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ABSTRACT
The fact that Worcester Infirmary provided the location for the founding of the Provincial (later British) Medical Association has long been commemorated as a highlight of the city’s history. This paper seeks to extend our understanding of the significance of this event by placing it in the broader historical context of the campaign for medical reform. In doing so, the paper links together the origins and early activities of the Association with the emergence and consolidation of Worcester as arguably the leading centre for medical publishing in England, outside of London, during the period 1828 to 1854. Hence, in charting the significant part played by Worcester’s doctors in driving the process of medical advancement and reform, the paper also gives due credit to the supporting role played by the city’s leading newspaper publisher during these years, namely the firm of H.B. Tymbs and H. Deighton, particularly through its collaboration in the ground-breaking launch of the Midland Medical and Surgical Reporter in 1828.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to express his gratitude to colleagues in the Department of History, Sociology and Politics at the University of Worcester and to the participants at a symposium on the History of Worcester held at The Hive, Worcester, on 9 October 2021. Special thanks are also due to Professor Grazia Ietto-Gillies for helpful advice and comments on an earlier draft.
Disclosure statement
The author reported no potential conflict of interest.
Notes
1 David Cannadine has aptly referred to the period from 1829–41 as the iconoclastic years: D. Cannadine, Victorious Century: The United Kingdom, 1800–1906 (London: Allen Lane, 2017), pp. 150–99.
2 D. Finkelstein, ‘Introduction’ in The Edinburgh History of the British and Irish Press, Vol 2, Expansion and Evolution, ed. by D. Finkelstein (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020), pp. 1–32.
3 The most significant periodical published by editor Charles Knight on behalf of the SDUK was the illustrated Penny Magazine which launched in 1832 and recorded sales of up to 200,000 copies in its early years: V. Gray, Charles Knight: Educator, Publisher, Writer (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006). On sales of the Penny Magazine see R. D. Altick, The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800–1900 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2nd Edition, 1998), p. 335.
4 For an overview of the role played by the provincial press in Britain and Ireland during the nineteenth century cf. A. J. H. Jackson, ‘The Provincial, Local and Regional Press’, in Finkelstein, Edinburgh History, pp. 709–29.
5 W. H. McMenemey, The Life and Times of Sir Charles Hastings (Edinburgh: E & S Livingstone Ltd, 1959), pp. 6–7.
6 Life and Times, pp. 19–34. McMenemy notes that Hastings had to wait a further forty years before achieving the honour of being appointed to the position of senior physician at Worcester.
7 McMenemey, Life and Times, p. 44.
8 W. F. Bynum and J. C. Wilson, ‘Periodical knowledge: medical journals and their editors in nineteenth-century Britain’, in Medical Journals and Medical Knowledge: Historical Essays, ed. by W. F. Bynum, S. Lock and R. Porter (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 30.
9 R. Porter, ‘The Rise of Medical Journalism in Britain to 1800’, in Bynum et al, in Medical Journals, p. 16.
10 S. Frampton, ‘The Medical Press and Its Public’, in Finkelstein, ed., Edinburgh History, p. 439.
11 J. Loudon and I. Loudon, ‘Medicine, politics and the medical periodical 1800–50’, in Bynum et al, in Medical Journals, pp. 54–5.
12 Frampton, pp. 440–1.
13 M. Conboy, ‘The Press and Radical Expression: Structure and Dissemination’ in Finkelstein, ed, Edinburgh History, pp. 512–16.
14 M. Brown, ‘”Bats, Rats and Barristers”: The Lancet, libel and the radical stylistics of early nineteenth-century English medicine’, Social History, 39, 2 (2014), 188.
15 McMenemey, Life and Times, pp. 51–2.
16 I. Loudon, Medical Care and the General Practitioner 1750–1850 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 167–76.
17 R. Berkeley, Sketch of Early Provincial Journalism (Worcester: Worcester Diocesan Architectural and Archaeological Society, 1898), p. 5; I. Griffiths, Berrow’s Worcester Journal: An Examination of the Antiquity of Britain’s Oldest Newspaper (Worcester: George Williams and Berrows Ltd, 1941), p. 28; H. W. Gwilliam, A Survey of Worcestershire Newspapers (Unpublished typescript, Local Studies Section of the Worcestershire Archives, 1982), p. 9.
