ABSTRACT
Thus Beddoes imagined the physician of the future as an experimental scientist, treating patients within a progressive investigative procedure. The sick would necessarily shed the interactive role they enjoyed in routine traditional practice. Yet they too in time would recognize the benefits: ‘the better people are informed concerning medical practice, the less will they intermeddle*, he opined, hopeful about the powers o f know ledge, ‘the less frequently also will they be the dupes o f the crafty and inert part o f the faculty, and the more readily will they cooperate with those, who, spare neither their faculties nor their credit in behalf of the sick*.91
