| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Methods/Theory

John C. Burnham. How the Idea of Profession Changed the Writing of Medical History. (Medical History, Supplement number 18.) London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1998. Pp. xi, 195. $50.00.

John C. Burnham argues that during the past generation "professionals moved to the center stage" (p. 1) as both subjects and authors of the history of medicine in Europe and North America. His purpose in writing about the historiography of this field since the seventeenth century is to "illuminate the general historical process of change and innovation in ideas" (p. 3) as well as broader "historiographical issues at the end of the twentieth century"(p. 10). 1

Burnham displays impressive erudition in several languages in explaining why, until recently, historians "so often missed . . . not the existence but the power of the idea of profession among physicians of the past" (p. 182). Most of the book describes how, during the last half century, historians of medicine, "with the help of interested general historians, [have] reclaimed from sociologists the idea of profession as part of the history of the actual work of physicians, of physicians as experts, of physicians as social and economic figures" (p.157). . . .

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