ScholarWorks@숙명여자대학교

초록

The purpose of this paper was to understand the strategies of American doctors in the late 19th century in constructing their identities and power, by examining the early Journal of the American Medical Association. Many scholars have argued that the modern identity of American physicians as ‘scientific experts’ emerged with the development of scientific medicines and the reform of medical education, which climaxed with the establishment of Johns Hopkins Medical School(1893) and the Flexner Report(1910). However the identity as ‘scientific experts’ was neither firmly fixed nor given to spontaneously, but had been constructed by strategies which American physicians had promoted carefully. Despite the contemporary developments of scientific medicines, American doctors referred to their discipline as a ‘learned profession’ which had been granted only to clergy and lawyers as well as physicians since the Middle Ages, emphasizing a liberal education comprising Latin, Greek, grammar, etc. The term ‘learned profession’ was a boundary to distinguish them from medical practitioners trained not at universities but at proprietary medical schools or under apprenticeships which could not teach liberal courses. Also, ‘learned profession’ was an effort to define their identity against those who had attempted to professionalize the profession exclusively and seek private interests only. These double boundary works should be understood not as a rejection of or ignorance to contemporary scientific medicines, but as intentional strategies to cope with confusing circumstances and to gain their professional power.

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