(Re-)Reading Medical Trade Catalogs: The Uses of Professional Advertising in British Medical Practice, 1870–1914

This article explores how medical practitioners read, used, and experienced medical trade catalogs in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Britain. Reader responses to the catalog, a book-like publication promoting medical tools, appliances, and pharmaceuticals, have been chronically understudied, as have professional reading practices within medicine more generally. Yet, evidence suggests that clinicians frequently used the catalog and did so in three main ways: to order medical products, to acquire new information about these products, and to display their own product endorsements and product designs. The seemingly widespread nature of these practices demonstrates an individual and collective professional desire to improve medical practice and highlights the importance of studying professional reading practices in the cultural history of medicine.