Biomaterial Database

'To be insert in the Mercury': medical practitioners and the press in eighteenth-century Edinburgh. 2000

H M Dingwall

Department of History, University of Stirling, UK.

The eighteenth century was a period of development and change in Scottish society, its structures, and institutions. In Edinburgh the Royal College of Physicians, the Incorporation of Surgeons (Royal College from 1778), and the University attempted to improve medical and surgical training, and in the second half of the century the Scottish Enlightenment found its intellectual home in the capital. At the same time, the newspaper press was consolidating and Scots had access to a number of newspapers which appeared regularly, such as the Caledomian Mercury and Edinburgh Advistiser. The press became a major vehicle for the dissemination of information and opinion of all sorts, and examination of surviving newspapers had yielded a substantial amount of evidence on the use of the press by medical practitioners and their organizations. The medical contents of the newspapers demonstrate the progress of the institutions, the activities of individual practitioners, the changing nature of lay practice, and some of the tensions which existed in Edinburgh medicine and society in the hotbed of the Enlightenment period.

UI	MeSH Term	Description	Entries
D009524	Newspapers as Topic	Publications printed and distributed daily, weekly, or at some other regular and usually short interval, containing news, articles of opinion (as editorials and letters), features, advertising, and announcements of current interest. (Webster's 3d ed)	Newspapers as Topics,Topics, Newspapers as
D010820	Physicians	Individuals licensed to practice medicine.	Physician
D012606	Scotland	The most northerly of the four countries of the United Kingdom, occupying about one-third of the island of Great Britain. The capital is Edinburgh.
D049671	History, 18th Century	Time period from 1701 through 1800 of the common era.	18th Century History,18th Cent. History (Medicine),18th Cent. History of Medicine,18th Cent. Medicine,Historical Events, 18th Century,History of Medicine, 18th Cent.,History, Eighteenth Century,Medical History, 18th Cent.,Medicine, 18th Cent.,18th Century Histories,Cent. History, 18th (Medicine),Cent. Medicine, 18th,Century Histories, 18th,Century Histories, Eighteenth,Century History, 18th,Century History, Eighteenth,Eighteenth Century Histories,Eighteenth Century History,Histories, 18th Century,Histories, Eighteenth Century,History, 18th Cent. (Medicine)