Making a Medical Living

Making a Medical Living explores the neglected socio-economic history of medical practice, beginning with the first voluntary hospital in 1720 and ending with national health insurance in 1911. It looks at public appointments in hospitals and dispensaries, office under public welfare systems, and at private practice. In this innovative study, Anne Digby makes use of new sources of information, looks at ordinary rather than élite doctors, and analyses provincial rather than metropolitan practice. From the mid-eighteenth century medicine became more commercialised; doctors travelled to see ordinary patients, developed specialisms, and were entrepreneurial in expanding institutional forms of health care. This entrepreneurial activity helped shape English medicine into a distinctive pattern of general and specialist practice, and of public and private health care.