introduction from the medical trade catalogue in britain, 1870–1914

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INTRODUCTION: THE MEDICAL TRADE

CATALOGUE IN CONTEXT

With the publication o Te reatment of Poisoning in 1888, Robert Saundby,Proessor o Medicine at the University o Birmingham, and Philip Harris &Co. Ltd, a Birmingham-based pharmaceutical and medical instrument manuac-turer, revealed the results o their long and ruitul business partnership.1 rueto its name, the booklet aimed to instruct medical proessionals in suitable treat-ments or cases o poisoning and yet its collaborative authorship, between anelite physician and a medical trade company, meant that it was neither solely amedical work o reerence nor an advertising pamphlet. While outlining Saun-dby’s extensive research fndings on eective antidotes, the publication alsounctioned as a sixteen-page endorsement o Harris’s pharmaceutical productsand ormed a part o the company’s growing advertising output. More broadly,

Te reatment of Poisoning was one edition among many thousands in an increas-ingly prevalent genre o publication: the medical trade catalogue.It is the purpose o this book to explore the rise and development o the

medical trade catalogue in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain.Te medical trade catalogue, a book-like publication o between 10 and 1,000

pages, was one o the most prominent orms o advertising aimed at medical proessionals in this era. With circulation fgures reaching 30,000 copies peredition by 1914, the catalogue was employed by medical companies across thecountry and beyond to provide medical practitioners with a comprehensive

promotional guide to medical instruments, pharmaceuticals and appliances (seeFigures I.1. and I.2). Yet, practitioners were also invaluable to its development.Like many o his colleagues, Saundby was a regular reader o and contributor to

this orm o publication. Saundby and countless other medical practitioners pro- vided ‘many valuable suggestions’ to catalogue producers aimed at improving the publication’s product layout, text and illustrations; they also directly providedcontent by writing instructive text based on their research, by providing productendorsements or tools they had tried and tested and by promoting their owneponymous designs o new medical tools and appliances.2



Figure I.1: Te exterior of John Weiss & Son Ltd, Illustrated Catalogue of Surgical Instruments and Appliances ([n.p.], 1901). By the late nineteenth century, medicalinstrument makers shaped their catalogues into well-presented, hardbound books.

Reproduced courtesy of Tackray Medical Museum, Leeds.



F i g u r e I . 2 : T e i n t e r i o r o f L y n c h & C o . , L t d , P r i c e

L i s t o f D r u g g i s t s ’ S u n d r i e s , S u r g i c a l I n s t r u m e n t s ( [ n . p . ] , 1

9 0 5 ) ,

p p . 2

6 8 – 9 . R e p r o d u c e d c o u r t e s y o f T a c k r a y M e d i c a l M u s e u m , L e e d s .



4 Te Medical rade Catalogue in Britain, 1870–1914

While regularly interacting with catalogues (especially those produced by Harris),Saundby simultaneously condemned practitioner involvement in general com-mercial activity, particularly in product promotion. As secretary o the BritishMedical Association, Saundby was a stalwart o medical proessionalism and his

Medical Ethics o 1902, a practical guide to proessional standards o best prac-tice, stated in no uncertain terms that: ‘No registered practitioner ought to be

personally connected with any business that manuactures or deals in any articleo invalid dietary or drug, or medical or surgical instrument’. 3 In the absence o any ormal ethical codes o conduct, Medical Ethics was Saundby’s attempt at dis-couraging doctors rom damaging their own reputation and the reputation o their

proession in the eyes o the public through partnerships with tradesmen. Suchcollaborations were undoubtedly a growing temptation or medics who wishedto earn a more comortable living in an increasingly competitive proession. Te

popularity o Saundby’s guide among the medical readership suggests practitionerstook this advice seriously; it certainly laid the oundation or the medico-ethical

work o the British Medical Association aer Saundby’s death in 1918.4 Crucially, Medical Ethics made no mention o medical trade catalogues.

