ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the "model" professions of medicine and the law sought to insert themselves in the upper rungs of the status system. The particular market structure of medicine enabled this profession to incorporate the interests of the large majority of general practitioners and blend them with the different interests of the reform leaders. The attainment of professional monopoly and of cognitive unification depended on this unique combination; the benefits of monopoly outlived the de facto breakdown of the alliance. Internal problems of stratification, specialization, and marginality do not break up the organizational front of the profession. The bulk of the profession tended to interpret its mediocre status and income as a sign that its services were becoming dispensable. In this fragmented situation, the "overcrowding" of the medical profession was a general concern shared, for different reasons, by all physicians.
