Privileged communications: medical confidentiality in late Victorian Britain.
نویسنده
چکیده
But at the turn of the century a number of court cases brought home to British doctors the fact that there were no hard and fast rules governing disclosure. Some in the profession argued that since medical colleagues in Europe and parts of North America had the legal right to defend the secrecy of their "privileged communications", British doctors' reputations would suffer if they did not win the same power to guard secrets. At the June 1920 meeting of the British Medical Association a resolution urged its members to fight to keep confidential what they learnt in their consulting rooms. Doctors opposed to such views immediately made their voices heard. One asked rhetorically if the physician was to remain blithely silent and indifferent when he knew that a male patient suffering from venereal disease risked infecting his innocent family. "Does that resolution mean this-that we are, as a profession, to allow a bounder to live and his wife and child to die?"2 In conjuring up the image of the chivalrous physician gallantly protecting a wife from her brutish husband, those arguing in favour of a doctor's right to decide when and if to divulge information struck upon an appealing ploy. Who could fail to respond to the call to protect women and children? But if doctors were simply relied upon to use their discretion and good sense in such matters, was it likely that most would turn their knowledge to the purposes of protecting the weak from the strong, women from men, servants from their masters?
منابع مشابه
Insurance against germ theory: commerce and conservatism in late-Victorian medicine.
This article highlights the role played by commercial life insurance companies in determining the response to tuberculosis in Britain between 1865 and 1920. Late-Victorian life offices hired two sorts of physicians to help them screen out high-risk proposals: provincial medical examiners, who collected fees for examining candidates; and salaried medical advisors, who developed guidelines for th...
متن کامل‘I am not very well I feel nearly mad when I think of you’: Male Jealousy, Murder and Broadmoor in Late-Victorian Britain
This article compares the representations of jealousy in popular culture, medical and legal literature, and in the trials and diagnoses of men who murdered or attempted to murder their wives or sweethearts before being found insane and committed into Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum between 1864 and 1900. It is shown that jealousy was entrenched in Victorian culture, but marginalised in medica...
متن کاملThe perfect food and the filth disease: milk-borne typhoid and epidemiological practice in late Victorian Britain.
This article explores the initial set of epidemiological investigations in Victorian Britain that linked typhoid fever to milk from dairy cattle. Because Victorian epidemiologists first recognized the milk-borne route in outbreaks of typhoid fever, these investigations served as a model for later studies of milk-borne scarlet fever, diphtheria, and perhaps tuberculosis. By focusing on epidemiol...
متن کامل‘I am very glad and cheered when I hear the flute’: The Treatment of Criminal Lunatics in Late Victorian Broadmoor
Through an examination of previously unseen archival records, including patients' letters, this article examines the treatment and experiences of patients in late Victorian Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum and stakes the place of this institution within the broader history of therapeutic regimes in British asylums. Two main arguments are put forth. The first relates to the evolution of treatme...
متن کاملذخیره در منابع من
با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید
برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید
ثبت ناماگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید
ورودعنوان ژورنال:
- Medical History
دوره 37 شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 1993