Such an omission was perhaps unsurprising given Saundby’s contribution toTe reatment of Poisoning , but ar rom questioning his respectability or therespectability o other practitioner-contributors, the publication was a responseto the increasing commercialization o medicine and broader trends in eco-nomic growth, mass production and household consumption. Indeed, while

proessional regularity bodies fercely condemned doctors’ prescription andendorsement o the goods o countless ourishing patent and proprietary medi-cine vendors and electro-medical equipment suppliers, neither Saundby nor any other catalogue contributor met with hostility rom the proession. By 1900,the General Medical Council, established ollowing the 1858 Medical Act touphold standards o best practice, had struck o approximately thirty British

practitioners or endorsing some orm o medical product in public prints andcautioned many more.5 Yet, no practitioner contributing to the catalogue wascharged with proessional misconduct and no complaints or debates about prac-titioners’ contributions appeared in the medical press, as they did so requently regarding publications intended or general consumption.

What then allowed the medical proession to accept its members’ involvement

in advertising in the medical trade catalogue, when it so orceully condemnedtheir involvement in other orms o product promotion? Te Medical radeCatalogue seeks to explore this important yet neglected aspect o medical prac-titioners’ experience by examining how and why the apparent conict between

practitioners and industry simply did not apply to the medical trade catalogue asit did to other orms o advertising and commercial activity. It demonstrates thatthe proession accepted practitioners’ interactions with the publication becausecatalogue producers – the producers o pharmaceuticals and medical tools – dis-



Introduction 5

tinguished it rom all other orms o advertising in two main ways: by targeting only qualifed medical practitioners to the exclusion o lay consumers and by shaping the catalogue into a publication with the same physical elements as (anda similar content to) a medical reerence book, an inormative and educational

publication the proession embraced.o some, this might seem a strange endeavour. Te sceptic might ask: how

much can one specialized orm o print tell us about medicine? But this ocuson the catalogue not only tells us about its design, production, distribution andreading as a signifcant medical publication o this period; it also signals doc-tors’ broader interactions with trade and material goods. In particular, it inormsour understanding o the role o practitioners in the design o medical tools andtheir power in purchasing such tools. Te catalogue was an eective mediatorbetween the seemingly incompatible worlds o commerce and medical proes-sionalism; it allowed practitioners to balance their proessional commitments

with the rising consumerism that seemed to dominate everyday lie in late nine-teenth- and early twentieth-century Britain. Te medical trade catalogue – asboth advertising and reerence material – achieved a unique hybrid status withinthe proession, not just in Britain but also globally as markets or medical toolsand pharmaceuticals expanded.

Te Medical rade Catalogue is thereore a book about late nineteenth- andearly twentieth-century British medical practice, a study o what being a doctorinvolved and an outline o the ways in which medical proessionals worked with

companies to mutual beneft. Indeed, trade was not solely constituted by patentmedicine and medical appliance vendors aimed at popular audiences, as mostexisting studies seemingly suggest, but also included elements which comple-mented medicine’s drive or scientifc progress and proessionalism. Proessionalmedicine during this period was not solely a clinical art or a practical sciencebut was also an industry that sought promotion and the generation o profts.Doctors played a key role in this industry as both consumers and promoters o medical products and crucially this role complemented, rather than conicted,

with their proessional sensibilities. Such discussions have clear resonances incurrent medical practice and the relationships between medical practitionersand suppliers that developed in this period continue to thrive today.

By ocusing on this particular orm o publication, Te Medical rade Cata-

logue enhances three main bodies o historical scholarship. Te frst o these, thehistory o medicine, analyses the development o the medical proession and itsinteraction with the world o commerce. Te second, the history o technology,is concerned with the pharmaceuticals, tools and appliances which ormed thecommercial content o the catalogues, but is also interested in practitioners asusers and consumers. Te fnal body o scholarship, once dominated by historianso the book but now extended into other felds (not least the history o science),ocuses on the culture o print and its signifcance within a given readership.




