ABSTRACT
The private practice of medicine allowed Daleton physicians to determine how they would handle requests for abortion. The relative confidence of Daleton practitioners in the practice of medicine was circumscribed by uncertainties that have little to do with physician character or the specific social relations among colleagues. Physicians in Daleton indicated that they routinely recommended the procedure to women over thirty-five, at which age the probability of giving birth to a child with Down syndrome significantly increases. Private practice was a refuge from the pressures to conform to innovations of any kind. In one sense, the practice of medicine in Daleton represented the lag between innovation and adoption. In another sense, individual physicians in private practice were able to decide how quickly and to what degree the process of adoption would occur. Private practice acted as a barrier between a profession that ideally served humanity and the physician who first served individual patients.
