ABSTRACT
Measuring health and the effects of medical interventions upon health are not new. In Mesopotamia around 2000 BC there was in force a law-the code of Hammurabi-governing the payments to be made to, or forfeits to be suffered by, a medical practitioner (Singer and Underwood, 1962, p. 12):
If a physician has treated a nobleman for a severe wound and has cured him or opened an eye-abscess of a nobleman and has cured it, he shall take ten shekels of silver.
