536 Ch. 14 • The Industrial Revolution
Daumier depicts a lawyer pleading his case.
elsewhere—the “pettifogging attorney” of the eighteenth century gradually
was replaced by the “respectable lawyer” of the nineteenth. Notaries, too,
gained in wealth and status with the growth of cities. They earned—though
some of their clients would not choose that particular verb—fees that some
times amounted to more than 10 percent of the value of property by register
ing and storing deeds of title. They prepared marriage documents, dowries,
and wills. Notaries thus remained in most countries the financial equivalent
of father-confessors, knowing—or at least guessing—most of the deepest
secrets concerning their clients’ fortunes.
The number of doctors rose rapidly in nineteenth-century Western Eu
rope, although they still struggled to be recognized as professionals rather
than members of a trade. While some brilliant researchers labored in
obscurity, some notorious hacks received public plaudits. Among the latter
was the decorated French doctor who claimed that he had proved that
syphilis was not communicable—thus reassuring clients who paid for his
soothing words. Doctors were limited in the treatments at their disposal,
which also contributed to their profession’s minimal prestige. Popular
belief in age-old cures rooted in superstition persisted. The vast majority of
the hospitals that existed in London at mid-century had been founded
since 1800.
In Western Europe, doctors began to form professional associations. The
British Medical Society began in 1832 with the goal of encouraging stan
dardized training and professional identity. For the first time, in some
countries surgeons now needed to have studied medicine in order to take
up a scalpel, at least legally. The British Medical Act of 1858 standardized
credentials for doctors, but did not require them.