Doctors, Druggists and Patients: The End of the Medical Marketplace in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Gloucester.

Healthcare in Britain from the sixteenth century through to the mid-nineteenth century has been characterised as a medical marketplace, a model that emphasises plurality, diversity, competition, and consumer choice. The medical marketplace was an unregulated space, in which qualified doctors were forced to compete with chemists and druggists, medicine vendors and quacks; one in which the gullible consumer was acutely vulnerable to unscrupulous suppliers. However, many details regarding the complexion of the medical marketplace and the timeframe and circumstances of its demise are unclear. This paper discusses the findings of a comprehensive survey of healthcare provision in Gloucester circa 1850, utilising a wide range of sources, some of which have been overlooked in previous studies. Focussing on the key attributes of the medical marketplace: plurality, diversity, choice and competition, it will suggest that the idea that the medical marketplace came to an end around the 1850s as the result of the professionalization of medicine is not supported by the evidence. In Gloucester, the transition to a more structured and stratified healthcare economy, dominated by the medical profession had occurred at an earlier date and by the 1840s was already largely complete. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]