The Coalbrookdale Doctors: A Family Practice in Shropshire, 1770-1870

They were years of unprecedented progress in industry, society, democracy, education and science, but of war in Europe, America and at sea. The last decades of the Eighteenth and first of the Nineteenth Centuries saw changes that ushered in the modern world. Nowhere more so than in the Shropshire village of Coalbrookdale where, perhaps more than anywhere else at this date, technical innovation led to the use of iron in bridges, buildings, sea-going ships, steam engines and railways. But also in the world of medicine, Coalbrookdale was subject to radical change as scientific discoveries brought new attitudes and a better understanding of life and disease. Throughout this momentous period, three generations of one family ran a medical practice in Coalbrookdale. Dr Richard Moore’s exhaustive research has uncovered how they skilfully adopted advances in knowledge, developed their education and played their part in creating the profession of General Practitioner as we know it today. This original account demonstrates how, in the microcosm of Coalbrookdale, the experiences of one family mirror the democratic, social, industrial and scientific changes of the early Industrial Revolution. ‘ It gives me much pleasure to commend this book that describes so well the transition in Coalbrookdale from the work of the apothecary-surgeons to doctors … at the dawn of the modern medical profession, ’ Michael Darby, descendant of Abraham Darby.