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"Disputing the London College, chemical physician George Thomson faults those who persuade patients 'willingly to resign their Lives up to their Judgements' while denying the many 'miscarriages, misdemeanours, and gross aberrations in Physick.' The 'fair pretences' of 'these Galenists,' Thomson argues, cannot be eradicated by even 'the best of Rhetorick or Logick' (15). A disciple of van Helmont who saw little value in Galenism, Thomson challenged College physician Nathaniel Hodges to put 'their two methods of practice to a trial' with the goal of proving once and for all, explains Harold Cook, that 'the learned physicians were the truly illegitimate practitioners' (Medical Regime 160). Thomson's aim was, of course, to champion his chemical practice over the bookish ways of a College comprised of physicians whose success owed more to rhetorical effect than healing efficacy. In opposing unlicensed practitioners and recruiting James Primrose and Sir Thomas Browne to his persuasive ends, however, Thomson also takes the learned physicians' part in making his case. Thus fashioning distinctions nebulous at best and spurious at worst, Thomson's own rhetoric suggests something of how early modern medicine worked to shape, distinguish, and uphold disciplinary différance. Whether serving the proponents of change or the Galenist old guard, and regardless of whether the debate centred on the differences among physicians or between physicians and all other kinds of practitioners, such a 'plausible Rhetoricke' worked to the professionalizing ends of those who would eventually claim the lion's share of medical practice"-- Introduction: Their plausible rhetoric -- "Another mans profession": Physicians and clerics -- "Onely the learned": Physicians, empirics, and women -- "An eloquent tongue": physicians and patients -- "Publishing those truthes": Women and affliction -- "Hard words and rhetoricall phrases": women and learned medicine -- "A bare physician stuft with words": women and domestic healing -- Conclusion
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