Bones of Contention? Orthodox Medicine and the Mystery of the Bone-Setter’s Craft

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Abstract
This chapter looks at ‘the merger’ of bone-setting with orthodox medicine during the latter part of the nineteenth century, and questions the extent to which bone-setting can be exempted from the framework of conflict common to the analysis of the relations between ‘regular’ and ‘irregular’ medical practice. Although lack of evidence must leave the full history of bone-setting as much a mystery as the craft itself, it is more than merely a want of evidence that renders bone-setting in late-nineteenth-century Britain an odd and awkward contributor to the history of the relations between ‘regular’ and ‘irregular’ medicine. The history of the relations between bone-setting and orthodox medicine thus fails to offer a satisfying, straightforward picture of the relations between ‘regular’ and ‘irregular’ medicine. Yet Hugh Owen Thomas’s position on bone-setting was in all respects unique and his views remained remote from the medicine and surgery of the London establishment.

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