ABSTRACT
In 1813, a well-known British satirist published an image that, for many of his peers, all too accurately represented the medicine of his age. Titled ‘Doctors Differ or Dame Nature against the College’, it is a scene of mayhem: four bewigged physicians in frock coats are attacking each other with their gold-topped canes, contesting the correct treatment for a wealthy patient (see Figure 1.1). Each offers a prescription more violent than the last, including emetics, bloodletting, sweating and blistering. All contenders are offering prescriptions drawn from the established medical canon of the early nineteenth century: there was no single or even dominant orthodox view of how to diagnose or treat a case. Chuckling in the background, the patient gleefully watches the fray – he has already chosen his healer: ‘Dame Nature’. Cured by nature while the physicians fought amongst themselves, he prepares to escape his would-be doctors, saving ‘both my money and my Life’ (Williams 1813).1
