The Birth of Medical Market and Its Regulation : A Case Study of Consumer Society in the Nineteenth Century

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This study examines the ways in which the nineteenth century medical world in Britain was constructed by a growing consumer culture and the commodification of health. Many historians have assumed that although in the eighteenth century, medicine was mainly directed by peoples' desire to buy health in free-for-all medical market in which little demarcation existed between regular physicians and itinerant quack vendors, in the nineteenth century medicine became a dignified field through the ongoing professionalization of the society. Examination of the medical commodities and doctors' market-oriented behaviors in late Victorian period, however, shows that this scenario needs to be reconsidered.Through the increasing market activities of industrialized society, commodity relations became more and more important in the late nineteenth century. Urbanization of the town, and the prosperity of middle class in the cities led to the increase in shopping activities and a growth of hedonistic des … More ires toward commodities. Surrounded by a dazzling advertising culture, consumers bought commodities for the sake of their self-realization and to pursue more hedonistic purposes. Medicine was no exception. Medical doctors were never able to overlook consumers' desire to improve their health in a fully commercialized context. Understanding medical personnel as full participants in this context reveals that uniformity of medical profession was not, in fact, the sole or even principal characteristic of the nineteenth century medical medicine.This study examines the ways in which medical professionals became affiliated with numerous medical commodities such as electric belts, electro-massage machines, Turkish Bath, and multifarious patent medicines. Electro-therapeutic goods are examined first, as a most scandalous case which incited the serious censorship by elite doctors. In the technologizing late Victorian age, electricity and medicine not only became a the hotbed of professional debate and tumult, but also created a hope for newly emerging professionals like electrical engineers to extend their business opportunities.I conclude, therefore, that even before the efflorescence of lave Victorian commodity culture and people's way self-illusory hedonistic culmination toward consumption, medical capitalism had permeated the seemingly well-established purity of medical professionalism. As a result the medical profession in the nineteenth century shows itself as more various and less controlled than the traditional scenario has described. Less