Medical Proessionalism and Commerce

Within the history o medicine, mid-nineteenth-century proessionalization hasbeen a subject o much attention. While there is little need to discuss the exten-sive literature in detail here, it is worth briey outlining how Te Medical radeCatalogue defnes ‘medical proessionalism’ in this period. Paul Starr’s Te Social ransformation of American Medicine is particularly helpul.6 Starr understandsthe distinctive competence o the proession in three main ways: cognitive, moraland collegial. Like American practitioners, British doctors at this time could bedistinguished by their possession and demonstration o medical knowledge, edu-cation, training and expertise; through their adherence to certain ethical codes

o practice, including those surrounding advertising and medical commerce;and through their collective participation and commitment to ensuring thecompetence o the proession’s members. Many have gone on to augment Starr’sdefnition but it perhaps remains the most comprehensive or the British context.

In recent years, scholars within the history o medicine have also lookedbeyond abstract defnitions o the proession in order to explore medical prac-tice. A growing body o scholarship on medical commerce, a part o medical

practice o particular relevance here, has now converged with the literature on proessionalism resulting in a much more comprehensive understanding o latenineteenth- and early twentieth-century medicine as both a proession and a trade.Purely sociological perspectives o the medical proession, which once dominatedthe historiography and concerned itsel with legislation, institutional oundation

and educational qualifcations, thus gave way to more inclusive studies by histori-ans such as Anne Digby, Irvine Loudon and Jeanne Peterson, who recognized that

proessional medicine consisted o more than just doctors’ mission to attain a staticset o essential criteria.7 Medicine, these historians argued, also incorporated theeconomic reality with which practitioners were aced: their need to make a medi-cal living and their regular interaction with the commercial world.

Accordingly, the ‘medical marketplace’ as a key conceptual ramework hasbecome dominant in discussions o medical commerce. Discussions o the‘marketplace’ have largely taken two orms, neither o which adequately ore-grounds the doctor as a producer or consumer o medical products. During itsfrst inception in the mid-1980s, historians, such as Roy Porter, initially used theterm as a metaphor to represent the provision and consumption o health-careservices in seventeenth- and eighteenth- century England.8 In turn, this modelenriched the new economic perspective o late nineteenth- and early twenti-eth-century proessional medicine, which likewise ocused on practitioners assuppliers o medical services to patients in a metaphorical, rather than physical,marketplace. New ormally acquired proessional status, advocates o this modelargued, oered practitioners a airer system, albeit an increasingly competitive



Introduction 7

and restrictive one, in which to sell their services. Concerns over respectability and identity ormed a signifcant part o this new economic approach. In Mak-ing a Medical Living, Anne Digby, or example, highlights that the proession’sconcern with respectability led to its condemnation o practitioners advertising their services to patients, earul o its association with irregular practitioners orthose o a lower status – such as chemists – and conscious o its ability to causeunair advantage over other practitioners.9

Scholars have also used the ‘medical marketplace’ to explore the produc-tion and consumption o medical products among lay rather than proessionalaudiences. Late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century general consumers

with rising disposable incomes ormed a willing market or all manner o grow-ing numbers o cure-all patent medicines, elixirs, lotions, pills, electro-medicaldevices and contraceptive appliances; consumption, which oen took place in a

physical marketplace, was aided by an unprecedented growth in the output and variety o promotional material, including newspapers and journals. Studies by Peter Bartrip, Lori Loeb and akahiro Ueyama have typically highlighted thetensions between the rising general consumption o medical products and medi-cal practitioners, who, ollowing the 1858 Medical Act in particular, deemedany products not proessionally sanctioned as dangerous or useless in order to

protect their patients and assert a monopoly over medical practice.10 Practition-ers who chose to sanction, purchase or prescribe unorthodox products rejected

proessional ethical standards and could ace proessional exile.

Historical literature on both the proession and on the ‘medical marketplace’,then, accepts that doctors’ pursuit o a more commercial approach to medicinecould be problematic. Yet, this literature has largely neglected the proessional’srole in producing and consuming the tools and pharmaceuticals vital or medical

practice. Instead, consideration o proessional consumption, o pharmaceuticalsin particular, is a topic increasingly pursued by business historians. Tose whohave adopted this approach – Roy Church and E. M. ansey, Georey weedaleand Jonathan Liebenau, or example – have highlighted the potential tensionsbetween commerce and proessionalism by recognizing the signifcance o themarketing developments o renowned British pharmaceutical manuacturers,such as Allen & Hanburys and Burroughs, Wellcome & Co.11 For example, Bur-roughs, Wellcome & Co. aimed to distance its print-based advertising o ‘ethical

