Kärringmedicin och vetenskap : Läkare och kvacksalverianklagade i Sverige omkring 1770–1870

Sammanfattning: The aim of this study has been to analyse the relationship between licensed and unlicensed medical practitioners by looking at the term quackery and how it was used. In this way the encounters between licensed physicians and unlicensed healers, and the concomitant issues of demarcation, have been brought into focus.From this starting point, I have analysed how physicians constructed their arguments when accusing someone of being a quack and how the accused responded to both charge and categorisation and how this changed over time. The way I have chosen to tackle the subject has laid bare the antagonism between different medical practitioners. Yet at the same time, it has also cast light on what underpinned the common views shared by the various parties in the medical market.The relationship between licensed physicians and unlicensed healers during the period in question, 1770 to 1870, was marked by the fact that the former were few in number and that medical science’s ability to cure disease was shaky at best, while all the while the medical profession enjoyed the backing of the state. However, these conflicting circumstances meant that in practice there was leeway for interpretation that both licensed and unlicensed medical practitioners could exploit. Under normal circumstances physicians surprisingly often accepted quacks and those accused of quackery acknowledged the expertise of the physicians. Yet, on the rhetorical, abstract level the dichotomy between science and old wives’ remedies was harped upon by the physicians.