The Medical Trade Catalogue in Britain, 1870–1914 by Claire L. Jones (review)

Recent historical literature has amply illustrated that doctors were not immune from the pressures of the market. Jones contributes to this literature with her impressive study of over 400 medical trade catalogues produced by 101 companies. The largest collection of these is held at the Thackray Medical Museum in Leeds. Her comprehensive examination of these catalogues includes their production, distribution, and reception. She argues that the catalogue was a mediator between the worlds of commerce and medical professionalism.

Catalogues emerged as a major marketing tool for pharmaceutical chemists and medical instrument makers by 1875. Typically, catalogues targeted only medical professionals, not the general public. They could range from 170 to 2,000 pages, though most were under 200 pages for ease of transport and use. Conventionally, they were cloth-bound, had embossed lettering on the spine and cover, often in gilt, and were indexed—in short, they looked like a reference book. And they functioned like one. Usually, each product was lavishly illustrated, often with purpose-made engravings. One catalogue could contain 10,000 illustrations. Text was initially limited to one or two lines per product, but in response to the interest of doctors text began to expand to contain more practical advice. Testimonials from practitioners were also usual, as were quotations from medical journals. Production was time-consuming and expensive. A typical catalogue could take between three and five years to produce. Each new catalogue required not only the addition of new products with new illustrations and text, but revised pricing for all products and up-to-date testimonials and quotations for every product listed. Distributed by post, traveling salesmen, and exhibitions, they had print runs of about 30,000 to 50,000 copies per catalogue.

Most catalogues marketed instruments rather than drugs. About one-quarter of catalogues promoted pharmaceuticals. These were more ephemeral and consequently were not cloth-bound, were usually less than one hundred pages, and emphasized laboratory research, branding, trademarks, and testimonials rather than illustrations of the product. In contrast, the majority of catalogues marketed surgical instruments, electrical devices, and apparatus. These catalogues were especially important in informing doctors about innovations in professional practice such as aseptic products, anesthetic inhalers, and X-ray apparatus. Jones shows how slowly the profession incorporated innovation. For example, instruments with handles that were ebony, ivory, or tortoiseshell were more difficult to sterilize than all-metal instruments, but they continued to be advertised alongside the metal ones as late as 1914. Sometimes the marketing reveals why doctors were slow to change. In the case of anesthetic inhalers promotional material pointed to doctors’ concerns about overdosing by emphasizing that the new, improved inhalers came with warning devices. Jones finds that the promotion of aseptic tools alongside nonaseptic tools, safety inhalers alongside Clover’s and Jenkin’s original designs, and X-ray apparatus alongside other forms of electro-medical products “suggests practitioner acceptance of new products was neither wholesale nor complete by the end of the period, and thus not all were convinced that new products were the route to improved scientific practice” (p. 79).

Doctors helped to refine the content of the catalogues by telling the producers what they needed—more text, more explanations of product usage in practice and theory, better covers that would allow their catalogues to stand up to daily consultation. Doctors also openly endorsed products in the catalogues, which was a good source of publicity for the individual doctor, yet did not defy the ethical dictates of the General Medical Council because catalogues were not distributed to the general public.

Ultimately, this book clearly shows the symbiotic relationship between medicine and commerce in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Companies balanced profit seeking with the ethical considerations of the profession; doctors both provided a service to their patients and were willing consumers, even promoters, of new products. The history of the medical catalogue, Jones shows, was a commercial...