medicines’ to medical proessionals rom its general advertising o proprietary drugs to lay consumers. Companies’ employment o the trade catalogue in aid-ing this distinction has only received cursory attention, but this orm o print,along with the employment o the travelling salesman and exhibits at world airsand medical conerences, allowed companies to eectively market their so-calledethical products to doctors. Much work, however, still needs to be conductedon the doctor’s role in consuming, as well as producing, medical and surgical




instruments and, with the exception o James Edmonson’s comprehensive study o the surgical instrument trade in North America, this remains a chronically neglected area in business history and the history o medicine.12 Te Medical rade Catalogue, however, oregrounds the practitioner in tool consumptionand production through its primary ocus on print.

Te Medical rade Catalogue is thereore intended to address the relativeabsence o the medical practitioner in both consuming and producing products– particularly medical tools and surgical instruments – in the history o medi-cine and business history scholarship. Existing studies o the late nineteenth- andearly twentieth-century ‘medical marketplace’, which ocus on tensions (between

practitioners, between practitioners and patients, or between practitioners andcompanies), are here extended to include an assessment o practitioners’ unprob-lematic contribution to the medical trade catalogue and their acceptable roleas producers, alongside industry, and as consumers o medical goods. However,recent growing criticism suggests that the ‘medical marketplace’ concept may be outdated, not least because o the potential conusion between metaphoricaland physical marketplaces. Moreover, as Mark Jenner and Patrick Wallis remindus in a recent contribution to the feld, medicine was not ormed o only onemarket, or marketplace, but many overlapping markets.13 Here then, ‘market’, ormore appropriately ‘markets’, is employed to aid our visualization o the variety o transactions o medical goods and services among a broad array o producersand consumers simultaneously taking place.

O course, the limits o medical proessional markets are di cult to deter-mine, particularly in this period o proessional consolidation. Growing numbers o institutions employing proessionally-related purchasers (such asnursing homes) that required uniorms, sanitary appliances and sterilizable stor-age acilities were also additional consumers or medical companies to target,thus urther blurring market boundaries. Yet, given the almost endless pos-sible number o transactions between producers and an exhaustive variety o

proessionally-related consumers, this study necessarily restricts its analysis to physicians; surgeons, including specialists, such as dentists; and general practi-tioners employed in an array o areas, rom asylums to private insurance frms;and their increasing requirement or tools, drugs and specialist orms o print.

Medical echnologies, Inormation echnologiesIn assessing both the supply and demand o medical products and ser vices, busi-ness histories and studies in the history o medicine also have much in common

with those in the history o technology, which view medical tools and appli-ances in terms o production and use. Although medical tools, appliances and

pharmaceuticals in themselves are not the primary ocus here, the ways in which



Introduction 9

companies promoted such technologies within the catalogue and the ways in which practitioners as users o technologies shaped the catalogue, orms animportant part o Te Medical rade Catalogue in three main ways.

First, in revealing the coexistence o markets or both ‘new’ and ‘older’ medi-cal technologies, this assessment o the pages o the medical trade cataloguereemphasizes the importance o demand-led innovation and the persistence o existing technologies long aer new innovations are introduced. Such fndingsinevitably challenge studies which still ocus solely on supplier-led innovation,and thus appear to present unproblematic acceptance o new technologiesamong given markets o consumers. For example, James Edmonson and JohnKirkup, both o whom work with medical arteacts, characterize the rise o aseptic surgical instruments between 1886 and 1893 as an ‘aseptic revolution’.14 Teir interpretation suggests that practitioners unproblematically and instantly replaced their non-aseptic tools with new aseptic designs, which is underminedthrough our ocus here on the catalogue.

