Medical police. Politics and police: the fate of John Roberton.

IT is difficult to imagine a case more deserving of detailed historical analysis than that of John Roberton (1776-1840), a surgeon who practised as a specialist in the treatment of venereal disease in two European capitals' yet is linked to a subject, medical police, which, on close examination, occupied a fraction of his known professional life. Despite his widely published popular works on venereal disease, Roberton's place in medical history is secured under public health by his authorship of one work, A treatise on medical police, and on diet, regimen, &c.2 In the history of public health and social medicine, he usually forms a triptych with two other distinguished scholars associated with medical police: Johann Peter Frank, professor of medicine at Pavia and Vienna, author of A complete system of medical polity,3 and Andrew Duncan, senior, professor of the institutes of medicine at Edinburgh, a mover in the foundation there of the first British chair of medical jurisprudence and medical police in 1807, and author of Heads oflectures on medicaljurisprudence and medical police.4 Little has been written about Roberton's professional life, yet it should be of as much interest to the historian as his published work on medical police, because it offers an illustration of a medical entrepreneur who, though openly disclaimed by the medical establishments of Edinburgh and London, was nevertheless able to operate successfully on the lucrative fringes of medicine. With limited formal education, and lacking influential connexions, Roberton advanced himself as a specialist in venereal disease, deploying unorthodox methods of treatment in a manner which would have been impossible after legislation imposed stricter professional standards later in the