According to Jane Eliot Sewell, the Maryland medical experience has been a study in diversity, with sharp divisions along gender, racial, class, religious, and geographical lines. This diversity of medical practice partly reflects the general development of American medicine. Yet in other ways, she argues, the history of Maryland medicine is unique.
In this first comprehensive history of medicine in the state of Maryland, Sewell tells the story of the people and institutions who helped shape not only the nation's health professions but also the very quality of lives Americans led. Among the topics covered are the development of the Medical Hall in late eighteenth-century Harford County, the evolution of the teaching hospital that became the University of Maryland, and the origins of the scientific tradition established at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Medical School, and School of Public Health. Published during the bicentennial of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland, one of the most distinguished medical associations in the United States, Medicine in Maryland will be of interest to citizens of the state, physicians, and medical historians.
"I hope [this study] will provide its readers with a better understanding of how medical practice has changed over the previous two centuries and how the complexities of geography, class, race, gender, religion, and professional development have shaped that process. During those two hundred years, some groups gained power, wealth, and status only to see their positions decline as the environment changed in ways that challenged their expertise. Some have regained their standing, while others never recovered. As this suggests, the history of medicine in this state has not been one of linear progress for any group of practicioners or their patients." -- from the preface
