The Laboratory and the Clinic Revisited: The Introduction of Laboratory Medicine into the Bergen General Hospital, Norway

摘要

The article explores the everyday relationship between the laboratory and the clinic in the Bergen hospital in the 1890s. Many claims have been made by historians of medicine and science that such a relationship was likely to be dominated by conflict. Through an analysis of the establishment of a prosector position in the Bergen hospital, followed by a careful investigation of practice in the hospital in relation to diagnosis of tuberculosis, diphtheria, typhoid fever and cancer, the presumed conflict between the laboratory and clinic is explored. Instead of conflict, I find in general enthusiastic clinicians putting the laboratory techniques and technologies to use in the clinic for ail their worth. The Bergen experience thus contributes to an ongoing trend where the conflict-oriented narrative between the laboratory and the clinic is challenged.