Diagnosis and Authority in the Early Twentieth-Century Medical Practice of Richard C. Cabot

This paper examines diagnostic practices using the early twentieth-century medical literature and the patient correspondence and records from the clinic of Richard Cabot. What shaped medicine's rapidly growing persuasive authority in the twentieth century? Diagnostic expertise demonstrated the doctor's control over disease but offered a service of ambiguous value to patients. Cabot and his peers offered differing views on how new diagnostic techniques would influence their relationships to their patients. In his busy private clinic Cabot put into effect an exacting diagnostic process, modeled on his innovative Clinicopathological Conferences. The people who came to the clinic often sought his technical expertise but accepted his diagnostic practices and opinions sometimes only provisionally.