18 As well as acting as a governor of the Worcester Infirmary, Tymbs also raised his civic profile by acting as a city councillor and alderman for many years, serving as a magistrate, becoming a supporter of Worcester Royal Grammar School, a trustee of Worcester Savings Bank, a director of the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway, an active promoter of the River Severn Navigation, as well as serving on many church and charitable committees. In 1831 Tymbs was elected as Mayor of Worcester. G. Cottrell, ed., Berrow’s Worcester Journal Tercentenary 1690–1990 (Worcester: Reed Midland Newspapers, 1990), p. 9.
19 Bynum and Wilson, p. 37.
20 Frampton, p. 440.
21 I. Waddington, The Medical Profession in the Industrial Revolution (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1984), p. 27.
22 E. M. Little, History of the British Medical Association (London: BMA, 1932), p. 16.
23 McMenemey, p. 58.
24 Loudon and Loudon, p. 56.
25 Loudon and Loudon, p. 58.
26 Midland Medical and Surgical Reporter (MMSR), 3, (1829), 213. A full set of this journal is available in the Palfrey Collection of the Worcestershire County Record Office.
27 B. Pladek, ‘”A Variety of Tastes”: The Lancet in the Early-Nineteenth-Century Press’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 85 (2011), 564, n.23.
28 MMSR, 6 (1829), 444.
29 MMSR, 13 (1831), 1.
30 MMSR, 16 (1832), 302–3, emphasis in original.
31 C. Berkowitz, Charles Bell and the Anatomy of Reform (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), p. 81.
32 McMenemey, Life and Times, p. 261.
33 W. H. McMenemey, ‘Charles Hastings (1794–1866) Founder of the British Medical Association’ in Charles Hastings and Worcester, 1794–1866, British Medical Association (London: BMA, 1966), p. 10; Life and Times, p. 75.
34 Cottrell, pp. 8–9. See also the accounts cited above by Berkeley, Griffiths and Gwilliam.
35 Little, p. 17.
36 P. A. H. Brown, ‘London Publishers and Printers c.1800–1870’, in British Book Trade Index <http://bbti.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/details/traderid=71267> [accessed 1 August 2022].
37 Baldwin and Craddock were listed for the first time as the Reporter’s principal London sales agents at the beginning of Volume III in August 1831. These were publishers of a higher standing than George Underwood’s business – and were therefore likely to have demanded a higher fee – being one of the firms that published materials on behalf of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge: H. Cox and S. Mowatt, Revolutions from Grub Street: A History of Magazine Publishing in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 6.
38 MMSR, 15 (1832), 220–23.
39 W. H. McMenemey, A History of the Worcester Royal Infirmary (London: Press Alliances Ltd, 1947), p. 201. McMenemey’s history of the Worcester Infirmary also notes that although Tymbs sold off his interest in his father’s publishing firm in 1836, he nevertheless continued to act as a governor of the Infirmary well into the 1850s, p. 233.
40 The University of Birmingham dates the origin of its Medical School to 1825. University of Birmingham, ‘History of the University of Birmingham Medical School, 1825–2001,’ University of Birmingham <https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/university/colleges/mds/about/history.aspx > [accessed 21 November 2022]; The University of Bristol dates the origin of the Bristol Medical School to 1833. University of Bristol, ‘History of the University’,< https://www.bristol.ac.uk/university/history/ > [accessed 21 November 2022].
41 Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 26 July 1832, p. 4.
42 McMenemey, Life and Times, p. 92.
43 Csiszar points out an important distinction that had been established in the publication of scientific papers by the beginning of the nineteenth century. By this time the term ‘transactions’ had become accepted as the generic noun referring to the collections of memoirs published by the members of scientific societies, in contrast to journals and magazines which printed information from a variety of sources. A. Csiszar, ‘Science and the Press’ in Edinburgh History, p. 458.
44 Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 26 July 1832, p. 4.
45 McMenemey, Life and Times, p. 100.
46 Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 26 July 1832, p. 4.
47 ‘The Prospectus to Inaugurate the Provincial Medical and Surgical Society’. This document was included in the final issue of the MMSR, 16 (1832). A copy of the Prospectus is bound into Volume 3 of the MMSR available in the Palfrey Collection of the Worcestershire County Record Office.
