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Casper ST, Welsh R. British Romantic Generalism in the Age of Specialism, 1870-1990. Soc Hist Med. 2015;29(1):154-174doi: 10.1093/shm/hkv103.
Casper, S. T., & Welsh, R. (2016). British Romantic Generalism in the Age of Specialism, 1870-1990. Social history of medicine : the journal of the Society for the Social History of Medicine, 29(1), 154-174. https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkv103
Casper, Stephen T, and Welsh, Rick. "British Romantic Generalism in the Age of Specialism, 1870-1990." Social history of medicine : the journal of the Society for the Social History of Medicine vol. 29,1 (2016): 154-174. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkv103
Casper ST, Welsh R. British Romantic Generalism in the Age of Specialism, 1870-1990. Soc Hist Med. 2016 Feb;29(1):154-174. doi: 10.1093/shm/hkv103. Epub 2015 Oct 14. PMID: 26858515; PMCID: PMC4743683.
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Soc Hist Med. 2016 Feb;29(1):154-174. doi: 10.1093/shm/hkv103. Epub 2015 Oct 14.

British Romantic Generalism in the Age of Specialism, 1870-1990.

Social history of medicine : the journal of the Society for the Social History of Medicine

Stephen T Casper, Rick Welsh

PMID: 26858515 PMCID: PMC4743683 DOI: 10.1093/shm/hkv103

Abstract

This essay explores the impact of 'generalism' and 'general practice' on the specialisation of British medicine using the case of neurology in Britain to reveal characteristics of British 'generalist medical culture' from 1870 to 1990. It argues that 'generalism' represented a particular epistemological position in Victorian medicine, one that then created a natural bridge between science and medicine over which almost all physicians and scientists were comfortable walking. The legacies of that Victorian 'generalist preference' exerted an enduring impact on the specialisation process as physicians experienced it in the twentieth century and as this case of neurology reveals so clearly. Neurologists and general physicians would still be arguing about the relative merits of a general medical education into the 1980s. By then, however, the emergence of government bodies promoting specialist labour conditions would have rendered the process seemingly inexorable.

Keywords: British medicine; general practice; generalism; history of medicine; history of neurology; neurologists; nineteenth-century medicine; specialisation; twentieth-century medicine

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