Jane Austen does not give much attention to doctors. Doctoring is another matter, and plays a significant part in the novels. This entry begins by sketching the ‘medical world’ at the time Austen was writing, and then goes on to look at the various forms of amateur medical treatment which the novels record. The presentation of disease is uncommon in texts which are predominantly comic – though there are examples of serious fevers – but the everyday paraphernalia of illness experience – drops, powders, waters, tonics, rhubarb and court plaister – is the source of much insight and amusement. Austen is interested in illnesses’ cultural aspects, in the patient's use of the body for social advantage and in the entertainment to be extracted from hypochondria in its various forms. At the same time, the novels also understand how social conditions register themselves in the body, especially in the bodies of women. Sexuality and illness being often intertwined, the entry ends with a brief look at sex and embodiment in these texts.

‘The Practice of Medicine, in a comprehensive sense, is conducted in this country, by Physicians, Surgeons and Apothecaries: for, however one profession may be independent of another, the prevalence of custom has given them such a relation, as renders them constituent parts of the same structure.’ This definition was given by John Coakley Lettsom, in the introduction to the second edition of William Falconer's A Dissertation on the Influence of the Passions upon Disorders of the Body (1791). Lettsom's inclusion of apothecaries was liberal and progressive: it was not until the Apothecary Act of 1815 that the role of these men, who did in fact provide medical care to most people, was recognised, and their profession regulated. His sketch is generous, if incomplete – midwives at least should be added – but this tripartite division was generally accepted.

Physicians were educated at Oxford and Cambridge, or, far more likely, had degrees from one of the Scottish medical faculties.