This book focuses on a formative period in the development of modern general practice. The foundations of present-day health care in Britain were created in the century before the National Health Service of 1948, when medicine was transformed in its structure, professional status, economic organization, and therapeutic power. In the first full-length study of general practice for these years, Anne Digby deploys an impressive range of hitherto unused archival material and oral testimony to probe the character of general practitioners careers and practices, and to assess their relationships with local communities, a wider society, and the state. An evolutionary approach is adopted to explain the origins and nature of the many changes in medical practice, and the lives of ordinary doctors. The study also explores the gendered nature of medical practice as reflected in the experience of a golden band of women GPs, and examines the hidden role of the doctors wife in the practice.

This is a history of general practice under the National Health Service, covering the whole of the first 50 years, from 1948 to the present.

This book focuses on a formative period in the development of modern general practice. The foundations of present-day health care in Britain were created in the century before the National Health Service of 1948, when medicine was transformed in its structure, professional status, economicorganization, and therapeutic power. In the first full-length study of general practice for these years, Anne Digby deploys an impressive range of hitherto unused archival material and oral testimony to probe the character of general practitioners careers and practices, and to assess theirrelationships with local communities, a wider society, and the state. An evolutionary approach is adopted to explain the origins and nature of the many changes in medical practice, and the lives of ordinary doctors. The study also explores the gendered nature of medical practice as reflected in theexperience of a golden band of women GPs, and examines the hidden role of the doctors wife in the practice.

A rich new examination of the cultural, social and self-representation of the woman surgeon in Britain from 1860 to 1918. This title is also available as Open Access.

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

. . . recommended to anyone interested in the thrilling subject of the relationship of IPRs and innovation. Ralf Uhrich, Journal of Intellectual Property This is an outstanding piece of scholarship. It will serve as a powerful stimulant for new research in the field and as a reliable guide for practitioners. Calestous Juma, Harvard University, US Intellectual property rights (IPRs), particularly patents, occupy a prominent position in innovation systems, but to what extent they support or hinder innovation is widely disputed. Through the lens of biotechnology, this book delves deeply into the main issues at the crossroads of innovation and IPRs to evaluate claims of the positive and negative impacts of IPRs on innovation. An international group of scholars from a range of disciplines economic geography, health law, business, philosophy, history, public health, management examine how IPRs actually operate in innovation systems, not just from the perspective of theory but grounded in their global, regional, national, current and historical contexts. In so doing, the contributors seek to uncover and move beyond deeply held assumptions about the role of IPRs in innovation systems. Scholars and students interested in innovation, science and technology policy, intellectual property rights and technology transfer will find this volume of great interest. The findings will also be of value to decision makers in science and technology policy and managers of intellectual property in biotechnology and venture capital firms.

Health, illness and disease are topics well-suited to interdisciplinary inquiry. This book brings together scholars from around the world who share an interest in and a commitment to bridging the traditional boundaries of inquiry. We hope that this book begins new conversations that will situate health in broader socio-cultural contexts and establish connections between health, illness and disease and other socio-political issues. This book is the outcome of the first global conference on "Making Sense of: Health, Illness and Disease," held at St Catherine's College, Oxford, in June 2002. The selected papers pursue a range of topics from the cultural significance of narratives of health, illness and disease to healing practices in contemporary society as well as patients' illness experiences. Researchers and health care practitioners now live in the age of interdisciplinarity, which has transformed both health care delivery and research on health. The essays in this collection transcend the traditional boundaries of biomedicine and draw attention to the many ways in which health is embedded in socio-cultural norms and how these norms, in turn, shape health practices and health care. This volume is of interest not only to researchers but also to those delivering health care.

This book reveals the ever-present challenges of patient care at the forefront of medical knowledge. Syphilis and gonorrhoea played upon the public imagination in Victorian and Edwardian England, inspiring fascination and fear. Seemingly inextricable from the other great 'social evil', prostitution, these diseases represented contamination, both physical and moral. They infiltrated respectable homes and brought terrible suffering and stigma to those afflicted. Medicine, Knowledge and Venereal Diseases takes us back to an age before penicillin and the NHS, when developments in pathology, symptomology and aetiology were transforming clinical practice. This is the first book to examine systematically how doctors, nurses and midwives grappled with new ideas and laboratory-based technologies in their fight against venereal diseases in voluntary hospitals, general practice and Poor Law institutions. It opens up new perspectives on what made competent and safe medical professionals; how these standards changed over time; and how changing attitudes and expectations affected the medical authority and autonomy of different professional groups.

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.

Illness and misfortune more broadly are ubiquitous; thus, healing roles or professions are also universal. Ironically, however, little attention has been paid to those who heal or promote wellbeing. These come in many different guises: in some societies, healing is highly professional and specialized; in some cases, it is more preventative, in others more interventionist. Based on rich and wide-ranging ethnographic data and especially written for this volume, these essays look at how a great variety of health providers are perceived – from traditional healers to physicians, from diviners to nursing home providers. Conversely, the authors also ask how healers, or those concerned with wider matters of well being, view themselves and to what degree social attitudes differ in regard to who these people are, as well as their power, prestige and activities. As these essays demonstrate, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, or state policy may all play formative roles in shaping the definition of health and wellbeing, how they are delivered, and the character and prestige of those who provide for our health and welfare in society.