This is a list of fictional doctors (characters that use the appellation "doctor", medical and otherwise), from literature, films, television, and other media.
Shakespeare created a doctor in his play Macbeth (c 1603)[1] with a "great many good doctors" having appeared in literature by the 1890s[2] and, in the early 1900s, the "rage for novel characters" included a number of "lady doctors".[3] Solomon Posen had collected a list of books with "a doctors as a principal figure" which he says resulted in a list of over 10,000 works as of 2005.[4]
Early cinematic and television representations of doctors typically characterized the practice of medicine as being "in safe (male) hands,"[5] with 90% of doctors on television through 1989 being male.[6]