Second, Te Medical rade Catalogue expands existing studies that identiy the signifcance o medical technologies to burgeoning medical specialisms.Much has been written about the emergence o the late nineteenth-century medical specialist, the rise o the specialist hospital and the adoption o accom-

panying technologies to conduct new specialist practices as a political moveor proessional consolidation. Christopher Lawrence, Stanley Reiser, GeorgeRosen and George Weisz, or example, have argued that medical specialists o

this period, in areas such as ophthalmology and orthopaedics, were more likely to show an appreciation o new scientifc insights o the late nineteenth century and to adopt new technologies as a way o challenging the power and privilegeo the established elite physicians.15 Te Medical rade Catalogue thus considersthe role o the publication in medico-political debates, particularly the drive orthe recognition o specialisms among markets o practitioners, rather than thetechnologies themselves. As we will see, companies producing specialist tools,such as Claudius Ash & Sons, dental instrument manuacturer o London, aidedspecialists’ call or wider proessional changes by shaping their catalogues intomedical reerence books and disseminating notions about specialization.

Finally, by viewing the medical trade catalogue as more than an adjunctto the tools and pharmaceuticals it promoted, Te Medical rade Catalogue

expands our very defnition o a medical technology. Indeed, as many recentstudies acknowledge, the technologies o medicine include more than the drugsand devices that once dominated the historiography, and cover both materialand non-material innovations, systems o practices and organizations.16 Temedical trade catalogue is clearly not a diagnostic or therapeutic tool, but it isa material innovation, one rarely seen as more than a source o reerence by themuseum curators who have long used it to identiy and date the medical instru-




ments within its pages.17 Yet, the catalogue, like other technologies, was shapedby both producers and end-consumers, and its orm and purpose – its two mostessential dimensions – were continually negotiated between the two; the orm,embodying unction, was reconfgured as the purpose changed.

More specifcally, the medical trade catalogue is a communication or aninormation technology designed and produced to extend medical instrumentmakers’ capacity to sell products. While there has been an array o historicalstudies on other unctional orms o print aimed at guiding readers througheveryday lie, such as nineteenth-century train timetables, discussions o cata-logues in this role have been limited.18 Less than a handul o studies currently explore the history o catalogues within specialist trades, although Paulo Bren-ni’s brie analysis o scientifc instrument catalogues is useul or comparative

purposes.19 A ew more studies, however, have outlined the signifcance o theretail mail-order catalogue as a communication technology. In Te Control Revo-lution, James R. Beniger, or example, argues that the frst catalogues producedby American retail giant Sears, Roebuck & Co. in the late nineteenth century,

were material innovations crucial or the dissemination o particular orms o knowledge to householders ollowing modern industrialization, alongside otherorms o print and non-printed innovations, such as telegraphy.20 Te modernrise o the medical trade catalogue as a communication technology, as we willsee here, resulted rom manuacturers’ aim to control markets: as all manner o new machines, technologies and techniques rapidly increased, so did the need

or market control via inormation contained within suitable ormats.

Medical Print Culture

While printed ‘communication technologies’ are currently receiving an increasing amount o attention rom historians o technology, they have long been studied by historians o print culture. Studies o late Victorian and Edwardian advertising, orexample, commonly highlight novel rhetorical eatures, such as increasing numberso sentimental images aimed to appeal to new markets o upper- and middle-classemale consumers and, as we will see here, rhetorical eatures also apparent in thecatalogue in a orm aimed to appeal to medical proessionals.21

Yet, by ocusing on a publication in book orm, albeit one non-literary incontent, this study more signifcantly contributes to a well-established analyticbibliographic approach in the history o the book. In particular, it enhancesour understanding o the print culture o the history o medicine, a chroni-cally understudied part o a thriving feld o print culture within the history o science; it does so by going beyond the changing physical means o print produc-tion. Recent scholarship at the nexus o print culture and the history o sciencehas analysed the physical eatures o a book, its paratext and circulation rom



Introduction 11

producer, publisher, distributer to consumer and back to producer in the ormo consumer responses, within what Robert Darnton has defned as a ‘communi-cation circuit’.22 Analysing these elements in the ‘lie cycle’ o orms o print canreveal as much about a publication’s meaning within a given market as the textitsel and the printing technologies used to produce it. Indeed, the once-com-mon printing history, which or late nineteenth and early twentieth centuriestended to emphasize the introduction o rolled paper, electro-stereotyping andthe mass production o books by actory-based printing frms, has now beenextended to take in account the market or reading.

