Dr%20Sally%20Frampton: List of publications

In this article we explore the historical antecedents and ongoing perpetuation of the idea that medical professionals must adhere to a specific ‘character’. In the late nineteenth century, an ideal of the medical student as ‘born not made’ was substantiated through medical school opening addresses and other medical literature. An understanding prevailed that students would have a natural inclination that would suit them to medical work, which was predicated on class structures. As we move into the twentieth-century context, we see that such underpinnings remained, even if the idea of ‘character’ becomes ‘characteristics’. This was articulated through emerging psychological and sociological perspectives on education, as well as medical school admission processes. The significance ascribed to character and characteristics-based suitability continues to exclude and limits who can access medical careers. In the final part of the article, we argue that a framework of uncertainty can and should be mobilised to re-evaluate the role of doctors’ education and critique long-standing notions of professional identity, via the integration of medical humanities and clearer professionalism teaching within medical curricula.

This special issue of Media History, arising from a workshop on nineteenth-century medical and health periodicals, aims to explore both the contemporary significance and readership of these periodicals, but also how their study has been approached by historians. We discuss existing work on medical periodicals—considering how these publications have been studied by literary and historical scholars—and how our understanding and use of them has developed in an era of digitisation. Finally, we examine how the contributors to this volume each highlight important issues in terms of the interpretation, reading, and materiality of medical and health periodicals.

The origins of contemporary exclusion of surgical methods from patenting lie in the complexities of managing credit claims in operative surgery, recognized in the nineteenth century. While surgical methods were not deemed patentable, surgeons were nevertheless embedded within patent culture. In an atmosphere of heightened awareness about the importance of ‘inventors’, how surgeons should be recognized and rewarded for their inventions was an important question. I examine an episode during the 1840s which seemed to concretize the inapplicability of patents to surgical practice, before looking at alternatives to patenting, used by surgeons to gain social and financial credit for inventions.

The usual story of medicine in the past couple of centuries is one of growing professionalisation, and increasing distance between patients and practitioners. But is a new era of public participation in medicine upon us? Clinicians and patients are moving towards shared decision making in many areas, whilst some medical journals now invite patients to take part in peer review. Citizen Science projects, such as Cell Slider run by Cancer Research UK and Zooniverse, have enabled the public to contribute to medical research. Such developments open up new possibilities.

<a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00033790.2012.663410">http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00033790.2012.663410</a>