ABSTRACT
The principle of associated philanthropy which underpinned the voluntary infirmary was an effective way of tapping the resources of the commercial economy. In return for their gifts, donors and subscribers – like joint-stock investors – were normally permitted to attend meetings and elect officers. The application of associated philanthropy to medicine channelled the wealth of the eighteenth century towards a project that was central to the Enlightenment agenda. Georgian doctors acquired money plus social and cultural status from their alliance with voluntary infirmaries, but medical knowledge and clinical autonomy were also at issue in relation to patients, governors and fellow practitioners. The moral economy of Georgian medical philanthropy – and its mediation of social status, political conflict and power – oiled the emergence of a wider elite in which doctors and fellow members of the affluent professional and commercial classes gradually fused with aristocrats and landed gentry.
