State Medicine and the National Health Service
Lecturer: Roberta Bivins
This seminar reflects on the shifting relationship between the state and medicine since the start of the twentieth century. It examines the reasons for a shift of emphasis towards state provision, but also the increasing problems experienced since the 1970s. In addressing the shifting relationship between health care and the state, the seminar pays particular attention to the National Health Service in Britain.
Discussion/Essay Questions
What factors encouraged a rise of state medicine in the twentieth century?
Why has state medicine encountered difficulties since the 1970s?
What accounts for the longevity and popular appeal of Britain’s National Health Service?
Required Readings:
Martin Gorsky, ‘The National Health Service, 1948-2008: A Review of the Historiography’, Social History of Medicine, 21 (2008), 437–460 [e-journal]
Charles Webster, ‘Medicine and the Welfare State 1930-1970’ in Roger Cooter and John Pickstone (eds), Medicine in the Twentieth Century (2000), pp. 125-40. [extracts]
Ellen Stewart, 'How we love the NHS', Transforming Society:Research, evidence and critique for positive social change Blog, 5 July 2023.
Further Readings:
Roberta Bivins, Commentary: Serving the nation, serving the people: echoes of war in the early NHS. Medical Humanities, Online First, (June 2020), DOI: 10.1136/medhum-2019-011760
Roberta Bivins, 'Picturing Race in the British National Health Service, 1948-1988', Twentieth Century British History, Vol 28, 1, (March 2017): doi: 10.1093/tcbh/hww059.
Andrew Burchell and Mathew Thomson, 'Composing Well-being: Mental Health and the Mass Observation Project in Twentieth-Century Britain', Social History of Medicine, 2021;, hkab104, https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkab104
Jennifer Crane, ‘"Loving" the National Health Service: Social Surveys and Activist Feelings’, in Jennifer Crane and Jane Hand, Posters, Protests, and Prescriptions: Cultural Histories of the National Health Service (Manchester University Press, forthcoming May 2022).
Jennifer Crane, ‘Save Our NHS: Defending the NHS and Reassessing the 1980s’Link opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window Contemporary British History, 33 (1) (2019), pp. 52-74.
Jennifer Crane and Jane Hand, Posters, Protests, and Prescriptions: Cultural Histories of the National Health Service (Manchester University Press, forthcoming May 2022)
Daniel Fox, Health Policies, Health Economics: The British and American Experiences, 1911-1965 (1986).
Nick Hayes, ‘Did We Really Want a National Health Service? Hospitals, Patients and Public Opinions before 1948’, English Historical Review, 127 (2012), 566-591.
Rudolf Klein, The New Politics of the National Health Service (1995).
George Rosen, A History of Public Health (1986).
Andrew Seaton, ‘Against the 'Sacred Cow' : NHS Opposition and the Fellowship for Freedom in Medicine, 1948–72’, Twentieth Century British History, 26 (2015), 424-449.
Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine (1982).
Charles Webster, The National Health Service: A Political History (1998).