Maltese dentistry in the E.C. context

The practice of Dentistry in the European Community is regulated by the Council Directives of 1978 which provide for the activities of and training programmes for dental practitioners, and the mutual recognition of qualifications to facilitate the right to freedom of movement and the establishment of dental practices by non-nationals. In this article the author describes the dental health and the dental manpower in Malta and E.C.peer-reviewe

Female Barrenness, Bodily Access and Aromatic Treatments in Seventeenth-Century England

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/.Scholars examining medical practice in early modern England have often remarked upon the complexities of the relationship between male physicians and female patients. It has been noted that ideas of female modesty and concern about the potential erotic nature of contact between patients and practitioners could affect the treatment of certain disorders. This paper contributes to this on-going discussion by examining the use of pungent substances to diagnose and treat female barrenness. Diagnostic tests included in medical treatises could rely upon the woman’s ability to perceive a particular substance. These tests thus put women at the centre of the diagnosis of their disorders and allowed them to negotiate access to their reproductive bodies. Similarly medical practitioners included a range of treatments for infertility that involved the fumes of certain substances entering the womb or surrounding the body. These treatments may have allowed women, and perhaps their medical practitioners, to choose a method of remedy that did not involve the application of external lotions to the genitalia. Thus by considering the multi-sensory nature of medical treatment this paper will highlight that the diversity of remedies advocated in early modern medical texts would perhaps have allowed women to restrict access to their reproductive bodies, while still obtaining diagnosis and treatment.Peer reviewe

Chamfort, doctor of morals : the maxim and the medical aphorism in late eighteenth-century France

The increasing prestige of medicine as a science, accompanied by the social rise of the doctor, in eighteenth-century France is well documented. What I would like to argue here, however, is that there exists a correspondence between the establishment of medicine as an independent field of study in eighteenth-century France and the increasing use and influence of an autonomous form of medical discourse, namely, the aphorism, in this period. This is not so much a question of the language used by the more renowned doctors of the day but of a form of discourse deeply imbued and associated with medical practice. (It is nonetheless true that certain famous physicians combined medical and literary roles. For instance, Theophile Bordeu intervenes significantly in Diderot's Le Reve d'Alembert, and Vicq d'Azyr, Marie-Antoinette's doctor, was elected to the Académie Française in 1788 in a sort of social consecration or medical discourse, implicitly incorporating his medical figure and figures into the socio-linguistic norms of 'le bon usage’ promoted by the Académie itself.) Yet what interests me particularly here is the insinuation of the medical aphorism itself into other fields of late eighteenth-century discourse, notably those of literature and politics, the traditional domains of the maxim

Chamfort, doctor of morals : the maxim and the medical aphorism in late eighteenth-century France

The increasing prestige of medicine as a science, accompanied by the social rise of the doctor, in eighteenth-century France is well documented. What I would like to argue here, however, is that there exists a correspondence between the establishment of medicine as an independent field of study in eighteenth-century France and the increasing use and influence of an autonomous form of medical discourse, namely, the aphorism, in this period. This is not so much a question of the language used by the more renowned doctors of the day but of a form of discourse deeply imbued and associated with medical practice. (It is nonetheless true that certain famous physicians combined medical and literary roles. For instance, Theophile Bordeu intervenes significantly in Diderot's Le Reve d'Alembert, and Vicq d'Azyr, Marie-Antoinette's doctor, was elected to the Académie Française in 1788 in a sort of social consecration or medical discourse, implicitly incorporating his medical figure and figures into the socio-linguistic norms of 'le bon usage’ promoted by the Académie itself.) Yet what interests me particularly here is the insinuation of the medical aphorism itself into other fields of late eighteenth-century discourse, notably those of literature and politics, the traditional domains of the maxim

Medical Practice, Urban Politics and Patronage: The London 'Commonalty' of Physicians and Surgeons of the 1420s.

Medical practice in fifteenth-century England is often seen as suffering from the low status and unregulated practice of which Thomas Linacre later complained. Unlike in many European cities, the provision of physic was uncontrolled, and while urban guilds oversaw surgery as a manual art, no comprehensive system of medical organisation or regulation existed. However, in a remarkable episode of the 1420s, a group of university-trained physicians and elite surgeons associated with Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, briefly established just such a system. While their efforts initially secured approval for a national scheme, it was only in the City of London that they succeeded in implementing their plans. The detailed ordinances of the collegiate 'commonalty' they founded provide a unique insight into their attitudes. Drawing on continental models, they attempted to control all medicine within the city by establishing a hierarchy of practitioners, preventing illicit and incompetent practice, and offering treatment to even the poorest Londoners. Yet they failed to appreciate the vested interests of civic politics: achieving these aims meant curtailing the rights of the powerful Grocers and the Barbers, a fact made clear by their adjudication of a case involving two members of the Barbers' Company, and the Barbers' subsequent riposte-a mayoral petition that heralded the commonalty's end. Its founder surgeons went on to revitalise their Surgeons' Fellowship, which continued independently of the Barbers until a merger in 1540; in contrast, the physicians withdrew from civic affairs, and physic remained entirely unregulated until episcopal licensing was instituted in 1511.This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust awards 097782/Z/11/Z and 077548.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Oxford University Press via http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ehr/cev26