Doyle examines the role of local and national politics on hospitals. Ultimately, Doyle argues that social and economic diversity created a number of models for future health care which rested on a combination of voluntary and municipal provision.
This major thematic and historical overview provides a clear guide to key welfare practices and developments in the public, private, voluntary and informal welfare sectors in twentieth-century Britain, outlining the dominant ideas about welfare in the period in question. As such, it offers an effective bridge between historical and contemporary concerns, drawing out some of the more rarely articulated premises of courses in the history of social policy and illuminating the social, political and economic dimensions of its subject.
An accessible introduction to the social history of medicine in Europe during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, set within its political, cultural, intellectual and economic contexts
First published in 1999, this rewarding volume offers a close and systematic analysis of the General Infirmary at Bath, which was founded in 1739 to grant ‘lepers and cripples, and other indigent strangers’ access to the spa waters. Four main themes are pursued in order to locate the hospital within its economic, socio-cultural and political contexts: arrangements for management and finance under the conditions of a prospering commercial economy; the rewards and restrictions experienced by the physicians and surgeons who donated their professional services free of charge; and the constructions of an integrated social and political élite around the physical and moral rehabilitation of the sick poor. In this way, the example of Bath – a stylish resort whose visitors and residents exemplified the dynamic of fashionable philanthropy – is used to open up issues of significance to our understanding of Georgian Britain as a whole.
The medical profession had as much influence on the lives of our ancestors as it does on our lives today. It occupied an extraordinary range of individuals - surgeons, doctors, nurses and specialists of all kinds. Yet, despite burgeoning interest in all aspects of history and ancestry, medicine has rarely been considered from the point of view of a family historian. This is the main purpose of Michelle Higgss accessible and authoritative introduction to the subject. Assuming the reader has little prior knowledge of how or where to look for such information, she traces the development of medical practice and patient care. She describes how attitudes to illnesses and disease have changed over time. In particular, she looks at the parts played in the system by doctors and nurses - at their role, training and places of work and she also looks at the patients and their experience of medicine in their day.'Each section identifies the archives and records that the family historian can turn to, and discusses other potential sources including the Internet. The book is an invaluable guide to all the information that can give an insight into the experience of an ancestor who worked in medicine or had a medical history.
G. R. Searle's absorbing narrative history breaks conventional chronological barriers to carry the reader from England in 1886, the apogee of the Victorian era with the nation poised to celebrate the empress queen's golden jubilee, to 1918, as the 'war to end all wars' drew to a close leaving England to come to term with its price - above all in terms of human life, but also in the general sense that things would never be the same again. This was an age of extremes: a period of imperial pomp and circumstance, with a political elite preoccupied with display and ceremony, alongside the growing cult of the simple life; the zenith of imperialism with its idealization of war on the one hand, the start of the Labour Party, a socialist renaissance, and welfare politics on the other; and a radical challenging of traditional gender stereotypes in the face of the prevailing cult of masculinity. Under Professor Searle's historical microscope, all the details of daily life spring into sharp relief. Half-forgotten figures such as Edward Carpenter, Vesta Tilley, and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman take their place on stage beside Oscar Wilde, the Pankhursts, and Lloyd George. Motoring and aviation, to become such an intrinsic part of life within the next decades, had their beginnings in this period as pastimes for the rich. From the wretched slums of England's great cities to their bustling docks and factories, from the grand portals of Westminster to the violent political challenges of the Ulster Unionists and the militant suffrage movement, from Blackpool's tower and beach packed with holidaymakers to the trenches of the Western Front, the energy, creativity, and often destructive turmoil of the years 1886-1918 are brought into focus in this magisterial history. THE NEW OXFORD HISTORY OF ENGLAND The aim of the New Oxford History of England is to give an account of the development of the country over time. It is hard to treat that development as just the history which unfolds within the precise boundaries of England, and a mistake to suggest that this implies a neglect of the histories of the Scots, Irish, and Welsh. Yet the institutional core of the story which runs from Anglo-Saxon times to our own is the story of a state-structure built round the English monarchy and its effective successor, the Crown in Parliament. While the emphasis of individual volumes in the series will vary, the ultimate outcome is intended to be a set of standard and authoritative histories, embodying the scholarship of a generation.
G.R. Searle's narrative history breaks conventional chronological barriers to carry the reader from England in 1886, the apogee of the Victorian era with the nation poised to celebrate the empress queen's golden jubilee, to 1918, as the 'war to end all wars' drew to a close.