Medicine in Wales: 1800-2000

Medicine in Wales, c.1800–2000 is the first book to deal with the history of medicine in Wales in an interdisciplinary context. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, from documentary records to film, oral testimony, and participatory social research, the essays collected here examine how the relationships between the public and the private provision of healthcare have changed since the Industrial Revolution. Individual case studies explore themes that range from the water supply to suicide, from mutual aid to industrial rehabilitation and the medical inspection of school children, and from nursing during the First World War to experiences of childbirth and health visiting after 1945.

Anne Borsay is professor in the School of Health Science at the University of Wales, Swansea.

1. Medicine and Health: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, Anne Borsay and Dorothy Porter2. Public Utility or Private Enterprise? Water and Health in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Richard Coopey and Owen Roberts3. From Private Grief to Public Testimony: Suicides in Wales, 1832–1914, Pamela Michael4. The Early School Medical Service in Wales: Public Care or Private Responsibility? David Hirst5. A Proletarian Public Sphere: Working-Class Provision of Medical Services and Care in South Wales, c.1900–1948, Steven Thompson6. Public Service and Private Ambitions: Nursing at the King Edward VII Hospital, Cardiff during the First World War, Sara Brady7. ‘Fit to Work’: Representing Rehabilitation on the South Wales Coalfield during the Second World War, Anne Borsay8. Private Lives and Public Bodies: Childbirth in Post-war Swansea, Susan J. Pitt9. ‘It’s a Funny Job Really’: The Contradictions of Health Visiting, Anthea Symonds10. Water, Health and the Public/Private Interface, Mark Drakeford11. Contrasting Perspectives of Inequalities in Health and in Medical Care, David Greaves