Medical Practice In Modern England

Before World War II, the great majority of practicing doctors in England and Wales were general practitioners. They performed their own surgery, and were accustomed to treating a wide variety of illnesses and symptoms. Specialists were few in number, tended to practice in large towns, and were often associated with major hospitals. But rapidly changing medical institutions and services in the twentieth century have compelled specialization even among more modest doctors and hospitals.

While medical specialization was not new-for centuries physicians were differentiated from surgeons-twentieth-century science and technology emphasized and accelerated this difference rapidly. Medical care began to shift from services rendered by the general practitioner to the employment of those doctors with a special interest-for example, pathology, neurology, or cardiology. Author Rosemary Stevens, an expert in public health, traces, especially within the last two centuries, the patterns of English medical practice, institutions, staffing, and training, and their influence on specialization, the British National Health Service Act, and post-World War II developments. Stevens discusses the ever-relevant issues of income determination, medical education, and the future of the general practitioner in an age of specialization. Along with its companion volume, Medical Practice in Modern England is a book that will be of lasting value to scholars of medicine, medical care organization, economics, and modern social history. It is of special importance at a time of crisis in the health care systems of many European Societies.

"A fine book. Carefully constructed, factual, elaborately researched, gracefully written."-George A. Silver, M.D., professor emeritus of epidemiology and public health, Yale University.

Rosemary Stevens is professor emeritus of history and sociology of science at the University of Pennsyvlania. Educated at Oxford, Yale, and Manchester, she has also taught at Yale University and Tulane University. She is the author of American Medicine and the Public Interest and In Sickness and in Wealth: American Hospitals in the Twentieth Century.

Stevens' (history and sociology of science, U. of Pennsylvania) 1966 analysis of the British medical profession was published by Yale University Press two generations after the National Health Service was established. Here she adds a new introduction looking at the changes during the two subsequent generations. She is also reissuing her 1974 Welfare Medicine in America to trace the fate of Medicare and related programs. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Rosemary A. Stevens is a DeWitt Wallace Distinguished Scholar in social medicine and public policy at Weill Cornell Medical College, and Stanley I. Sheerr professor emeritus in the history and sociology of science at the University of Pennsylvania. Her writings have appeared in Harvard Business Review; Journal of Health Politics, Policies and Law;and American Journal of Public Health. In addition she is the author of numerous books, including The Public-Private Health Care State: Essays on the History of American Health Policy. Rosemary A. Stevens is a DeWitt Wallace Distinguished Scholar in social medicine and public policy at Weill Cornell Medical College, and Stanley I. Sheerr professor emeritus in the history and sociology of science at the University of Pennsylvania. Her writings have appeared in Harvard Business Review; Journal of Health Politics, Policies and Law;and American Journal of Public Health. In addition she is the author of numerous books, including The Public-Private Health Care State: Essays on the History of American Health Policy.