ABSTRACT
E.W. Lane (MD, Edinburgh, 1853) presented his medical philosophy, called “hygienic medicine,” in his book Hydropathy: Or Hygienic Medicine, in 1859. His hygienic medicine was deeply influenced by the concept of natural laws of health and by the Romantic concept of nature. Lane also attempted to incorporate the newest blood pathology of John Hughes Bennett into his holistic and naturalistic therapeutic system. For Lane, hygiene was neither the ancient concept of regimen represented by “the six non-naturals” nor the newly shared reductionist concept, which was focused on cleanliness and infection management. In this chapter, I focus on the aspect in his medical philosophy that is related to the medical market. Lane was one of very few physicians around the time of the Medical Act 1858 who aspired to “medical reconciliation” among medical professionals based on nature cure philosophy. He did not so much protest the medical mainstream as straddle the boundaries of orthodox medicine and hydropathy, medicine and hygiene and public and personal hygiene. Lane viewed the medical market not only as a place of competition between different medical beliefs for dominance but also as a place where a variety of medical theories could be respected with mutual tolerance.
