Enlightened Physicians: Setting Out on an Elite Academic Career in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century

In the second half of the eighteenth century, medical doctors faced heavy competition. They competed for patients and for institutional positions and sought a variety of means to enhance their reputations. Among rank-and-file physicians, some strove to respond to the high expectations and rationalistic discourse fueled by Enlightenment philosophy. They aimed to build a new medicine on rational and empirical principals. Concentrating on the rich correspondence left by young physicians born in Geneva, this article maps out the social and moral dilemmas encountered by ambitious young physicians in the second half of the eighteenth century, who, like many thousands of others, flocked to Edinburgh, "the first medical school" in Europe. Conscious that they formed but one group among a series of possible practitioners, they pondered over cultural codes, civilities and economic realities as they strove to promote the figure of a knowledgeable, experienced, gentlemanlike physician.