Perfecting the World

Book excerpt: In the late twentieth century, we assume a wide array of humanitarian and democratic privilege: health insurance, preventive medicine, equal treatment of rich and poor, equal rights for all. But in Victorian England these issues were just emerging. A nineteenth-century British physician, Dr. Thomas Hodgkins, was their committed champion; his battle ultimately cost him his career. Dr. Hodgkins is now best known for his description of the disease of the lymph nodes named after him, but he was also a reformer, an educator, and a Quaker. He was responsible for numerous medical discoveries. He actively advocated health insurance for the working poor. Throughout his life he espoused the humane treatment of the underprivileged, including minorities. His farsighted vision of medicine and society brought him into conflict with the establishment of the Victorian Empire- with many important medical, religious, and political figures of his time. This vision and struggle remain significant more than 100 years after his death. The authors, both prominent medical educators at Harvard University, have based this book on the hitherto unexplored papers and letters of Dr. Hodgkins and his family in the first major biography of this great nineteenth-century British physician. -- from Book Jacket.