The Trials of an Ordinary Doctor
Joannes Groenevelt in Seventeenth-century London
Harold J. Cook(Author)
Johns Hopkins University Press
Published on 1. June 1994
Book
Hardback
328 pages
978-0-8018-4778-3 (ISBN)
Description
On July 27, 1694, Suzanna Withall and three of her neighbours appeared before the Censors of the London College of Physicians to lodge a complaint against Dr Joannes Groenevelt. The doctor, according to the women's testimony, had given Withall a "secret remedy" that had left her bedridden. When the Censors learned the remedy contained cantharides - or "Spanish Fly" - they seized what they saw as an opportunity to assert their authority over all London practitioners, including dissenters in their own ranks. The resulting series of legal charges, suits and countersuits would leave Groenevelt impoverished and the reputation of London physicians subject to public ridicule. Harold J. Cook's micro-history shows how a medical malpractice case against an otherwise obscure Dutch physician in London became the centre of one of the era's great medical controversies. Beginning with Groenevelt's boyhood in the provincial city of Deventer, Cook follows Groenevelt through his Dutch medical education, his modest but successful practice in England, his conflict with the medical establishment and his impoverished old age.
He shows how society and politics, as well as the scientific and professional uncertainties and jealousies of the early Enlightenment, helped dictate the course of one man's life - and how the actions he took against those forces helped bring down the authority of the physicians of London.
He shows how society and politics, as well as the scientific and professional uncertainties and jealousies of the early Enlightenment, helped dictate the course of one man's life - and how the actions he took against those forces helped bring down the authority of the physicians of London.
Reviews / Votes
"Like the best of the microhistorical genre, 'Trials of an Ordinary Doctor' uses the specifics of a single life to illuminate from a new perspective a breathtaking array of issues and developments, many of which might otherwise not have seemed related at all."--Wayne te Brake, State University of New York at PurchaseMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Baltimore, MD
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Weight
650 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8018-4778-3 (9780801847783)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Harold J. Cook is professor and chair, Department of the History of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Medical School.