Medical Discourse and Ideology in the Edinburgh Review
Medical Discourse and Ideology in the Edinburgh Review
This chapter examines medical discourses and ideologies in the Edinburgh Review to set up a comparative context for examining the relationship of their primary ideological competitor – Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine – to medical culture. It argues that the reforming and professionalising rhetoric of the Edinburgh emerged, in part, from medico-scientific culture and was harnessed by key medical contributors, such as John Thomson (1765–1846), Andrew Duncan, junior (1773–1832), and John Gordon (1786–1818). This rhetoric was carried forward in Archibald Constable’s Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal. The scathing reviews of medical and physiological texts in the Edinburgh Review are read as drawing upon and contributing to the liberal Whig ideology and reforming rhetoric of the journal, while also forwarding the professional agenda of individual contributors.
Keywords: Edinburgh Review, medical culture, Whig ideology, John Thomson, John Gordon, Andrew Duncan
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