Sir John Colbatch and Augustan medicine: Experimentalism, character and entrepreneurialism

Summary

The medical career of Sir John Colbatch illuminates some of the ways in which experimental philosophy, social change, and medical entrepreneurialism together helped bring about the end of the old medical regime in England. Colbatch's career in Augustan England depended very much on a growing public culture in which the well-to-do decided matters of intellectual importance for themselves, becoming increasingly free not only from the clerics but from the physicians. In this new world, debates about the fundamental principles of the new science took place increasingly in public, and in the English language, without the learned men of the university being able to enforce their authority. It gave people like Colbatch a new opportunity to make their way into the medical establishment.

An earlier version of this paper was read at the Wellcome Institute in London in November 1989, and I would like to thank Chris Lawrence for the invitation and the participants for their comments; thanks also to Anita Guerinni and especially to Harm Beukers for other useful suggestions. The research for the paper was completed and the writing undertaken during a leave in Europe funded in part by the Fulbright Commission and the National Endowment for the Humanities, to whom I am also very grateful.

An earlier version of this paper was read at the Wellcome Institute in London in November 1989, and I would like to thank Chris Lawrence for the invitation and the participants for their comments; thanks also to Anita Guerinni and especially to Harm Beukers for other useful suggestions. The research for the paper was completed and the writing undertaken during a leave in Europe funded in part by the Fulbright Commission and the National Endowment for the Humanities, to whom I am also very grateful.

Notes

An earlier version of this paper was read at the Wellcome Institute in London in November 1989, and I would like to thank Chris Lawrence for the invitation and the participants for their comments; thanks also to Anita Guerinni and especially to Harm Beukers for other useful suggestions. The research for the paper was completed and the writing undertaken during a leave in Europe funded in part by the Fulbright Commission and the National Endowment for the Humanities, to whom I am also very grateful.