Germ of an Idea shows how a belief in contagion began to spread among a group of medical reformers who had been forced by nationality and religious nonconformity to follow alternative pathways to medical education and professional status in early eighteenth century Britain. It explains how contagionism shaped their ideas about the nature and behavior of diseases such as smallpox, plague, syphilis, and consumption and how it interacted with the belief that diseases were not imbalances, but specific entities.
Germ of an Idea shows how a belief in contagion began to spread among a group of medical reformers who had been forced by nationality and religious no...
The reformers, who were often "outsiders," English Nonconformists or men born outside England, emerged from three coincidental transformations: transformation in medical ideas, in the nature and content of medical education, and in the sort of men who became physicians.
The reformers, who were often "outsiders," English Nonconformists or men born outside England, emerged from three coincidental transformations: transf...
