ABSTRACT
This chapter will look at the development of medical knowledge and at changes in the methods and funding of health-care provision and in the division of labour in health care in the first half of the twentieth century. It will show how these changes were all related to and also contributed to changes in the class and gender orders of British society during that period. At the outset Britain was still at the height of empire but no longer safely preeminent in industrial production. The United States and Germany were serious rivals. These were not just problems for the captains of industry, they were also of concern to a state wishing to defend the national interest in its far flung and its home territories.
