as a voluntary hospital funded by a legacy from Dr John Addenbrooke, and increasingly developed links to the University of Cambridge.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Bacteria in Britain, 1880–1939 , pp. 13 - 40Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014