Medicine transformed: On access to health care

Introduction

Access to healthcare is important to all of us. Did the arrival of state medicine in the twentieth century mean that everyone had access to good medical services? If you fell sick in 1930 where could you get treatment ? from a GP, a hospital, a nurse? This unit shows that in the early twentieth century, access to care was unequally divided. The rich could afford care; working men, women and children were helped by the state; others had to rely on their own resources.

This unit is an adapted extract from the Open University course Medicine and society in Europe 1500-1930 (A218).

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