‘Bats, Rats and Barristers’:The Lancet, libel and the radical stylistics of early nineteenth-century English medicine

The early decades of the nineteenth century were a turbulent time for English medicine. The return of demobilized military surgeons from the Napoleonic wars and the increasing numbers graduating from the Scottish universities and private anatomy schools served to swell the lowest ranks of the medical professional hierarchy. These general practitioners, as they were known, combined the practice of medicine and surgery while some also adopted the shop-based trade of the apothecary. Though predominantly catering to the nascent middle classes, their increasing numbers meant greater competition for trade, leading to widespread economic and social insecurity. It also fuelled internecine medical conflict as those at the bottom sought to challenge the hegemonic position occupied by the corporate elites of the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Surgeons and reform the system in accordance with their own, avowedly democratic, interests. Of course, this situation both mirrored and was shaped by events in the wider social, economic and political landscape. The post-war years were characterized by agricultural distress, labour unrest and radical political agitation, including such openly insurrectionary incidents as the Spa Fields Riots of 1816 and the Pentrich Rising of 1817. Indeed, as frustrated artisans, the general practitioners of the medical sphere had much in common with the radicalized followers of ‘King Ludd’ or Thomas Spence. A number of historians have been sensitive to these parallels between the medical and the political. In his peerless study of early nineteenth-century medical radicalism, for example, Adrian Desmond has drawn out the deep ideological affinities