The story of the development of the modern British
medical profession has been an insular affair. At least, this is the inescapable
conclusion from the scholarly literature on British medicine. In light
of the growth of Britain's territorial possessions and its commercial hegemony
in the world, the absence of the Victorian empire from the history of British
medicine is not just puzzling, but plain wrong. In the brief compass of
this paper, I will sketch out the multifaceted impact of British imperialism
in the making of Victorian medicine. At a minimum, the primary care needs
of imperial personnel and colonial charges in the dependent generated a
constant demand for practitioners in a chronically underemployed domestic
profession. Similarly, the colonies of white settlement provided new markets
for both the cultivation and expansion of fee-based regular medicine. Further,
the empire helped to constitute the political and social contours of British
medicine. It not only furnished a political space for defining the scope
of the normative authority of British medicine. The representation of British
medicine in the empire in the medical press also provided a cultural space
for defining the identity of practitioners and place of medicine within
Victorian society itself.