| Description |
In 1832, cholera appeared in London for the first time. This caused social upheaval and various actors with differing and often conflicting agendas competed for authority over the distribution of information to the public. Editorials and correspondence published in the Lancet and the Times, a medical journal and a major newspaper, reveal these conflicts. In the absence of medical licensing, the editors of the Lancet sought to resolve issues of the legitimacy of medical knowledge within the journal's pages so the emerging profession could present a united front to the public. These efforts were undermined by practitioners who published their opinions on contagion or the results of therapeutic trials directly in the pages of newspapers such as the Times. The Times portrayed itself as a mediator of medical knowledge, but also used the discord that existed within the profession to advance its own political agenda. By the final major cholera outbreak in London in 1866, however, greater consistency existed between the medical information presented in both the Lancet and the Times. This is largely due to the integration of medicine into the government and the medicalization of public health. |
