The Cape Doctor in the Nineteenth Century - Paperback

by Harriet Deacon (Volume Editor), Howard Phillips (Volume Editor), Elizabeth Van Heyningen (Volume Editor)

The Cape Doctor is a social history of medicine, which places formal Western medicine within its political, social and economic context. The work shows the way in which the Cape medical profession excluded all but a few women and black practitioners, and discriminated along lines of race, class and gender in their practice. It revises traditional whiggish and linear accounts of professional advancement, but it also moves beyond the classic revisionist tradition, which documents the emergence of a society divided along lines of race and gender, by providing examples of cultural crossover and medical pluralism. It also provides a perspective on a broad historical process within which to understand present debates about the most appropriate health policies in South Africa today.

Author Biography

Harriet Deacon (PhD Cantab.), Elizabeth van Heyningen (PhD UCT) and Howard Phillips (PhD UCT) are social historians of medicine working in Cape Town, the first two as independent scholars and the latter as an associate professor in the Department of Historical Studies at University of Cape Town (UCT).