Recent interest in reading, then, demonstrates a shi in historical study romthe ‘what’ and the ‘who’ to the ‘how’, the ‘where’ and the ‘why’ and highlights how book producers with commercial motivations carved out reading audiences withsuitably shaped texts. Georey Cantor et al., or example, have demonstratedthat the British scientifc periodical press witnessed enormous growth during the nineteenth century because the weekly or monthly journal was a much moreaccessible method o communication to an increasingly literate audience with agrowing interest in scientifc ideas.23 Similarly, Jonathan opham has argued thatTe Bridgewater reatises were prepared with wide margins, a large typeace and

were produced to a high quality, in order to demonstrate their alignment withserious theological treatises, which circulated in markets ormed o the aristocracy,gentry and the upper middle classes.24 In contrast, the general absence o detailedbibliographic analysis and explorations o how publications were shaped to suit

readers in recent discussions o proessional medical print culture in this periodmeans that our understanding o the importance o print to medical practice islimited. Such neglect is all the more surprising, given the growing importance o authorship and reading to the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century medical

proessional, as outlined by Starr and others. Indeed, the catalogue’s book-likeorm, the methods used to publish it and practitioners’ use o it or reerencematerial demonstrate that the publication had much in common with otherunderstudied but widely prevalent medical reerence books o the period.

Reading is thereore as critical to Te Medical rade Catalogue as production:the publication’s changing material orm – its textual content, its illustrationsand exterior covers – aimed to both suit and shape the proessional and practi-cal requirements o a more distinguishable readership o medical practitioners,

and as companies responded to economic changes and intensifed competition within the medical trade. Robert Darton’s ‘communication circuit’ is o particu-lar importance here and while it is not possible to rigidly analyse the catalogueat its every stage, the broad approach nevertheless highlights the ways in whichmeaning was embedded in the catalogue’s physical eatures as it circulated.Authors are also readers themselves and practitioner-readers o the cataloguecomplete the circuit because they inuence companies both beore and aer the




act o catalogue composition. In act, as we will see, catalogue readers inuenced producers much more directly than other types o publication through the con-tribution o content.

Te Medical rade Catalogue: New Perspectives

Te Medical rade Catalogue thus proposes a much needed broad historicalargument about the commercial and material practices o late nineteenth- andearly twentieth-century British medicine and, in doing so, is innovative in align-ing current scholarship in the history o medicine, commerce, technology and

print culture. Nonetheless, it remains a detailed case study o one particular orm

o print, a case study which assesses all known existing editions o the medicaltrade catalogue between 1870 and 1914 (a total o approximately 400 producedby 101 dierent companies). Te largest collection o catalogues in Britain, and

possibly the world, is held at the Tackray Medical Museum, Leeds, UK, butits extensive collection may reect more about institutional policy than it doesabout the numbers originally produced.25 Collecting policies, along with theephemeral nature o the publication, mean it is di cult to estimate how repre-sentative this sample is; it seems likely that many more editions were producedthan we have knowledge o or access to. Yet, while it is not possible to identiy how requently many o the smaller companies in the trade produced the pub-lication, catalogue preaces suggest that the museum holds comprehensive runso catalogues produced in successive years meaning that this sample includes at

least one o each catalogue edition produced by Britain’s largest medical instru-ment makers. Tis study cannot thereore claim to be defnitive, but it is certainly the most comprehensive study to date.

Te catalogue’s changing orm and content serves to highlight how pro-ducers attempted to incorporate practitioners’ requirements ollowing directrequests or company assessments o what they elt practitioners needed. Cata-logue reading practices are perhaps more di cult to obtain than producers’intentions. Indeed, there appears to be relatively ew existing accounts o practi-tioner experiences o the publication, particularly among those beyond the elite.Catalogue producers intended or the publication, with its distinct promotional

purpose, to ft neatly into the environment o everyday lie by fnding commoncause with readers, and thus practitioners were less likely to record their expe-riences o the publication than they might or more sensational publications,such as Te Vestiges of Creation, the anonymous Victorian publication eloquently analysed by James Secord.26 Yet, companies’ motivations and their increasing reliance on the catalogue as a promotional tool, and practitioners’ catalogueexperiences, can be obtained by piecing evidence rom the catalogues together

with a range o sources: correspondence inserted inside individual catalogue



Introduction 13

editions, numerous medical company and printers’ records, hospital accounts,reviews in periodicals and rom the physical markings practitioners le on orinside particular catalogues. By consulting a range o sources, Te Medical radeCatalogue thus provides a more comprehensive view o the relationship betweenmedical commerce and proessionalism than has hitherto been attempted.

