Introduction: Medicine and the market in England and its colonies, c.1450 - c.1850

What was the medical marketplace? What is a 'medical marketplace'? This book provides the first critical examination of medicine and the market in pre-modern England, colonial North America and British India. Chapters cover the most important themes in the social history of medicine from the fifteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, addressing healthcare in town and country, among rich and poor, women and men, and examining both patients and practitioners. Drawing on recent developments in the history of exchange, they offer new understandings of the ways in which diverse aspects of healthcare operated and changed in this period of social and economic transformation. Each chapter offers significant new interpretation of its field based upon a critical examination of the applicability of the medical marketplace model and presents substantial new research in an accessible style