Medicine and the Market in Ealry Modern England

An age of quackery and medical diversity, premodern medicine has often been described as a 'medical marketplace'. But what is a 'medical marketplace'? And what does it tell us about medical practice and knowledge? This volume provides the first systematic examination of medicine and the market in England, North America and India between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. Covering key themes, including magic, midwifery, and professionalization, it offers a new understanding of how healthcare operated and changed over this period. The medical marketplace / Mark S. R. Jenner & Patrick Wallis Medical economies in fifteenth-century England / Robert Ralley Competition and cooperation in the early modern medical economy / Patrick Wallis The rural medical marketplace in southern England c.1570-1720 / Ian Mortimer Magic, alchemy, and the medical economy in early modern England: the case of Robert Fludd's magnetical medicine / Lauren Kassell The marketplace of print / Mary Fissell Recipe collections and the currency of medical knowledge in the early modern 'medical marketplace' / Elaine Leong and Sara Pennell Midwifery in the 'medical marketplace' / Adrian Wilson Illness in the 'social credit' and 'money' economies of eighteenth-century New England / Ben Mutschler Medical marketplaces beyond the West: bazaar medicine, trade, and the English establishment in eighteenth century India / Pratik Chakrabarti Monopoly, markets and public health: pollution and commerce in the history of London water 1780-1830 / Mark S. R. Jenner Medicine, quackery, and the free market: the 'war' against Morison's pills and the construction of the medical profession, c.1830-c.1850 / Michael Brown. What was the medical marketplace? What is a 'medical marketplace'? This book provides the first critical examination of medicine and the market in pre-modern England, colonial North America and British India. Chapters cover the most important themes in the social history of medicine from the fifteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, addressing healthcare in town and country, among rich and poor, women and men, and examining both patients and practitioners. Drawing on recent developments in the history of exchange, they offer new understandings of the ways in which diverse aspects of healthcare operated and changed in this period of social and economic transformation. Each chapter offers significant new interpretation of its field based upon a critical examination of the applicability of the medical marketplace model and presents substantial new research in an accessible style What was the medical marketplace? This book provides the first critical examination of medicine and the market in pre-modern England, colonial North America and British India. Chapters explore the most important themes in the social history of medicine and offer a fresh understanding of healthcare in this time of social and economic transformation.