Te Medical rade Catalogue is comprised o six chapters. Te frst our o these chapters ocus on catalogue production – rom generation to publish-ing – to demonstrate companies’ intentions to create an advertising publication

practitioners could accept, fnd useul and to which they could contribute.Following this introductory chapter, Chapter 1 broadly outlines the rise anddevelopment o the medical trade catalogue, rom the frst ew editions pro-duced in the late eighteenth century to the vast numbers o catalogues producedby the outbreak o the First World War. It considers the nineteenth-century expansion o the British economy, the growth o medical print culture and con-sumerism, and the proessionalization o medicine as key actors in its rise andas explanations or the publication’s particular ormat. Chapters 2 and 3, mean-

while, ocus in more depth on catalogue orm and content between 1870 and1914: Chapter 2 assesses the ways in which companies shaped typical catalogueeatures, such as textual content, illustrations and promotional devices such asbranding and trademarks, in order to appeal to practitioners in our overlapping segments o the proessional market (surgeons and physicians, apothecaries andchemists, medical specialists and general practitioners), while Chapter 3 assesses

the signifcance o the ways in which companies sought to promote their goods within the catalogue. Chapter 3 ocuses on three particular types o medicaltechnologies promoted within the catalogue – products associated with asep-sis, anaesthetic inhalers and X-ray apparatus – and in doing so, demonstratesthat companies used similar orms o rhetoric – novelty, saety, convenience andscientifc progress – or each type o product to appeal to practitioners. Con-trasting somewhat with the previous chapter, Chapter 4 proceeds to explore thegeneration and production o a catalogue edition to demonstrate how compa-nies and printers shaped the publication into the orm o a medical reerencebook, through the inclusion o eatures such as the quality o paper and types o binding and blocking, in order to appeal to their target market o practitioners.

Te fnal two chapters ocus on the reception o the catalogue among indi-

vidual practitioners and the proession as a whole. Chapter 5 continues toexamine the ways in which companies made their catalogue a publication exclu-sive to a proessional practitioner audience by analysing the three main methodso catalogue distribution: via the postal service, travelling salesmen and throughinternational trade exhibitions and medical conerences. Trough an assessmento evidence contained within the customer registers o Maw, Son & Tomp-son/Son & Sons, a large London-based pharmaceutical and medical instrument




manuacturer, it also demonstrates that companies succeeded in obtaining andmaintaining custom or catalogues and the goods promoted within them romthe medical elite. Te fnal chapter completes the analysis o the ‘lie cycle’ o the catalogue by uncovering practitioners’ responses to and experiences o the

publication. By outlining the main ways in which practitioners o high proes-sional status read, used and actively contributed to the catalogue, it demonstratesthat catalogues ormed an important part o medical practitioners’ work-basedroutine, which, unlike practitioner involvement with advertising aimed at lay audiences, in no way contravened the ethics laid out by their proession.

Te Medical rade Catalogue, then, oers a new and distinctive account o late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British medical practice, one that

places commerce and print culture at the heart o its analysis. It also oers impli-cations or the ways in which we think about British medicine in the present.Medics today, as well as the National Health Service rusts, (where they stillexist), the hospitals and the universities o which they orm a part, continue toorm lucrative markets or all manner o pharmaceuticals and instruments, butalso orm growing markets or new orms o biomedical innovations, stem cellsand genetic engineering, and are targeted by all manner o promotional tech-niques, including the sales catalogue. Medics orm an elite body o proessionals

which cannot be divorced rom the inuence o commercial activities. Perhaps,then, there has never been a more appropriate time to look at the history o themedical proessional as a specialist consumer, actively working with and contrib-

uting to the business world.

introduction from the medical trade catalogue in britain, 1870–1914

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