This shift moved the physician out of the patients home and into the hospital which changed the power dynamic (Jewson, “Localization of Disease” p.2-3). Physicians no longer had to market themselves to make a living, and they began seeing patients in lower social classes, as “hospital patients all came from the poorest classes and were treated free of charge” (Jewson, “Localization of Disease” p.3). This move to hospitals allowed for the “disappearance of the sick man” from medical cosmology (Jewson, “Localization of Disease” p.1). Additionally, physicians in Britain and France began to understand that disease was completely internal, rather than it being an imbalance of humans, physicians began pin-pointing specific organs and causes of illness (Week Four Notes). This served as a “precursor to understanding bacteria and viruses” and allowed for disease to become “tangible” which eventually led to better methods of both treatment and prevention (Week Four Notes). At the same time, more teaching hospitals began to pop up. There was agreement that “the best place for medical students to gain the practical knowledge they needed was the hospital. Here, they would be exposed to a critical mass of patients that would enable them to gain vital diagnostic and therapeutic skills” Jewson, “Localization of Disease” p.11). …show more content…
Women were placed in charge of taking care of their families. They were expected to have a “stock of remedies on hand” to be able to care for and treat their family members (Medicine in a Democratic Culture p.32). Additionally, women served as lay practitioners (Medicine in a Democratic Culture p.49). Natives were taken advantage of to learn their healing methods that they did not always want to share. One such method that white people took included getting Native people drunk in order to coerce them into telling their medical knowledge, which was often focused around botany (Calloway, “Indians, Europeans, and the New World of Disease and Healing” p.41-47). Slaves were utilized as trial subjects. One such example includes Ephraim McDowell removing ovarian cysts on slave women (Schlich “The Emergence of Modern Surgery” p.74) There were countless other cases, such as James Marion Sims who operated on slave women after childbirth “who had to bear the hour-long operation without anesthesia” (Schlich, “The Emergence of Modern Surgery”