Punish or Treat? Medical Care in English Prisons 1770-1850

Despite this claim, after the Gaol Fever Act of 1774 required justices of the peace to appoint surgeons or apothecaries, jail doctors were "participants" in an increasingly "comprehensive system of punishment" and an increasingly "pervasive power structure." It ranges from the astonishing account of the operation by a Portsmouth surgeon to save the life of a suicidal felon who had slit his own throat (pp. 90-91) to the routine treatment of patients suffering from the itch or mild indigestion (pp. 94-96 and 99-102).