48 Waddington, Medical Profession, p. 48.
49 McMenemey, Life and Times, p. 74.
50 P. W. J. Bartrip, Mirror of Medicine: A History of the British Medical Journal (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 6.
51 Louden, p. 279–80.
52 Life and Times, pp. 148–52.
53 The figure for the membership of the PMSA in 1840 can be found in P. Bartrip, ‘The British Medical Journal: a retrospect’, in Medical Journals, p. 128.
54 Copies of the PMSJ are available via the website of the British Medical Journal at <https://www.bmj.com.>.
55 Bartrip, British Medical Journal, p.130. The title of the journal was changed to the Provincial Medical Journal beginning from the issue dated 9 April 1842.
56 Bartrip, Mirror, p. 38.
57 D. Porter and R. Porter, Patient’s Progress: Doctors and Doctoring in Eighteenth Century England, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989), see espec. pp. 96–114. On quacks and quackery more generally see R. Porter, Quacks, Fakers & Charlatans in English Medicine, (Stroud: Tempus Publishing, 2000). The term quack, to label a bogus physician, was widely used in the nineteenth century, having been included in Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary as early as 1755. Ibid., p. 18. The word quack appears to have originated as a corrupted version of the Dutch term for charlatan.
58 D. P. Helm, ‘Doctors, Druggists and Patients: The End of the Medical Marketplace in Mid-Nineteenth Century Gloucestershire’, Midland History, 43, 1 (2018), 80.
59 PMSJ, 1, 3 October (1840), 1.
60 Grierson’s account of Wilson’s activities in the field of hydropathy notes that he obtained the diploma of the Royal College of Surgeons and the Licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries in London around 1830. The situation regarding his qualification as an M.D. however is opaque. It is suggested that the M.D. was obtained only after he began to practise in Malvern, probably in the middle to late 1840s, ‘as he does not add these letters to his name in his early books’. J. Grierson, Dr. Wilson and his Malvern Hydro: Park View in the Water Cure Era (Malvern: Cora Weaver, 1998), p. 7.
61 PMJ, 25, 24 Sept (1842), 491–2. Note that the German peasant referred to by Hastings in his tirade against hydropathy was Vincent Priessnitz. It was Priessnitz whose methods Wilson had observed at first hand during a stay at his water-cure practice in Graefenberg, Silesia, shortly before setting up his hydro in Malvern which he named Graefenberg House. Grierson, pp. 12–19.
62 PMJ, 108, 22 Oct. (1842), 73; 112, 19 Nov. (1842), 149; 121, 21 Jan. (1843), 328.
63 PMJ, 157, 30 Sept (1843), 541–2. One member of the scientific community who benefitted from the Malvern-based water-cure therapies was Charles Darwin. He first attended the practice of Wilson’s initial partner, Dr James Gully, in 1849. Whilst receiving his treatment in Malvern, Darwin wrote to assure his friend Joseph Hooker: ‘I feel certain that the Water cure is no quackery’. J. Browne, ‘Spas and Sensibilities: Darwin at Malvern’ Medical History, Supplement No. 10, 1990, reprinted in The Medical History of Waters and Spas, ed. by R. Porter (London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine), p. 109.
64 Loudon, Medical Care, pp. 297–8.
65 Beardmore points out that, while the Act of 1858 did not outlaw the activities of unqualified quacks, it did enable registered doctors to set themselves apart from the ‘irregulars’: C. A. Beardmore, ‘Death, Grief and the Victorian GP: A Case Study of Edward Wrench of Baslow, Derbyshire, 1862–1898’, Midland History, 47, 3 (2022), pp. 313–30.
66 PMSJ, 1, 3 October (1840), 13.
67 Bartrip, Mirror, pp. 38–9.
68 Ibid., pp. 41–62.
69 Ibid., p. 20.
70 Life and Times, pp. 343–4.
71 Bartrip, British Medical Journal, p. 132.
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Howard Cox
Howard Cox is Professor Emeritus at the University of Worcester. He has published widely in the fields of business and media history and is the co-author (with Simon Mowatt) of Revolutions from Grub Street: A History of Magazine Publishing in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).