How the concept of profession evolved in the work of historians of medicine / John C. Burnham.
Abstract:
'What I found was that many medical historians never did recognize professional forces as historical determinants. Furthermore, other scholars chose to view any idea of profession as incidental to a developing social history of medicine. Still other medical historians, however, especially after the mid-1960s, made professional phenomena a special field of inquiry and borrowed conceptualizations from the sociologists. Finally, another era began in the late 1970s, when new sociological thinking about professions ceased to serve as a major inspiration to historical investigators.'
Bulletin of the history of medicine Vol. 70 (1996), p. 1-24