Discussing Patients in Private and in Print: The Records of an Eighteenth-Century Dispensary

Abstract

This essay studies the variation between the ways in which physicians wrote about their patients in private and their presentation of these case histories to the wider world in print. Focusing particularly on the case of Andrew Duncan, who founded the Edinburgh Public Dispensary in 1776, this paper will investigate the differences detailed in Duncan's handwritten case notes with the ways in which he chose to portray these patient cases in his published works. This paper will argue that not only does Duncan demonstrate a tendency to exaggerate the positive outcomes from his treatments but also his published works simplify the diagnoses performed on dispensary patients. The self-editing which is apparent in his medical publishing includes the omission of details of the range of complaints individual patients suffer from and exclusion of certain disease categories, including hysteria, from the printed record. This paper will argue that a historiographical focus on printed material such as disease studies and annual reports can result in the distortion of information regarding diagnosis, medical outcomes, and the relationship between patient and practitioner during the eighteenth century.