The Cape doctor and the broader medical market, 1800-1850

Regularly trained and licensed Cape doctors in the nineteenth century operated within a medical market which accommodated other suppliers of medical care, both competing and complementary. These 'alternative practitioners' included shopkeepers selling patent medicines, apothecaries, chemists and midwives, Muslim folk healers and indigenous Khoisan or African healers. Licensed doctors also provided medical services for a wide variety of clients - white settlers, their slaves, servants, free blacks and indigenes, usually in decreasing order of frequency. Most of these patients probably consulted alternative practitioners as well, often in preference to the Western-trained doctor. Cape doctors distanced themselves very firmly from alternative healers and folk medical traditions in order to establish their niche within the medical market and to secure state support by creating a strong profession.